From the early 70’s I was tinkering with electronics. While my peers were playing ball or getting their hearts broken, I was getting shocked and talking to people all over the world.
Peering through the back of a radio or perhaps the TV, one would see all these glowing amber lights. Soon after my fascination with the front of the radiant dial on the old floor model radio piqued, I wanted to know how it worked.
Garage sales and discarded appliances became a source of amusement for me. Boxes of small parts from different devices soon lived in the closet, under my bed, and soon I had to pare down the collection. A borrowed receiver, some junk box parts, and a crystal as were the rules back then, I was on the air as a newly minted Novice Amateur Radio Operator. The glowing 6AQ5 tube was the final for a whopping 7 watts unmodulated Carrier wave controlled by the steady fist of what they used to call ‘brass pounders.’
Today, 47 years after the date, I still remember Morse code, but I must confess I have not pounded a key in eons.
Tubes gave way to transistors, which soon turned into integrated circuits. Now we have software-defined radio that minimalizes the power usage and, of course, exaggerates the complications if you need to troubleshoot it.
Time marches on.
A man once stipulated that we stand on the shoulders of giants, and the same is true of the law of accelerated return of advancement regarding technology.
Most teenagers today have more technology in their back pocket or on their wrist than we used to send a man to the moon. What they do with it remains to be seen but, the possibility of great things is within their grasp.
Licensing for the Amateur Radio Service is nothing like it was. One could argue that nobody builds anything anymore, so it does not need to be as difficult as it was back in 1973.
I still tinker, albeit minimally and mostly with antenna design and theory. All that said to get to the point of this blog.
When I purchased this switch box online, I knew what to expect. Never in a million years would I push any wattage through this thing.
In my office resides a desk, with several different apparatuses on it. From state of the art to antique, I still listen to and ‘mess’ with them on occasion. You see I always appreciate the glow from the dial light of old shortwave radios. I wanted a way to control the RF from my antenna to the different devices without messing with cables.
The name of this device is miss-leading, and I am confident if put to the test, they would call it a ‘name’ and say they never meant it to handle 1000 watts. With the wording CB in the advertisement, they could argue the illegality of using more than 12 watts PEP ergo ‘what were you doing with this thing?’
A smart person could take them to task, in that this thing would perform miserably at 27mhz.
Whoever designed it had a handle on DC but not AC. The integrity of the 50 ohms impedance is violated, making this a horrible device even for switching between receivers. Again I knew what to expect when I spent the $20. Why then did I buy it?
Real coaxial switches have the same essential components, they are just well thought out. If you look at the contact on the switch, you can tell that any kind of wattage would burn the connections and or arc over to the next. In its original construction, I would not even use it for low wattage use.
Below you can see how I modified it with coax and common grounds. One last modification is to add a ground lug to it, so I can ground the box to earth ground.
Enjoy your hobbies, and be very wary of crap from the Far East. While it is all made there, ‘for the most part,’ some companies have a reputation at stake, while some just want to sell cheap junk.
In its original form, it was just that, junk.
-Best
Scott
TheTimeDok 