Steve - WB6TNL's Scrounger

Here is the Scrounger that he built as a Novice. Take a look, Steve tells about each picture. Cool Steve!

Housed in an aluminum cabinet built by my father. Theres no way I could have made such a nice piece at that stage of my life. He was a craftsman. I didn't prep the metal properly before painting so now the paint is flaking off. The G.E. meter and knobs came from the high school radio junk room. So did the Collins winged emblem. As a kid I just, couldn't resist tacking it on. Hey, the-knobs- are Collins, HA!

Here it is in all it's glory! The "main bang" is a 5881, the "high performance" version of the 6L6(oh brother). The pwr transformer is a mil.surp. job that is way overkill in it's quality for this transmitter. But it was all that was available to me in the voltage range I needed. It will last forever. Notice the film of rust on the screwheads and other steel parts. All due to our wonderful atmosphere here on the Left Coast which will slowly destroy anything left uncovered. Not shown is the rear panel with a BNC connector for the antenna. Fairly avante garde for a Novice,HA! Actually, I probably didn't have an SO-239 at my dispospal because even back then I had the proper size hole punch for installing one.

Here is the bottom shot. You will note that I adhered closely to the layout in the article. I knew nothing about circuit layout at the time so I stuck with it. Thank goodness for that cause it worked on the first smoke test. The orginal bank of series-paralleled  electrolytic capacitor is still hanging underneath, dried up and disconnected. The two blue colored Japanese cap's replaced them in the circuit. The filter choke came out of an old 40's vintage vibrator car radio I scrapped for parts. The 120K Ohm bleeder resistors were added after I learned about such things.

You will find a copy of the Scrounger article here.