Just Passing By

[Nowhere-Man]

I'm in the process of setting up a hopefully large venture where I hope to be providing more components. Some time I've been investigating the Russian radio scene which is very active. There is a wide range of electron tubes and the capacitor ranges especially interest me. конденсаторы is the term used so I'm contacting a few companies as I tend to need the higher voltage ranges, for cathode bypass and so forth.
There is a fairly large website I'm developing but it is not a forum. Merely schematics and articles. I am working on German tube radios a bit and hope to be featuring a fair range of receivers from the USSR.
That is all. I'm too busy these days to post news but thought I would pass by.
Regards to Mark.

[Mark Hennessy]

Hi NM,

Sounds interesting! Keep us updated

All the best,

Mark

[Crackle]

Hi NM
I thought you had been quiet recently.
Good to hear you are still OK.
Just thought I would mention that cathode bypass capacitors are not normally especially high voltage types.
The anode to grid coupling ones do need to be a high voltage type. As do a lot of the decoupling capacitors found in radio circuits.

by for now
Mike

[Nowhere-Man]

I basically follow the recommendations by F J Camm on the voltages of coupling capacitors, smoothing capacitors and HF or AF bypass and so forth. His books are around 1940's period. There is a very good chapter called Correct Component Values and all the recommendations were contemporary with the era (which I like). I would like to get hold of His Superhet Manual as well at some point.
The technology in Russia today in its application to "dated" engineering has been very useful to me. I've had to spend a lot of time researching the availability of tubes. The 6U8A had me a bit interested last night - seems a bit more scarce. In Russia the perspective is neither "valve" nor "tube" but they tend to go with "lamp". For me the main consideration is finding decent prices or matches. Hopefully my site will creep up on Google once I sort out the listing process. Still, yes, I'm very active in electronics and mechanical engineering at present.

http://radiofun.ru/2011-03-21-06-13-21.html

[Mike Watterson]

I've spent much time trying to translate datasheets from Russian. Often scans or from Berg, so challenging for me to type it into translate.google.com

A Russian now in the Ukraine has helped on occasion.

Tip: Only use Google Translate INTO your OWN language, and for subjects you know, then it's fixable. I've given great amusement to some German speakers, using Google to convert English to German.  It's even more rubbish for Irish (Gaelic), which I don't know, but I have fluent relatives ...

Vacuum lamps.


The most widely used are electron tubes with different numbers of meshes placed between the cathode and the anode. Feeding these grid certain magnitude and sign (with respect to cathode) voltage, it is possible to some extent to control the anode current: at a given anode voltage of positive voltage to the grids will help to increase the anode current, negative as their voltage will decrease it. Furthermore, when positive voltages on the grid of the electrons emitted by the cathode and will branch off to them, ie, mesh grid current circuit appears..; at negative grid voltage noticeable grid currents will not.

Lamps with a grid (control) is called triodes. Lamps with two screens called tetrodes or lamps with shielding grid (this grid is a screen between the anode and the control grid, reducing the capacitance between them). Lamps with three grids called pentode or lamps with a protective grid (mesh protects the screen grid of secondary electrons ejected from the anode). Lamps with five grids (including two managers and two shielding) called pentagrid converter.

Distinguish direct heating lamp, in which is used as a cathode filament of an incandescent electric shock or heated-lamp and indirect heating, which serves only as a filament to heat it from the isolated special cathode.

I think any English speaking Expert can fix the above "auto translated" from http://radiofun.ru/2011-03-21-06-13-21.html which looks interesting.
I find copy & paste of blocks of text works better than putting the website URL into Google's translate tool.

[Nowhere-Man]

Sort of put me out of a job really. Still I know my way around the search engines in fact you can use Yandex.ru the same as Google.

[Nowhere-Man]

Just tested my alternative dial chord mechanism. At the moment it uses very small weights used as a tension drive just so I can test the system. After many trials I finally managed to get the tuning vanes to drive with the sensitivity I was seeking. The final stage will be a very small mechanism to substitute the weights. Can't yet say whether the effort spent will be worth it. Still so long as it works in the end I will be content. I did notice the HAM schematics seem to opt for direct drive.

[Nowhere-Man]

East German wire offers a different approach to soldering but it's probably pretty reliable. Design wise they tend to split schematics into segments. I did notice they skipped the recommended series resistance in the rectifier cathode feed designed to buffer the HT initial load. This set has LW, MW, KW and UKW. Also I was impressed by the stringing mechanism. Where new wiring was necessary I used a similar type to the original.