W2EWL Special - How Vintage SSB started in Ham radio

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WD5JKO:

This topic is a little off topic on an AM forum, but I just cannot get over how innovative Tony Vitale was when he developed a phasing type mobile transmitter based upon the BC-458 command transmitter. I might be wrong, but that two band heterodyne scheme from a 9 Mhz crystal with a 5-5.6 Mhz VFO set the standard for LSB on 80M and USB on 20M. I have scanned the article from the early 1950's, and posted a link to it.

http://pages.prodigy.net/jcandela/W2EWL/W2EWL_Special.PDF

What strikes me reading the W2EWL article is that the passion to innovate and further the state of the art was big at that time and it was for SSB when the appliance operators ran AM!

So can anyone construct a time line relating the W2EWL special, Central Electronics (CE 10a. 10b, and 20a) introductions, and the Lakeshore Industry "Phase Master" transmitter? Who did what first, and who copied whom?

Jim WD5JKO

Here is some more vintage SSB history I uncovered with some web surfing courtesy of Google:

http://www.ac6v.com/73.htm

Tony Vitale  W2EWL who lived in Denille NJ wrote an article in CQ in the early1950's  entitled "Cheap and Easy Sideband".  It was a 9 Mhz USB phasing generator tweaked for optimum suppression on LSB and an ARC-5 used as a 5 Mhz VFO.  It summed the 9 Mhz USB signal and 5 Mhz VFO to work on 20 meters.
Sum mixing does not invert the USB signal.  It used  difference mixing to work on 75 Meters, causing the USB signal to be  inverted to LSB.  At this time commercial SSB rigs were virtually non  existent.  Shortly after this article was published, Wes Schaum &  Joe Batchelor formed Central Electronics and utilized a similar design to  make the 10A, 10B, & 20A. The few hams using "Ducktalk" had only the  capability of USB on 20 meters and LSB on 75 meters.  Thus the  convention was set.  When other rigs like the 10A, 10B, & 20A  came along, they followed the precedent that had been set by the "Cheap and Easy Sideband" article by Tony Vitale.  I met Tony in 1975 when I worked for Cessna. Tony retired in the late '70's and died in the mid  80's.

http://www.qsl.net/k5bcq/Lorne/w2ewlside.jpg
http://www.qsl.net/k5bcq/Lorne/w2ewlfront.jpg

here  is another one built:
http://www.ohio.net/~ka8wtk/458/458.htm

Some  more history:

Single sideband This is not to suggest that no amateurs  were developing the art in the SSB field, still a controversial  area.

Tony Vitale WZEWL, made many a convert with his cheap and Easy  S.S.B.''
('March 1956) an ingenious phasing-type exciter built in and  around a surplus BC-458 transmitter.

Murray Crosby, WZXSY,  described his ''product detector'' in May, l 956 and made it impossible  for anyone during the following years to peddle a sideband receiver that  didn't have something labeled a ''product detector."

In September 1957  Howard Wright, MQPNB, one of the early sidewinders described the "Third  Method of S.S.B. Generation" a system primarily of academic  interest.

In 1960 the 7360 beam-deflection balanced-modulator be was  introduced and in the same year Joe Galeski WWIMP described his three-tube  complete filter sideband transmitter which certainly must have set some  kind of a record for minimums.

By 1960 the pattern of  linear-amplifier design was firmly established; tetrodes operation ABl for  high-sensitivity applications, or grounded-grid Class B triodes when 30 to  100 watts of drive was available.
Historical articles from  the
1964  issues of QST.  Submitted by Jim Linn, WB8RRR

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Central Electronics reflector:
From: "NICKTUSA@aol.com" <NICKTUSA@aol.com>
Sent: Mon, November 9, 2009
Correction folks.  Wes Schum started Central Electronics  without Joe Batchelor in 1948 after he was released  from active military duty.  His first series of products had to do with  language lab and hearing aid equipment for the profoundly deaf.  These were  marketed by the J. Warren Company. The 10A, and the 10B had been released and  development of the 20A was essentially completed when Joe and Wes met by  chance at a Chicago-land hamfest in 1954.

Joe, like many others, had leveraged the vast depths of WW-II surplus to make sideband rigs available in the very early 1950's.  His rig was built using the BC-696 as a transmitter foundation, but with an on-frequency 75-meter  phasing generator.  Wes, however, developed his CE exciters, using a 9MHz heterodyne scheme as an all-band manufactured product expressly for radio amateurs. Other than the BC458 pressed into vfo service (as he could buy  a palletload of them for twenty bucks) the CE exciter line was a pure ham radio product.

The CE 10A was first advertised in QST magazine in September 1952, however, the little set was available to Chicago area hams for some time prior to this  country-wide marketing move. Wes was aggressively spreading the word about  single-sideband at area hamfests well before he could  afford hist first QST ad.

Joe's initial contribution to Wes's Central Electronics. in 1954-1955, was the design of broadband couplers of the 600L amplifier....although his association with Wes was initially forged by their joint collaboration on a revolutionary no-tune transmitter concept each shared:  the 100V.  The amplifier was built to give folks a first taste of no-tune technology. Joe had  to relocate to Chicago from Walnut Grove, GA as his initial broadband coupler design was not readily reproducible for manufacturing.  How the  couplers became such was through the intense labors of Wes and Tom Clemens  W9OKA (SK).  Wes understood the sensitivities of manufacturing processes  whereas Joe continued to search for perfection in an imperfect world.  Yet,  it was Joe's genius that yielded the innovations that set CE apart and  fortunately garnered the interest of Zenith and Karl Hassel.

So, if ever there was a "Odd Couple" pairing in amateur radio's  history it has to be Wes and Joe's association during the 100V's  development.  You could not have paired two entirely opposite  personalities onto such a complex and technically demanding project,  intentionally, without a lot of sparks and fire.  Somehow, they made it  work.  I have the schematic of Joe's W4EGK 75-Meter SSB Exciter/Transmitter  and will be happy to post if it is of interest as well as a picture of Wes and  the first 100Vs coming off final test. 

73  Nick, K5EF

Pete, WA2CWA:
Hams were designing phasing-type exciters back in the late 40's. There are a number of articles in QST during that period that were not that difficult to build with junk box parts.

k4kyv:
The first articles that I know of on the subject of practical amateur SSB appeared in R/9 magazine in late 1933 and early 1934.  First, there was an explanation of what SSB was, then basic theory on how it worked, and finally a construction article for a 75m SSB transmitter.

The SSB signal was generated at barely ultrasonic frequencies, filtered with a L-C filter made from audio transformers, and then heterodyned twice to reach a limited segment in the 75m band.

This is not hearsay; I have all three instalments of the article in my magazine collection. 

KA8WTK:
Here is a transmitter I think was built from that article..... (a bit out of focus, but you get the idea)

WD5JKO:
Quote from: k4kyv on November 20, 2009, 06:29:13 PM

This is not hearsay; I have all three instalments of the article in my magazine collection. 


Don,  This sounds interesting. Maybe you can scan and post them one at a time. I bet Pete will look the other way concerning the copyright issue since the authors and the publication are all long gone..

Jim,
WD5JKO

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