DX60 ON 160?

[ve6pg]

...i understand there is a mod, to put 160 on the dx 60.....anyone know where i can get a copy of this?..

..tnx..

tim..


.sk..

[w3jn]

Google brought up a multitude of articles.  One was in Electric Radio, another was in 73 magazine.

[WQ9E]

I think this comes under the heading of, "you can do it but are you sure you really want to?".  Unless you are driving an amplifier with it this is going to be a painful experience on 160 AM given the low power.  The controlled carrier AM is very friendly to modern amplifiers however.

Unless you are married to the DX-60 an equally small rig like the AF-67 is probably a better choice and it already has coverage of 160.  Or the ubiquitous Viking 1 or 2 is larger but a great all band AM/CW rig.

The DX-60 is a nice nostalgic novice rig (I have one) but there are a lot better 160 meter choices out there.

[k4kyv]

In the early 60s I modified a Heathkit AT-1 to cover 160. I added a coil (the rig had a separate link-coupled output coil for each band, in kind of a turret arrangement), and painstakingly drilled out the contacts on a junkbox rotary switch that happened to be identical to the ones on the AT-1 bandswitch. Then I modified the stop on the rotary bandswitch to add one more position, and attached the new contacts using tiny screws in the holes where rivets normally go. The thing worked perfectly on 160. I wish I hadn't got rid of it, since AT-1s are collectors items these days.  But it probably wouldn't be worth much to collectors since I replaced the cheap meter with a real d'Arsonval panel meter and eventually converted it to rack-and-panel construction to serve as an exciter for a higher power rig.

Those were days when 160, with all its power and frequency restrictions, was not considered a real ham band by "serious" amateurs. Ads in the ham radio rags of the day were full of "all-band, 80 through 10m" rigs. The only thing that saved the band was that a few of us die-hards managed to keep interest in 160 alive until LORAN began to be phased out, and enough pressure was put on the FCC to restore the newly vacated frequencies to amateurs.

To this day, 160 has never been fully restored.  For many years before WW2, the band went from 1715 to 2000 kc/s.  Briefly, just before the War broke out, it was expanded and shifted to 1750-2050, a full 300 kc/s.  I'm  not sure amateurs ever got to actually use those new frequencies before Pearl Harbor was attacked.

Amateurs are presently relegated as secondary users on 1900-2000; radiolocation is officially the primary user. But GPS has pretty much rendered 160m radiolocation obsolete. There are no longer any major beacons active in the ham band, and I usually hear only one between 1700 and 1800, around 1730 kc/s. Back in the 1980s, 1600-1800 was packed with radiolocation beacons like sardines in a can. The FCC gave them 1900-2000 to "reaccommodate" the beacons displaced by the expanded AM broadcast band. The radiolocation industry requested an exclusive allocation, but the FCC let amateurs continue to use it on a secondary basis. For a while, there were maybe a half dozen beacons operating in that part of the band. To-day, extremely piss-weak CW beacons can sometimes be detected when the band is quiet; those are said to be flea-powered with short whip antennas, mounted on buoys in the ocean, some allegedly to mark the spot for illegal drug dropoffs.

We dodged a bullet on that one. We might have lost the entire upper half of the band to a service that now wouldn't even be using it, much as we lost part of the 220 mc band to UPS, who never deployed the communications system on the frequencies they successfully lobbied the FCC for.
__________________

[ve6pg]

...i've looked all over google...no go, as yet...just key click mods, and many pages on audio mods...if anyone has a link to putting 160 on a dx60, please post it.....i have 2 vikers on 160, as well as a K7DYY, 300watts carrier...i have 3 of these things, and would like to try it...


..tnx...

..tim..


..sk..

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Did a Google DX-60 160 meters
First page has a link:
http://lists.tempe.gov/admin/WA.EXE?A2=ind0202&L=heath&D=0&P=21130

[ve6pg]

...thanks, but that is just a listing of past issues....no direct links, except ER, and i dont purchase stuff online...

..tim..

..sk..

[KL7OF]

Tim....Why?

[KM1H]

Cuz all VE's are cheap? 

[Carl WA1KPD]

Here is an overview of how I changed my T-60. It may give you some ideas
http://home.comcast.net/~chnord/T-160/T-160.htm
Carl
/KPD

[ve6pg]

...with the canadian dollar worth more than the u.s., no, that's not it....i wont give that personal info out....


..sk...

[w3jn]

ER is easy to deal with.  Send them a money order via snail mail for the back issue.