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Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2018 5:16 pm
by Richard Hull
This past weekend I went as a seller/buyer. Sunny and warm but all in the shade. The entire fair grounds are covered in trees. We call it "the hamfest among the trees" I sold $490.00 worth of my Geiger counters, minerals, elements, high voltage capacitors and connectors.

I spent a total of $55.00 on cool stuff. See photos for data.

The handles are for The larger mica windowed GM counters I make and sell. List price per handle is about $12.00. Good surplus handles are about $4.00 each. At 25 cents each, I went crazy.

I repair a lot of CDV-700s for folks as the original PNP Germanium xistors in the HV circuit fail a lot. The NOS 2N404's were a god-send.

I did not need another Keithley electrometer...I already have 15 of them, but at $5.00 I could not resist.

As usual, click on image to enlarge...

Richard Hull

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:13 pm
by Bob Reite
I would have grabbed those ceramic standoffs had I been there. To replace the ones that always seem to get broken in the ATUs at AM broadcast stations.

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2018 12:13 am
by Richard Hull
I now have a vast stock of these insulators. Most are E.F. Johnson. Every time I see them, I buy all of them. Hams have always highly prized these standoffs when building xmitters. That kind of ham is a distant memory now. Few old guys remain doing this and a newbie has his mom or dad buy him a Yaesu or Kenwood transceiver. Not many total brass pounders around anymore, either. Most all are silent keys now.

I'm buying up a lot of their cool old stocks as musty basements are cleared of 50 cigar boxes filled with mostly junk that was held in high regard, but now is trash. I see the cigar boxes full of removed, short lead, 2 watt carbon comps at 20% tolerance or full of foil/wax capacitors. It is the boxes stuffed with Ra tipped WW II toggles or Ra meter movements and standoff/insulators that I go for.

I forgot... I picked up two mint 1 lb rolls of 60/40 lead solder at $5.00 per roll. The ROHS solder is pretty much crap. While the joints might be good they all look like cold solder work of an amateur on cooling. Nothing touches tin/lead... and no tin whiskers either.

Richard Hull

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2018 4:03 pm
by Dennis P Brown
Very impressive; especially since you just happen to have the electronics needed on hand to repair items like that meter!

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2018 3:01 pm
by Bob Reite
The ROHS solder is pretty much crap. While the joints might be good they all look like cold solder work of an amateur on cooling. Nothing touches tin/lead... and no tin whiskers either.
Ah I'm not the only one that noticed that "dull" look of lead free solder. Stuff I want to sell in CA has to be made with it, but I do a lot of repair on older equipment that it is still best to use 60/40 or better yet 63/37 eutectic solder, as 63/37 is either melted or solid, not a semi-molten state if it's not hot enough. If it's something I'm building for myself I'll use 63/37, as I don't plan to eat my transmitter.

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 1:21 am
by Richard Hull
Good man! I, too, prefer 63/37 for my own work, but I have a lot of 60/40 laying around to use up and I tend to grab it when working on old vacuum tube gear, and I work on a good amount, bring stuff back to life.

Both the tin-antimony and tin-silver-copper alloy ROHS solder look cold in solidus as finished joints. Not even a hot iron will produce a pretty joint with the ROHS stuff. There is nothing as good as tin-lead.

Richard Hull

Re: Berryville hamfest booty

Posted: Wed Aug 15, 2018 6:42 pm
by Bob Reite
I also think the tin whisker issue with the RHOS alloys is going to be a serious problem as equipment ages, especially with the fine pitch of surface mount component leads. Then again, people these days throw away stuff before it's five years old, so the whiskers probably won't have time to form before the equipment gets junked.