Catching Up!

Wow, it's been an eventful year! 

During the Holiday Season, the Letterpress Activity begins to slow down, with the last set of Christmas Cards going out to an Arch Diocese up in Virginia Beach.  Apart from a few purchases from our Etsy Shop, and one Christmas Indie Market show in DeLand, Florida (up the road) - we decided to take a bit of a Letterpress break.  But Nature abhors a vacuum!  So, what fills this vacuum?

Why . . . Boatanchors, of course!

Now, just a little back story here: I once had the kind of Ham Shack that many folks would have drooled over.  I had the Hallicrafter rigs, I had the National rigs, I had the Johnson rigs, I had the military Command sets, the Antennas, the B&W test equipment, the O-scopes, GDOs, SGs, Tektronics this, HP that, over thirty five years worth of Antique Wireless restoration.

. . . yeah, and we still didn't get to the V-500 Viking, museum quality HRO-5, and an FM commercial Transmitter!  But I sold all of this for an even nearer and dearer avocation become vocation: Letterpress!

All this stuff had to go.  It took about three months.  The proceeds went into a very nice 1936 8x12 Chandler and Price New Series platen job press, paper cutter, type, inks, papers, later a Pearl treadle press, a hand fed Kluge, a power stitcher . . . and all this space became filled - and remains filled - with Letterpress and Bookbinding apparatii.

And so it was since 2007.  I went from being WD4NKA to Paper Wren Press. 

Well, I never ceased to be WD4NKA, but the 15 foot by 11 foot room ceased to be dedicated to WD4NKA. 

Then, in December of 2013, my son in law's father, Steve, offered to me his FT-101EE, for a nice price.  He thought I might enjoy using my license, and, well . . . he understood, once a Ham, always a Ham.  And then, a fellow from Church, Ron, gave me HIS station.  Part of it is the cover photo for this blog, that cute little Kenwood (which I have since sold, in order to purchase that FT-101EE!)  Along with this acquisition came a Drake TR-3, in dire need of refurbishing.

Soon, the back wall of my Print Shop became Radio Active again.

There ya go.  Little FT-101 . . . Little Dentron MT3000a . . . a couple keys, a nice Astatic Mic, a fairly hard to find low impedance set of headsets dating back to the Korean War . . . nice little corner.

And then comes the 2014 Holiday Slow Down. 

Courtesy Bry, AF4K, I suddenly become the proud owner of a transmitter built by a guy named Faust.  Faust Gonset.  A GSB-100.

Gee.  You know, I took secret pleasure in finding this under my shop composing table, where the marble "imposing stone" lie.  The Gonset GSB-100 is a multimode transmitter dating to the middle 1950s.  It is about twenty three inches deep, nineteen inches wide, and about fourteen inches tall, weighing in at about seventy pounds.  It seems to be relatively clean.  Welcome to Paper Wren Press, "Faust"!  ( I love that name.  Faust.  Maybe my daughter can name her first kid Faust.  I'll text her and ask . . . )

I had a pair of new 4-400z amplifier tubes.  If you don't know what those are, take heart.  Until I had them, I didn't know either.  And since I stood very little chance of finding a transformer and tuning caps to handle 'em, I sold them.  Again, courtesy the resources of AF4K (and former owner Ronnie Hull), the proceeds from the sale of those two tubes brought this into my Print Shop:

I always wanted a big ol' receiver that had something like quality going for it, and even more important, symmetry.  I am, after all, a design artist.  The appearance of my radios are just as important as their function, if not more!  I once had a National NC-303 and a 300.  Wonderful receivers, but I could not get my mind around their avante guard asymmetrical front panels that were the rage in industrial design by the Year of our Lord 1960.  I grew up on Hammarlunds and RMEs.  Mine was a world of black wrinkle finish and meticulously measured out front panels.  Maybe I'm old fashioned - ya think?  But I really need symmetry in my life.  These big Hammarlunds have that.  Behold: my newly acquired HQ-170.

And so it follows: that little desk won't carry these nineteen inch by twenty inch by fourteen inch beasties!  A new operating table is in order!

And this is tomorrow's task.

So, this is the view from the top, at the Paper Wren, WD4NKA.  Old Time Printing . . . and Old Time Radio!  

And, you know?  He who forgets the past - forfeits the future!

-gary.

Magazines!

Part of the mission of this blog is to explore the commonality between Radio and Letterpress.  Specifically, Amateur Radio, and more often than not, vintage wireless and the graphics and print activities that surrounded it.

First, permit me to introduce to you, none other than:

The "Wapsi".  Also known as the Wapsipinicon Almanac.  Printed by a fellow named Tom Fay.  You can read about this amazing magazine here. The short description of this publication is that it is printed out of Small Town Iowa, carried in Barnes & Nobles in that state.  It's a completely letterpress printed magazine, Linotype set, printed from hard metal formes on an ancient cylinder press, along the lines of a Kelly B or Little Giant press.  What's amazing to me is how such a magazine can even exist in this day and age.  The cost of production in sheer labour intensity is enormous.  Hence, one publication per year has been produced by Tom's operation, "Route Three Press" for over twenty years, now.

The cover art is amazing.  Now, I am not entirely sure if they still use the old process, but at one time they used traditional ply wood, hand cut, to print their covers.  This was pretty common back in the the later 19th century and first three decades of the 20th century.  Back in this era, each colour required its own separate wood 'block', which was cut in register with the other colours and the "key", or black colour wood block.  In the cover above, two colours are utilized, the blue and the black.  Each colour would have it's own hand carved block.  Another word for a printing surface is "die".

I really enjoy these covers from the Wapsipinicon Almanac, and largely because the covers, in the main, are hand wrought as they were in 1919.  Now, I cannot say that every magazine was printed using wood, some were "dot etched" copper dies, using a photographic method of exposure and acid etching.  But many did use plywood dies, one of which was Vogue.  Close scrutiny of Wireless Age magazine indicates that they used similar, at least up to 1919.  My understanding is that the Wapsi cover art is designed by local artists, and hand cut on premises, usually by the artists themselves.  The annual magazine enjoys the talents of a Linotype operator who has been in the business over sixty years.  I don't know the type of cylinder letterpress they use, but Tom calls it "ancient".  Tom runs it himself.

I thought I might, for educational purposes....which is the decided aim and function of this blog....share a few Wapsi Covers so you might get the feel of a genuine, hand wrought artisan publication.

Here we go:

. . . amazing, isn't it?  By the way, the Wapsipinicon is a conjunction between two indian names, Wapsi, and Pinicon.  They were lovers who drowned in the river which bears their name.  Sorry saps.  (-yawn-)  But a great rag!

Ok, now the Wireless connection.  I direct your attention to probably the best known and one of the oldest surviving technical magazines: "QST ", the official organ of the American Radio Relay League;  It began publication by Hiram Percy Maxim, founder of the League itself.  When he started the "Relay" League, he took in members of another radio club which was in existence since around 1909, called the Junior Radio Club which, believe it or not, managed to strike off a one-shot magazine of its own!  I cannot find a photo of it, neither can I find the name of that publication, but I am pretty certain its existence and continuance was something Hiram desired to perpetuate, probably as a tool to bond fellowship among members and as an Amateur Radio recruiting tool.  The magazine title is taken from the wireless telegraphic "Q" signals, and means "General Message for all Amateurs", beginning publication in 1914.  While I do  not have a photo of the original first edition (really more of a printed membership roster, less a magazine at first) - below is an idea of what it looked like.  The magazine cover art is very common for trade publications, mostly simple hand drawn art-deco framing, titling with typeset characters.  Liberal use of typeset border fonts seem to be incorporated into these covers. Below is an early QST:

By way of translation, the cover reads "QST de the American Radio Relay League".  "de" is the telegraphic shorthand for "this is".  Again, QST  as a three-letter signal sent telegraphically over the air carries the meaning of "Calling All Hams" or "Calling All Wireless Operators".

This particular QST has a blue-grey cover, printed in black, for the month of December, 1915. I believe the cover stock colour changed month to month. This was a true informational magazine, carrying ads, and quite early in the game, comics.  The magazine was printed through the first World War, announcing America's first wireless Wartime ban, and then, in 1919, heralding the lifting of that ban.

By the late teens, QST sported some surprising cover art, for a private hobby organization with a few hundred members and a limited budget.  I am sure Hiram sunk a lot of his own money into these sorts of ARRL endeavours.

This is the general look and design of QST from the late teens, and up to the middle of the 1920s.  I think this cover is a wood cut duo-tone, vermillion and black.  That is a wartime era dirigible depicted on the cover, crossing over either the English Channel or the Atlantic.  Love the font used, and the lightning bolts emanating from the framed title "QST:".  That motif pretty well held through the 1920s.

This July, 1922 cover is probably my favourite.  Again, its a duotone print, green and black.  Notice any similarity between these magazines and the Wapsi?

This is another one of my favourite covers.  I love the central circle design framing the little "Radio Shack".  Now, there's a real radio shack, stovepipe and all!  Check out how far it is from the house!  This is a duotone cover, aquamarine and black.

Hmm . . . another canoe theme.  Come to think of it, there's a lot of canoe oriented art going on with the Wapsi, too!  I might guess this was a traditional favourite.  Note that more than two colours are being used.  Right about 1921, QST began more and more to use screened four-colour separations in their printing, but from time to time, solid colour rendering would still appear.  By the way, these magazines of the early twenties or late teens sell for a considerable sum these days.  Back in the seventies, you could have picked these rags up for almost nothing.  What a difference forty years makes!

Here is a three-colour combination of dot-etched screen work on copper plating, and solid colour printing, very possibly using the same wood die technique employed by Vogue at this time, and more recently, the Wapsi.  Notice that the level of artwork varied considerably.

Printing varied a bit, too.  The registration of the red-orange die slipped a bit.  Oops.  Notice that this colour is used for both the skin pigment of the operator, screened at about ten percent, and for all text.  This appears to be a 1922 duo-tone.

A 1922 tri-tone. Red, brown and black  Red and Black would be the primary elemental cover colours with this magazine.

This was to become the standard cover format through 1930.  Three colours, solid and screened.  The title text is obviously hand drawn.  The text on the bottom is type, using the ubiquitous Cooper Black, the most extensively used advertisement font in the western world, and still thriving today.

From about 1931 up through 1939, QST used a cover format that consisted primarily of a half tone photograph of something having to do with an article or feature within that issue (usually), surrounded by a solid red frame.  I refer to these issues as the "Red Jacket Issues".  Just me.  

As the cover art was evolving, something else was evolving with QST : personalities and a unique style all it's own.  QST was becoming less a trade journal, and more an entertainment and information publication, with pen names like "T.O.M." (The Old Man), Hiram Percy Maxim, President and fearless ARRL leader himself, "The Dixie Squinch Owl", written in a style that fall somewhere between Will Rogers and Colonel Sanders.  Not only was "the Squinch" funny, he also touched upon subjects of morality, including racial equality!  It might be said that of all intellectual and academic endeavors, there was never a racial barrier in obtaining a DOC or FCC Ham Ticket!  I think, in a way, we were ALL ahead of the curve, there.  

One of the guys that got me into Ham Radio was an African American Technician Class Op, Al Harmon, in Philadelphia, 1969.  He was an avid 6-meter VHFer who would regularly work into New Jersey using a 10 watt Lafayette AM rig and a Squalo bumper mounted 6m folded dipole array.  Operated a nice station since the early 1950s. He operated hand in hand with his white counterparts during the riots.  There was no divide. We were all brothers in a very unique fraternity.

Back to Printing and Wireless:

Comic illustration was coming into it's own in QST.  From the mid 1920s, up into the very early 30s, Otto Eppers, W6EA did the bulk of the comic illustration, but he eventually left, applying his almost Robert Crumb stylings and caricatures for more commercial ventures, doing ads for Itel McCullough and Taylor Tubes. (Actually, I might be more accurate to say that San Fransisco's Robert Crumb may have been heavily influenced by Otto Eppers!")  Taking his place at QST came the unassuming Phil Gildersleeve, possibly one of the most iconic comic illustrators - and least known - in the 20th century.  Unknown because he only drew for one magazine: QST.  Well . . . perhaps.  I suspect he moonlighted for the competition once or twice.  I have a 1937 edition of Radio magazine featuring "Scratchi", the fictitious ham from Osockme Japan, which was a quasi-regular article taking the form of a letter to the editor from said Hashfisti Scratchi, in very broken English. The article artwork is clearly, unmistakably, the handiwork of none other than Phil Gildersleeve.

Ahh, but this is fodder for another installment.  Time for me and my ol' buddy Scratchi to say "Ima no wakare" until next time!

73!

-gary

G. Johanson, Printer, the Paper Wren Press.

Our New Arrival!

On Saturday, December 14th, a new arrival was included as part of the arsenal at Paper Wren Press, a 1980 Yaesu FT-101EX.  This is the "no frills" model featuring NO 12v. power supply, NO speech processor, and NO ten meter (a) and (c) xtals.  No, No, NO!!!   It's the "NO!" Rig.  What she IS going to feature is . . . a bath and a complete field strip, cleaning, re-furb, re-dressing, and new accessories.

I've always had my eye on these products by Yaesu.  As a Novice back in the 1970s, I just could not afford them.  As a General, it was all I could do to take out a loan and purchase a Kenwood TS-520SE, which was a gorgeous rig, very dependable, and just like this Yaesu: it was the economy strip-down model aimed at us yokels who couldn't afford the really nice stuff.  

But you know?  I wouldn't have had it any other way.  As  novice, I was forced to build.  And build I did.  I made my own transmitters from a chunk of wood - later aluminium, a couple tubes, and a lot of wire and visits to the Military Surplus store in town.  I made my own primitive receivers, later designing a simple supherhet which I called a Regenerodyne.  If you google "Regenerodyne", you will now find the nomenclature to be fairly common and widespread. I wrote a program called "TubePad" to help me build, and later share what I was building on this new thing called an "Internet".  Thus, having to build brought me to where I am today.  Still broke, but having lots of great memories. From building, I got into restoring old radios, and a lot of great rigs have crossed my bench.  Classics.

And now, I have another classic.

So, sit back, pour up some coffee, and enjoy the Show and Tell as I clean up my new rig!

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When I received the radio, it had been stored in a garage for a number of years.  A Florida garage. This spells humidity and heat.  Perfect ingredients for Oxidation of metal.  When the radio got home, her filaments either would not light, or lit for brief seconds and go out again. Her receiver had trouble finding a clear connection somewhere on her audio control for sound to get through to the speaker.  The band switch was very touch and go.  Nothing was making a solid connection.  No idle current to the finals when I could get the filaments to light on the finals.  My options were pretty obvious: do the deed.  Tear her down and give her a good going over with the radio restorer's best friend: DeOxit.  

This is not a commercial for DeOxit.  But it might be (grin).  DeOxit is a lubricating and penetrating oxidation inhibitor.  I get in a squeeze bottle, capped with a hypodermic needle-like cap.  It permits me to apply this stuff in the hardest to get to places.  It not only dissolves the oxidation, it also applies a conductive and protective coating which prevents, or at least inhibits future oxidation.  Oxidation is simply a molecular change in a metal that creates a less-than-conductive electronic environment. It makes a conductive surface, like, say, copper - less so.  If this oxidation forms a bridge between two connections that are meant to be isolated from each other, it is a "semi-conductor short".  Sometimes the crystals formed by such oxidation take on properties of a semiconductor diode, capable of detecting wireless signals.  They reduce current and introduce gobbs of noise.

DeOxit also has "DeOxit Gold", which is the same, only on steroids.  I used both DeOxit and DeOxit Gold.  This stuff is expensive, but I have managed to keep this little bottle for over twenty years now, so it lasts a long, long time.

Taking apart a "modern" transceiver can be a challenge just to keep track of all the screws, switches, buttons and knobs that have to be removed.  I kept track on the print shop floor using labels and old film canisters which were not only marked, but also showed the positions of the knobs when I removed them from the front panel.

The beauty of the FT-101 series of radios is their modular construction.  This is what made what normally takes days, even weeks - take only one day.  Twelve hours, to be exact.  I gave a liberal dose of DeOxit to both the copper traces on the slides, and the receiving slots.

There are a number of these plug in modules, I think something like six or seven.  You have to be careful when inserting them back into these slotted receptacles, because they are not keyed: it is possible to place them into either the wrong socket, or backward.  I numbered each one and drew a direction arrow on them.  The  larger module in this photo indicates by that obvious space that I need to find a CW filter.  I think Yaesu's CW filter was along the order of 600 Hz. 

This is the view within the "cage" where the finals reside.  These tubes have around 6-700v. coming off their "top hats".  A lot of radio frequency energy (RF) circulates around this area, which is why a conductive shield cage is placed around this part of the transmit portion of this radio.  It serves both as a physical safety against shock hazard, and keeps stray RF energy down to a dull roar, so it doesn't go leaking out and into your Hi-Fi (my what?) - the neighbours TV set, or your computer's sound card.  

You can see the socket which the changeover relay plugs into.  I removed it to clean the pins and socket.

Here's a 'bird's-eye' of the FT-101 with four of the modules removed.  This was quite a revolutionary design in transmitters and receivers back in the 1970s.  Yaesu used actual computer slot receptacles as they were known thirty and forty years ago.  A tip for you enterprising DIYers: make sure you photograph what you do, and mark those things you remove so you not only know where things go back, but in what position or direction!

Here she is with the modules re-inserted.  Just as a reference, I will be doing the equivalent of what I am doing here on a Drake TR-3.  The TR-3 will probably take about a week. Not that I mind, it's the usual amount of time.  In all fairness, the TR-3 is about ten years older, and will require re-capping.  The FT-101 shown here can go a few years before I have to do that.  Notice those electrolytics at the center top of the rig?  Those are the newer type low profile filter caps.  Even though they are 34 years old come 2014, they appear to be holding and discharging just fine!  If they were the older "Atom" type electrolytics, it might have been a different story!

Close inspection of the bottom wiring, and the hard-wiring in the "cage" showed no obvious signs of over-heating, shorts, opens or bypass issues.  Usually, I'll look closely at any resistor in series or parallel with a capacitor.  They usually tell the story, both on the resistor itself, and it's associated capacitor.  While, to be absolutely sure, one must lift any cap and resistor from ground and take measurements, I felt no real need to go that far.  This rig has common storage issues, but no cold solder or heat related issues, and almost all the caps are mica.  Ceramic hi-volt caps usually have a long shelf life, too.  Paper, molded and electrolytics are the main source of old-age issues.

Thus, observing no further issues, I just blew out the dust, slid the cabinet back on and screwed on the bottom plate.

The last thing I did was to re-set the bias to read 50mA idle current.  I did not feel the need to neutralize the finals.  I think sometimes we dig larger holes than we need to when we get into these rigs - something that restoring radios have in common with restoring old printing presses. Resisting the urge to take everything apart...because you can.

I might add that I did replace the plastic transparent protective cover.  That was pretty involved.  I had to use two sheets of medium-thick transparency stock, the type used to photocopy transparencies.  I used two because I did not have one that was wide enough to cover the entire front in a single piece. They meet at the middle of the front panel.  The escutcheon and vernier dial take up most of this area on the front panel, so the seam isn't noticeable at all!  I cut the holes with an Exacto knife.  The escutcheon and dial knob screws are holding the new Mylar transparency frontspiece in place very nicely!  Also, if you look at the power and heater switches, you might notice that I put a black border around each to cover some pretty bad scratches where larger areas of paint had been removed.  This was done with black electricians tape.  The Mylar transparency cover goes a long way hiding the fact that it's actually plastic electricians tape, and not paint!

Here's a close-up of the switches and their new 'borders' under the Mylar transparency.  Oh, I also touched up the scratches on the black part of the escutcheon, too.  Those marks you see in the photo are more of an anomaly of my digital camera, not actually something on the chrome part of the escutcheon.

Here she is.  Isn't she pretty?  That reflection on the bottom of the front panel is not a buckle in the mylar, it's actually some other random reflection.  The new plastic cover is perfectly placed.

Here is the FT-101EX installed in it's new operating position in the Print Shop at Paper Wren Press.  She sets upon a Dentron MT 3000A antenna tuner.  To the right is my Champion Bug, D-104 mic, Sure-444 mic, and trusty cup o' Joe.  My military head-sets from the 1950s lie atop the rig.  She runs at 100 watts on her original finals and driver.  She will peak at 150 watts on Sideband.  I have as yet to check out AM on here, but she'll probably do about fifty watts or so on that mode.

Here are my two major code-copying tools.  A pad of paper, a good pen, and my awesome 1955 Office Smith & Corona!  The typewriter serves as a "mill" for what is called "mill copy", an audio form of "touch typing".  I am trying to build my code speed back to my former 35 wpm.

While moving things around to make room for the FT-101, I came across a batch of my old QSL cards that I used in my vintage Boat Anchor days back in the 1990s.  These are all letterpress printed from one of the largest iron Gordon-style platen handpresses made in America, the Kelsey 9x13.  These will be reprinted soon.  If you, dear reader, might like some of this sort of vintage letterpress printed QSL stationery to grace your vintage station, contact Paper Wren Press at gary@paperwrenpress.com, or wd4nka@aim.com

A few close-ups of both the white and green cards and their respective envelopes.  White was for domestic contacts, the green was for foreign contacts.

And this, of course, is the Letterpress Connection.  So far, it's been just been QSL cards, but there are other connections, which we will explore.

That's it for now gang!  And a Great and Merry Christmas to you all!

-gary // wd4nka