April 5, 2007 Club Meeting
Thursday, April 5, 2007 at 7:00 PM
Program: “Tubes that never made it”, Lud Sibley, KB2EVN and Bob Deuel, K2GLO
We had another good turnout at our 5 April meeting. There are still more chairs available, so “bring a friend.”
The program for the April meeting was given by Lud Sibley, KB2EVN and Bob Duel, K2GLO. They gave us a fine presentation on “tubes that never made it” including some strange German tube types. We had a surprise guest appearance when Bud, W7LNG, brought some of his large tube collection and talked about a few of the rare ones.
Meeting Notes
From the May 2007 issue of The Repeater.
Minutes of the RVARC 5 April 07
The meeting was called to order at 1901 by President Jack Schock, and was followed by introductions all around. Thanks to Al, W6GER for talk on military radio last month.
Treasurer Lud Sibley reported $2364. Also, the club generator needs a new battery before Field Day. He will take care of it.
The April Pear Blossom parade is to be handled by JCARES. Kerby, KL7VK took names of potential volunteers. Info on the JCARES net was given. It meets Thursdays at 7:30 PM on the linked repeater system. 146.34/94 works in Medford. (Use a tone).
Three members of the Tube Collectors Assn. gave an interesting program on vacuum tubes.
Lud, KB2EVN told about tubes RCA developed but never produced. Examples: The “bullet” tube, which was a predecessor of the octals, but smaller. Many odd metal tubes. Early glass miniatures, a metal sub-miniature, only 5/16” in diameter. The regular miniature tubes (7-pin) came out in 1939 with 1.4-volt filaments. Many were used in the wartime “Handy-Talkie”. An early version had the evacuation tip in the base but was not made in quantity.
Bob Deuel, K2GLO, showed many European tubes, mostly German. They had some strange looking ones. The Lieben had a spiral grid, disl plate and a drooping filament above. That shorted out sometimes. A spherical French/British one saw service in WW1.
The Germans taxed radios on the number of tubes so they evaded it by putting 3 tubes in one envelope along with capacitors and resistors. It took only a battery, tuned circuit and loudspeaker to finish the radio.
“Bud” Larson, W7LNG, showed some transmitting tubes, mostly from the 30 with numbers from 800 to 833A. These were familiar to several old timers.
Respectfully submitted, “Bud”, W7LNG in absence of the secretary
