The Benton Harbor Lunchbox

The Heath Company was founded in 1926, initially making aircraft and then more famously making radio and electronic kits from 1947 to 1992.  The company didn't close as some sources reported, but did file for  bankruptcy in 2012. The company was restructured, and continues to operate on a small scale, selling parts and kits on eBay.

The first Heath kit was a do-it-yourself oscilloscope that cost $50. Even in 1947 that was a good price for an oscilloscope and it was a big seller. They marketed kits for audiophiles, hacks, hams, amateurs and engineers, even one kit for a full size Thomas electric organ. It was a phenomena that tapped into an early vein of technical geekery. Their instructions were thorough on a level that would embarrass IKEA today.  Other electronics companies like Radio Shack, Lafayette and Allied,  all also marketed kits. but Heath kits were top notch. They remained on top until they were bought by Zenith in 1979 mostly for their then nascent computer kits. More here and here.

The Heath kit lunch box was a phenomena inside a phenomena. For many years Heath was based in Benton Harbor Michigan. So when they began making squarish radios in the 1950s, about the size of a lunch box, with a handle on top... they got nicknamed "Lunch boxes" or Benton Harbor Lunch Boxes. These are beloved by collectors.purists might argue that the "real" lunch boxes were 2, 6 and 10-meter band radio kits
 marketed from 1961 to 1967. They were affectionately called the "twoer", "sixer", and "tener". But the lunch box chassis goes back almost to the very beginning.

In truth that first Heathkit in 1947 had a handle on top. But it was taller than it was wide. It wasn't very lunchbox-like. But in 1948 they debuted some test equipment: a RF signal generator model G-1, the Condenser Checker model C-1, and that Signal Tracer, model T-1. [SOURCE] These definitely had the right shape. But it was only those early 1960s transceivers were actually marketed by Heathkit as 'lunch boxes."

Ham Radio Now Podcast

What is the difference between a podcast, a vidcast and a webcast?  No really. Whichever of those three things this is, the Ham Radio Now program is great. Hosted by Gary Pearce (KN4AQ) the show focuses on news and technology in the Ham Radio arena. Their slogan is "Television programs all about Amateur Radio... on the web" Gary has a great radio voice, clearly a pro. Below is episode 41, of the over 200 shows so far. It's my favorite so far focusing on high speed communications in the 420 MHz band

Ham Radio Vs. Marijuana Growers

According to AARL, the average age of a ham radio operator is over 50. They don't say how much over 50 and some nations have admitted their median ham age is almost 80. You would think that mature demographic would have some non-recreational interest in medical marijuana. But that has not been the way things have gone. Marijuana growers and ham radio operators have actually become mortal enemies. The AARL even posted an article on identifying these growers, and how to deal with the problem from both a legal and technical point of view here.

the conflict stems from a simple fact about grow lights. Like many forms of fluorescent light, they produce RF interference (RFI).  In the last decade, digital high-intensity discharge (HID) ballasts have largely replaced traditional coil magnetic ballasts. The HID ballasts typically operate on 110-270V circuits. The target target output frequency from the ballast is 50-120Hz. But your household electricity typically operates on 60Hz.  not the obvious problem. Fluorescent tubes are non-linear devices, and generate harmonic currents in the power supply. The arc within the lamp can generate RFI as well, which can be conducted through power wiring!  More here, here and here.

The RFI is usually in bands between 1.8 MHz and 30 MHz and it's strong enough you don't need special gear to detect it. You can find a bad grow light with a handheld AM radio. These aren't 40 watt bulbs either. Grow lights are usually High pressure sodium (HPS) or metal Halide (MH) and easily 1000w per lamp. Lab tests at the AARL have revealed that many grow light makes and models violate FCC part 15 and/or part 18. The units often operate on a timer making it even more obvious what the source of the RFI is. Even for marijuana growers in Colorado, this presents an unexpected legal problem with the FCC instead of the FBI. I found an article on policeone.com that details the ease at which police can now find indoor growers.

"One narcotics officer from the San Francisco Bay Area turns his car radio to 560 AM when he checks out potential indoor grows. He’s checked out seven indoor marijuana grows since learning about the RFI issue. All seven times, the car’s radio showed significant interference from the ballasts inside of the grow location. "

This unnamed police officer is finding marijuana growers, not with helicopters, thermal cameras, NSA stingray transcripts, automatic number plate recognition, video surveillance, or phone taps but with the stock AM radio in his cruiser. Notably, the AARL, still primarily focused on ending RFI, listed in that same article how a grower might reduce the RFI affordably with simple AC line filters and toroids.

SK

These are practices specific to every culture and subculture that help define them from other groups. These are the nuances that define them from those outside the group. In anthropology it's sometimes called exclusivity. This is about one specific to ham radio. The abbreviation SK stands for Silent Key meaning that a person is deceased. The etymology alone is fascinating, and today there are whole websites dedicated to canonizing dead hams. [Link and Link] They even have memorial Silent Key scholarships. Here is a usage from an article by L. B. Cebik on the ZL Special antenna for context:

"ZL3MH (later ZL2OQ and recently a silent key) brought the antenna to ham attention in 1949, giving credit to W5LHI and W0GZR for basic information on the design."

The key in this context of "SK" refers to a telegraph key. It is the primary tool and human-to-machine interface for hams. The telegraph key is the the ham as the paintbrush to the painter, the pen to the writer. Clearly the term must antedate the Morse key. The term could predate wireless, but could not predate land-line telegraph systems. Straight lever keys date back to the 1850s but large scale production was uncommon until around 1880.

But at the other end of the time line I see the term escaping the ham culture and appearing in contemporary books... both fiction and non-fiction. I'll list off a few more recent publications.

• 2011 - Survivors - James Rawles 
• 2009 - Full Circle - Theodore Cohen
• 2009 - Is Anyone There? Communication? by Karim Buksh
• 2004 - Talk the Talk - Luc Reid
• 2004 - The Queen Off Broadway - Alexis Greene
• 2003 - Hello World - Danny Gregory
• 1987 - Unsinkable - Daniel Butler

But as we go backward into the 1970s the references disappear from pulp fiction and reappear in trade magazines and publications dedicated to amateur radio. It appears in the ARRL handbook of 1979. The of June 1975 issue of QST magazine lists W3NRE as a silent Key. They had been using the term since at least 1967. A 1969 issue of CQ magazine lists WA2QCQ as a silent key and multiple 1966 issues use the term as well.

The uses of the term I find before that only refer to an inactive or otherwise unused telegraph key. such as in this line from The Great Iron Ship by James Dugan.  "In the beach hut the electricians sat by a dark index and a silent key. French telegraph shares slumped acutely on the Bourse and Exchange." But there is one lone use from the 1940s that clearly is in the same sense that CQ and QST use it. A 1943 issue of MSG Journal, the trade magazine of the Marine Department of the American Communications Assoc. The line reads   "...don't flirt with high Voltages, that is, unless you want to get your name into MSG, under the sad notation "Silent Key". 

The use in quotes is common in formal writing with new terminology making the jump from slang to common usage.  So that's my best guess. It was likely new in the late 1930s, and popularized by QST and CQ magazine who used the term to precede obituaries. It's worth noting that by 1985 the term was fully entrenched. In 1985, Alan Tavor succeeded in establishing Israel's Silent Key Forest, a memorial to deceased hams.

The Glory of the CW Keyboard

They just don't make these anymore.  A CW Keyboard was a device which could produce Morse code from a typewriter-like keyboard. Today we have Raspberry Pi and Arduino board kits that can convert the output from a PC or keyer or both. In short, these have long been obsolete... and are rapidly becoming arcane.

The Codetyper above is from the March 1952 issue of CW Amateur Radio Magazine. It was a very early  CW keyboard, it actually predates the term.  For the record, CW stands for "Continious Wave," a term that hearkens back to the very beginnings of radio. The Codetyper was designed by Nathaniel Dorfman and it was written up in CW, Radio and Television News, QST, Radio-Electronics. Even MARS the Army signal Corps Bulletin wrote it up. The Codetyper went for $500 which when corrected for inflation is over $4,000 in today's dollars.

The device broke down the 43 different sequences of dots and dashes into units of time. The dash for example is three units long, and the dot is one. Units were strung in sequence the longest unit of time is the number "0" which is made of 5 dashes in Morse code. Five dashes, at 3 units each is 15 units plus the 4 spaces between them makes 19 units. Everything by definition has to be a subset of that sequence. To accomplish this, the Codetyper had 40 tubes... yes it was tube driven.

But the Codetyper vanished into obscurity by 1953. Hams, even the industrious bunch, were making their own. Catalogs carried kits that subtracted labor costs from complete units like the Codetyper. By the 1960s solid state electronics were widely available and Hams attached pin switches to manual typewriters to bridge the gap. By the 1970s they had integrated circuits, memory and buffers to play with.

With cheaper components in the 70s complete units began appearing on the market again: the Info-Tech M-300, the Picking Keyboard, the HAL MKB-1 and the MFJ-494 Super Keyboard (pictured above.)  The Heathkit HD-8999 came out in the early 1980s, and may have been the last one. MFJ actually still makes a CW Keyboard today: the MFJ-452, but the keyboard is external and connected by a PS/2 port.  There are few if any models on the market today with an integrated keyboard. More here and here.

Amateur Radio Plates

This is brilliant. For anywhere from $40 to free a radio ham can get their calls on their license plate. The free structure varies wildy from state to state but is well-documented here by the charming nerds at ARRL.

It's free in Georgia, Alaska, North Dakota, Rhode Island. And the fee averages under ten bucks. Only Kentucky and Wyoming stand alone at thei high end and only New Hanpshire charges based on some weird book value equation.

To receive Amateur Radio plates, a copy of the operator's FCC Amateur Radio Operator's License must accompany the request, and the requestor must state that it is current. Upon revocation, abandonment, or transfer of the license, the plates must immediately be surrendered to the DMV or the transferee. Yadda yadda.

Its written about online everywhere but the best gallery I found was this one:
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nyplates/hamgallery.htm