MY QSL-40, FOUND!

My QSL-40 has been found for awhile but I've only recently had time -- and light -- enough to photograph it:Front view (tomcat left in for scale). The 40m coil is installed.

Under chassis view (tomcat as per above) -- the chewed-up resistor is a 100 mA shunt across the (actually) 1 mA/1V/1k meter. You didn't really think it was a 4-Ampere meter, did you? It's salvaged from an old commercial rig. If you look carefully, you can see the insulator the 140 pF variable is mounted on.
Close-up of the front. The crystal is one of a batch I purchased from Phoenix Crystals, which was one of the very last of the small crystal grinders. Sadly, the owner passed away about ten years ago and no buyer could be found for the business.

Changes from the original Fred Sutter transmitter are few:

1. I used a male chassis connector for the power supply. --These days, I'd use an octal, as the "tube base" pattern 4, 5, 6 and 7-prong plugs (though not tube sockets) are no longer made.

2. The crystal is an FT-243 rather than a "doorknob" type and the socket is according different. You could use a 2-prong socket for the crystal if you had one, but they'll fit an octal tube socket okay. (There's a no-wrong-way-to-plug-in wiring pattern for FT-243's in an octal socket. I didn't use it but I'll look it up and post it if any reader is curious.)

3. I should have used enameled wire for the coils. What I did use is #14 house-wire, stripped. This increases the hazard, since the coil is at B+ potential. (Now that I own a drill press, I can redo them properly.) The material holding them is clear plastic rather than black Bakelite. --But that is real Duco glue holding it all together!

4. The meter is different, a square one instead of the round version he used (probably a Triplett and a bit nicer than the Readrite typical of low-end designs at the time). It was the right size and I had several.

VIBROPLEX, OUCH!

It appears that the Vibroplex Co., under new ownership in Knoxville, TN (and with, last I checked, a lot of repair parts and accessories back in production), has made a radical change to the nameplate.

I think it is an unfortunate change. Given the cost of replacing the dies that stamped the old nameplates, going to a printed or silkscreened label may have been inevitable, but the design is terribly plain and a bit jarring to my eye.

It is, however, a lot better than not having Vibroplex around any more.

Remember, the earliest Vibroplex keys had very plain serial-number plates instead of the ornate stamped ones we've become used to -- and, in some cases, a water-slide decal of the "bug" logo.

NORMAN CORWIN: 1910 - 2011

One of the best writers for radio, a man famous for, among other things, radio documentaries, passed away 18 October. Norman Corwin was 101, a man whose career hit at about the peak of radio broadcasting as family entertainment.

Although he later wrote for film and TV, as well as several plays, radio was medium in which he most excelled. The spoken word can be the slipperiest of instruments; unsupported by images, with no turning-back of pages, the listener's attention must be gripped and held -- and Corwin was unmatched at doing just that.

Much of his work survives. He will be missed.

(A tip of the hat to alert reader Noel, who brought it to my attention; I knew who Mr. Corwin was but had lost track of him, assuming his passing to have been long ago).

COINCIDENCE

Radio hams may be a little surprised to learn the paddlewheel steamer USS C. W. Morse, used by the Navy as a receiving ship in WW I, did not specialize in radiomen. Who was C. W. Morse? I don't know. A cursory websearch finds only the ship.

SET IN TYPE

Set in wooden type, in fact: the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin keeps the obscure skill of wooden poster type and printing therefrom alive. (So can you, if you join: they offer studio access as a benefit of membership.)

Wooden poster type? It was the standard; most old posters (and even some new ones), especially the ones run off in huge numbers to promote events, were made with wooden type, offering huge flexibility in font and form.* It was cheaper than cast type, too. How good is it? Have a look at a nice topical example, and you tell me. (Plenty more in their store).

More about wood type can be found at the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. It appears the very last commercial manufacturer held on until 2001.
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* Windows users will find a parallel in Word: if regular typesetting is like normal typing in that program, wooden type is the Word Art utility.

A NEW SOURCE

Have a gander at Hand-Eye Supply. With a primary client base in the art/handicraft printing community, they carry a number of interesting and useful items, including a nice selection of sturdy work clothing and very fine-looking safety glasses.

Not a huge stock but a number of items I've not seen elsewhere.

SHOP TRICK

It's like the old carpenter said, as he hammered the screws into place: "Every trade has its tricks but mine."

Here's one. It's not much of a trick, but it helps keep me out of trouble with a router. You usually need to know the distance between the edges of the routed groove and the edge of the baseplate of the router, so you can clamp a guide down at the proper spot. You can calculate it but it's easy to get tripped up -- and why do it on paper when you can create an example and measure it directly? There you go! It's a lot easier to get everything in the right place with an actual example you can plop down on the work and use to mark it. A real pro might even use it to set dividers and eschew the numbers altogether. Me, I'm an amateur and this makes it easier to visualize how things will turn out.

As you might suppose, I'm building more bookshelves. As ever, I find a ratio of at least 4:1 between the measuring/setting-up and doing the cutting.

(The greenish tint to the freshly-exposed wood? It's a scrap piece of poplar, which often looks a bit green. Very nice to work with, harder than most soft woods. Smoothed and linseed-oiled, it will usually retain the hue.)