You deserve it!

I love your channel Mr. Carlson!

@@AndreasSpiess Indeed he does !

@@AndreasSpiess Both channels are soooo addictive! :)

You have a great channel too!

Enjoy! You were even earlier with starting with electronics than I did. But you were lucky to have an involved father. Mine learned me to work with wood...

So you radios and tubes have a good place! I also once had a tube radio from 1925. But unfortunately, when I left home, my parents also once thought, they have not enough space...

@@AndreasSpiess Yes, throwing it away would break my heart. I have a weak spot for old radio's and tubes.

The text is right! 73.

So good luck for your restauration. It seems easy if you watch Mr. Carlson on UKposts. But I am not so sure about reality ;-)

@@AndreasSpiess Thank you. Mr. Carlson makes a lot of things look easy. Benefit of experience, I guess. He does indicate what parts tend to take lots of time and meticulous, precision work. On that basis, I'm considering it an "informed decision." 😁

These are the "live changing events"... Today it is not easy to get such high impedance earphones. They are low impedance these days adapted to today's voltages.

Andreas Spiess Yes indeed. Had a teleprinter (50 baud) in my bedroom aged 16 - and 50 valve ‘modem’ to drive it from my valve radio. Worked in telecoms all my life, from X25 data networks to microwave, fiber and satellite and mobile networks! An early hobby turned into a life!

AliExpress is quite good in bringing the Chinese products to the world ;-)

Thank you. I was not involved in tubes when I was young. Only linear amplifiers had them, of course.

Glad your radio works now!

That´s great! I never built one of those back then. I assume quite a few viewers will share similar experiences...

Heathkit were great. Back in the 1960's I built their Oscilloscope, it used either a 3" or 4" CRT. It worked perfectly from first switch on. The instructions detailed the length and colour of every piece of wire used. As you say no H&S then. Here in the UK we are on 240V and can only imagine the voltage on the CRT anode!

Built an HR-10b in 1973-4 - in the eighth grade. Needed help getting it running, as I had not yet learned to be “methodical enough.” Built the 6t9 transmitter from scratch. I learned about “Bee-Plus” (b+) voltage then, and got *tossed* by the 275+ volts on the plates.

Without a signal generator it is probably too difficult. If you are lucky you find a strong station.

Today it is probably no more easy to get AM stations, at least not in Europe. Most are switched off by now.

Enjoy the build when you got the right kit!

Depends on the tube(s). There are a fair number of tubes that use (relatively) low voltages, e.g. 1t4, 1ad4. The latter is especially interesting, as 1) it’s very small; 2) it has a fair level of gain; and 3) it runs well on less than 45 volts. I’ve run these on 27 volts in a small regenerative radio.

If I see what technology we have today at nearly no cost, I would say, today is much better. But of course, we were young then and did not know how fast things will move. I am glad that I was able to see all the development in electronics of the last nearly 50 years. What a journey if we look back at your tube radio on a block of wood. But still: They worked!

You are right with the morse signal. It was probably better to start young. Now I know what can happen and fear high voltages...

You are right! But you had more stations near you who could serve as a "function generator". These days it is hard to find strong stations... I am more in SDR than in superhets.

You are welcome! The problem with winding the right coil and finding a good distance to the feedback coil is still there. One thing, however changed: We do no more have a lot of powerful radio stations on those frequencies.

Glad you think so!

You seem to have a lot of experience in tubes! It is interesting to see that distortion is a good thing in your profession! We mostly try to avoid it ;-) Concerning your "tube size reduction": An interesting idea. I am sure your customers are happy that somebody builds these things. One thing I wonder is if this distortions could be "simulated" by today's DSP technology and then amplified by a distortion free amp.

Andreas Spiess . Everyone is trying to simulate tube distortion with DSP. So far nothing is as good or better then tubes yet, in my opinion.There are some pretty good sounding plugins out thete, but they are still not the same. They are an ok simulation, but not the same. Tubes have even harmonic rich distortion that is just so wonderful sounding. All the solid state device distortion, (even modern class D amps) is very bad sounding when clipped. It has hard clipping when hitting the power supply rails and generates much more odd harmonic distortion which is not pleasant to the ears. Tubes have a nice soft clipping effect filled with beautiful even harmonics. Tubes run in depletion mode where SS devices run in enhancement mode. In listening to music you don’t want distortion? When it comes to guitar, the tube distortion started a while new world of music beginning with the legendary blues. I am involved in all matters of electronics. I have been into ham radio since i was a kid and i was involved in wireless transmission most of my working career. i just fell in love with tubes in the late 60’s and have not been able to break from its grips. I made tube guitar amps that ran on battery back in the late 90’s into the 2000’s. It was the worlds first and i think only all tube battery powered amp? I don’t build amps commercially anymore? I still build a few one off custom amps for a small group of customers. The tube adapters are an easy way to get that cranked amp tube distortion without waking up the neighbors or having the police at your door. Its an ancient technology that still can not be beat for tone with guitar. It’s a bug i just cant seem to shake. Plus i just love the smell of hot tubes. Its the while thing. The tone the smell. It’s tremendous. I’m building a couple of tube amps as we speak. I have tried every DSP amp simulator i can hear, but they are just not there yet. They sound similar, but they just don’t have the dynamics and the rich harmonics. Take care. Thanks for the email. If you need any tube info ever? Let me know. I have lots of stuff rattling around up there in my brain. I have hundreds of tube books. Theory, circuits, specs. Also scanned to files as well.

I can imagine that clopping on modern amplifiers do not sound good. And good to know that I have a specialist in my viewers!

Andreas Spiess. You have Mr Carlson as well. He is another professional tube head. I watch all his videos as well. Thank you. Take care my friend.

150W RF output on 144MHz 55 years ago. This was marvelous! My first 2m rig had 2 watts if I remember right :-(

A specialist like you looks differently at things than a noob like me, I assume. I ordered a bigger capacitor, even with a gear reduction for 23 dollars (used) because I want to try it out. I did not see many other tube kits around these days...

That is my goal: To make it look easy. Thank you!

I am glad to have an 80-year-old viewer! I hope I will be able to do electronics when I am your age (only 15 years from now ;-)

Indeed, this is not a fake valve. Otherwise I would not have shown it...

You are right. A "tube PC" would be too big even for our living room ;-)

If you are a hobbyist who builds guitar amps with valves like me, you have other problems than small glas tubes, trust me. Ask my neighbours about testing 100w tube amps........ :-)

@@hesspet In my family, we play drums. No need to tell me about angry people around me :D

That is what fascinated me, too. With one tube (or later transistor) they built a working radio! When I was young we bought old military batteries and gave it to friends to touch both ends. What they did not know before they tried was that their voltage was 110 volts ;-)

Andreas Spiess that’s funny yes

So maybe you can finish it now. I ordered a bigger capacitor because I did not like this small one. But it nearly doubled the price of the kit ;-)

Good information on the numbering. Thank you! In military we had transmitters with 10kW output. They also had very high anode voltages. I never liked it :-(

The engineers back then had to be very creative, I think. Their technological possibilities were much smaller than what we have today.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Unfortunately, I am too old to hear a lot of difference :-(

Cool! Hopefully you will get a tube device running!

Glad you enjoyed it!

Glad you liked it! I am not too much in audio and therefore do not have a lot of knowledge, unfortunately...

I’ve never used valves in any circuit design, although I admit they have a retro charm - FETs with pilot lights. There are audiophiles and guitarists who are convinced valve amplifiers are more ‘musical’, however I’m sceptical. Apparently valves produce more even order harmonic distortion, and this results in a ‘warmer’ tone - I’ve not seen any spectral analysis to verify this though.

My grandparents didn't have electricity in their house. For their radio they bought a 90v battery which lasted a long time as the HT only consumed a few mA. The 1.5V valve heaters however were powered by an accumulator. These were glass cased cells that were rechargeable and a guy called round every week and you simply did a swop for a newly charged accumulator. In 1958 they moved into a house with electricity and bought a "battery eliminator" to power the radio from the mains.

Interesting stories! Each time had their solutions. Today they start to talk again about a "sharing economy. It seems history is moving in circles ;-)

Things changed considerably over the years and it is a privilege to live in such times, I think. I remember those chassis. But a PCB is of course much easier...

Thank you!

So maybe you try one now...

@@AndreasSpiess I might do so but I hoped the kits were designed for the FM band so it would be usable as a normal radio. Probably not possible due to the high frequency of FM? I'm a licensed HAM as well but living in the city the reception of the 40m band is terrible due to interference. A good magnetic loop antenna might be a first project ;-).

So you were lucky to have a dad which knew the stuff! But it was quite complicated back then without PCBs I assume...

I am not sure if this would be easy with a regen radio. Needs for sure some amplification, I assume.

Thanks for the info. I did not know. It looked nice ;-)

You are welcome!

Those days the tools were simple, but the skills to use them were bigger. Today 90% of the effort is in UI development to make it easy for the user. And complex for the machine.

:-)

That's what the salesmen told the purchasers ;-) For sure they were much more robust than today's equipment. Later they tried to sell NEMP filters for the same purpose. Fortunately, we never needed them.

I remember these "magic eyes". But I do not know which signal it was connected to.

ukposts.info/have/v-deo/paZ0q7CDpq2esKM.html He repairs a valve radio and builds a magic eye in one video

@@AndreasSpiess The Magic Eye was connected to the receiver's AGC or Automatic Gain Control, which adjusts the gain so strong and weak AM stations come in with about the same volume. The gain adjustment was done with a "remote cutoff" pentode whose gain depended on the amount of grid bias.

Interesting! We had good solutions when we were young. But it was often replaced with even better stuff! The development during my career was mindboggling!

This seems more like a mechanical problem... I am sure you will be able to solve it.

@@AndreasSpiess I'm sure I would be able to had the radio not gotten thrown out by a past step-parent. I had the radio when I was in my teens (acquired roughly 2000-2001). Thanks to a divorce though in 2010, through that I gained at least 150 working vac tubes that I could build my own radio, if not that, at least an amplifier.

Thank you!

Thank you for the feedback. Also in the past I did such "explorative" videos. But it has to fit.

Yes, it is correct (at least the characters). I do not use points and dashes, I just listen to the signal ;-)

Greatscott tried one last Sunday. But he thought there is not a lot of value... Nixies are probably better if you like the glow.

I had an old Westinghouse long band, medium band, shortwave receiver (back in the day) with 6 or 7 tubes. It was seldom in its case, and I would listen to radio at night in just the glow of the filament heaters.

The tubes I have unfortunately do not glow a lot. Even if they use quite some current, they are low-power :-( But the big ones definitively are nice to look at.

Dale P. Newbury Gosh, that is almost romantic!

@@captainpugwash4100 ha ha! It could have been so, but then she tried to do me in (after I dropped my hand on the top-cap of one of the tubes in the audio amp section).

Two different careers... But it was easier to make money with computers than with radios ;-) So your decision was probably not bad.

@@AndreasSpiess Yeah - computers have done me well over the years. Still are!

@@rbphilip ooh - I was doing the PDP8 thing back then aswell. All those toggle switches just to start up the punch tape reader :-)

@@fotografm Exactly! We've advanced more than a little with modern bootloaders! On the other hand, my octal-to-decimal skills were much sharper back then!

@@rbphilipand my morse code reading skills also just got sharpened :-)

Good luck!

Thank you for the info. It seems the still sell it on AliExpress

@@AndreasSpiess But unfortunately it is very tough to get anything directly from China.

@@AndreasSpiess On watching your video I was taken to the days when I was building a radio receiver. Four years before I tried. At that time this capacitor was not available in the market so I had to go to scrap store to get old radios. I had to teardown most of the radios to get a working gang capacitor. But unfortunately I had the same issues with the capacitor that you faced. I works when I touch the capacitor.

Unfortunately those miniature tubes do not glow a lot. The heating power is too low.

You can add my "Mesh communicator" video, too ;-)

You are right. In 1977 it was no more part of my education.

Everybody is free to start such a project. I would probably join with one of the "tube" UKpostsrs. On this channel, the interest in such things is not too big...

That happened to quite a few commenters. I was a little too late for the tubes in education. So I had to do it now ;-)

Very good!

Looking what he achieved I would not focus on his dead. He obviously was a brilliant engineer.

You saw what you get. I think it is ok for a beginning. For sure I will change the variable capacitor... 73 de HB9BLA

Thanks for the link. I understand German, I just do not speak it properly ;-)

@@AndreasSpiessyou'e welcome. I guessed you speak german a little. :D This was intended more for non english speakers ;)

That was a "vibrator" power supply

High voltages always kept me away from tubes. But I assume you can learn how to deal with it. But it will be dangerous even if you know how to deal with it. And generating high voltages was for sure more difficult those days. Now we order a "boost" converter for a few bucks and get 400 volts...

Thank you!

Also a good idea, particularly for this case ;-)

Thank you!

Otherwise I probably never would have tried tubes...

Very good Information. Thank you!

I maybe wrong but I thought the getter was to catch the remaining air molecules after the tube was vacuum pumped and sealed. Sorry that sounds contradictory, that is not the intent. What I mean I don't think the getter will do that [catch air molecules for the purpose of keeping the tube alive] afterwards i.e. yes it turns white but it does not help if the tube gets air into the tube over time.

​@@jimmiller5891 It is, but the barium stays reactive after production so it also catches any oxygen that enters later. "or are left from production" should be read as "after sealing"-activating the getter happens as part of production. Barium won't catch all molecules, just the reactive ones like oxygen, that cause the most problems in tubes.

@@TheEvertw Thanks for the clarification. :)

You are right. I mixed it up. 73 de HB9BLA

Thank you for the hint!

Nixie tubes are still in use in the big Antonov transport airplane. A picture from the cockpit was shown on TV when they transported a satellite to the launch site.

You are welcome!

As I said, I do not understand a lot of tubes. But it was interesting for me to dive into the matter. It is somehow similar to transistors from a logical point of view. And interesting how these engineers solved the problems with "primitive" tools compared to now.

@@AndreasSpiess These were days, when the tubes technology was of centimeters density 😄

You are welcome!

You are right with the text. And you were not the only who had to repeat the signal. The statistics shows a big increase for that passage ;-)

These are SMD tubes compared with the "normal" tubes back them ;-)

You're welcome!

I am sure he will like this idea!

That is probably why I love transistors and chips. The enable very sophisticated things. But going back sometimes is also nice. It shows how good times are now...

And it was true! I had to learn a lot during this video...

Interesting! I am not sure they were already playing in the "tubes ages" ;-) It probably should be "Beatles" or Elvis"

Quite some time since! For sure you were able to hear more stations than today.

@@AndreasSpiess Used to listen to Radio Free Europe, BBC World, School of the Air, Pravda, Tass and of course Voice of America All on AM and Shortwave. We lived on a small island on just below the equator and almost right on the IDL. The skip was crazy!

So we are very similar. I also had tubes in the high power RF transmitters in military service. The rest was already transistors.

Same here. Air Traffic Control radars i 1981-82. Take a look here radionerds.com/index.php/AN~MPN-13. The IF strip was built with transistors, 30 MHz. Rectifier diodes (tubes) big as 1.5 L soda bottles.

@@mannhansen9337 Yes Sir, All Traveling wave tubes or Magnatron.

@@mannhansen9337 reflex klystron opened the gate to HIGH Power Microwave.

These days you can build morse transmitters as well as receivers. But this is not wat we want, of course ;-) I started to learn it at the age of 16 and then in the army. Afterwards I was a radio operator for the red cross abroad. It took quite some time to learn it.

@@AndreasSpiess How cool, very admirable. I bet you have some stories. Thank you for your reply 😁

Thank you!

You are welcome!

Thank you for the additional information! And tubes still seem to have a big fan community.

Hi John, UKposts does not allow links any more. But you can search with Google with these keywords "tube radio diagram 2p2 1b2" . Select "images" and you will find various diagrams.

@@AndreasSpiess Thank you very much!

These were the days... BTW: I created a second channel just for HAM radio if you are interested...

Thank you!

Since 1977... 73 de HB9BLA

You are right. It was not "subscribe". Some viewers used an Android app to decode it ;-)

These are two capacitors and obviously used for these two purposes. However, the transistor radios they are or were used are not regen type.

I am born in 1957. So you definitively had an advantage back then ;-) These early kits were of a much better quality I think. But probably also more expensive compared with an average income.

I do no more remember the details. But I do not see that I needed a negative voltage in my design. Did you do the steps of testing the audio amplifier? Then you should know in which stage the problem is.

They are 1 Mega Ohms...

Good information! I did not know.

and in such radio receivers, i am guessing you cannot find one now.

Yes but they are hard to find today and really expensive. I've a portable tube tester from the old days and there is a realy big slot for such a power source. I think they put in 4x6V blocks. Not so hard to replace with some modern cells. and a small regulator :-)

And 70's. My first universal V/A and ohm meter from 1975 used one. Hioki AS100-D. The battery was available until early 90's. Today I use two A27 batteries and 2 1N4001 diodes in series to drop voltage.

My homebuilt regenerative radios in the 50-60s used 45v or even 90v batteries ... probably hard to find now!