Category: Components

  • Roll your own valves (tubes)

    A few weeks back – in the post about wartime crystal production – I made a tangential reference to my all time favourite YouTube video – Claude Paillard F2FO distilling down to less than 20 minutes his meticulous work making a triode valve, effectively by hand to create a very cute looking valve wearing blue shorts. F2FO,…

  • Grinding quartz and holding a frequency during World War II

    I’m a great fan of the Prelinger Archives which is home to so many items like this video I’ve heard about recently from various ham radio email lists. I like how the components of the earliest electronics and wireless were so basic and ‘natural’. Think of hand made capacitors and resistors using traces of graphite on paper.…

  • Arnie Coro and the Super Islander

    Looking back over some older email list posts today I came across an interesting exchange of posts on the QRPp list. In early August Arnie Coro CO2KK announced latest progress on the ‘Super Islander Version 5 QRP transceiver project’. Key design criteria include using “as much as possible parts that could be recycled from easy to find sources of electronic…

  • B&W coils

    I was surprised to see that one longtime brand I associate with my earliest days playing around with radio, Barker and Williamson, is still thriving – and even better, still providing the product I associate them most closely with, air wound coils, specifically the Miniductors. There’s a list of the types they have available here. They’re…