Rescued by the Past.

This is a story about how a family from the Revolutionary War rescued me from a life of crime.

In 1969, newly arrived in the 'burbs of West Philadelphia, this fifteen year old military brat's life was tipping on a precipice.I had already been expelled from the Tredyffryn-Easttown Township school transit system for assaulting a bus driver, supposedly. Despite becoming interested in printing and even beginning apprenticeship through my school,  I had already joined a gang for self protection.  Thus, having already been pegged as a delinquent, for the rest of the year I walked the Penn Central tracks from where I lived behind the Devon Horse Show, to Conestoga HS, Berwyn, a distance of some eight miles. Looking back, it was actually quite an interesting experience walking the rails.

I wasn't your typical gang punk. But I was indeed a punk. It was a persona I put on to mask a lot of fear. Getting caught up in a turf war taught me that I needed protection. which was why I joined a gang to begin with. But I was a bit different from the other guys.  I had just came from Germany as an Army Brat. I spoke two languages and had a slight Euro/ Brit accent.  I had no home town, so I didn't really come from anywhere; I was forever the "New Guy".  In 1960s Philadelphia, living on the bad side of town, you didn't want to be the "new kid". No sir.

 

This punk collected stamps instead of knives, loved Prokofiev instead of Iron Butterfly, read history instead of the Furry Freak Brothers, played harp and guitar and was at the tender age of 15 already doing lettering and letterpress jobs for pay (through Conestoga High School.). Not a lot, but it was something.

One thing for certain: my peers didn't know what to make of me.  Except I was smaller than most guys my age....and that dynamic was fully exploited.

Walking the commuter rail tracks home home from school one day, I happened upon an antique store. Since I had developed an interest in old books while living in Germany,  I thought I might inquire, to find if they may have perhaps one or two old volumes. I was thinking in terms of maybe 1860 or so. I was directed downstairs to the basement, where racks of books stood side by side. To my astonishment, most of these books dated to the eighteenth century!  I had some money, so I bought a 1735 Baileys Etymology, and a Bible, printed by W. Young of Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, 1782 for a buck and a half each.

Now, this was no ordinary "Polyglot" bible. In it I discovered a handwritten Genealogy of the Leamy Family, starting with John Leamy who married Mary, his wife in 1765. Apparently when John bought the bible, he entered the date of his marriage to Mary. His was a handwriting that I would die for. Turning the pages, I read with fascination each birth, each marriage, each death, following sons and daughters to grand children, to great grand children. Over the years, the Bible went from daughter to daughter, apparently because every forty years or so the name changed, from Leamy to Jenkins to Norts. The handwriting and shade of ink would change, from black to ochre to turquoise (one 1830s entry was a lovely shade of teal!) - to blue. I would follow the thicks and thins of the quill strokes. The swirls encircling the "J"s, the "I"s, the "T"s, as I have never before or since have seen them inscribed. The last entry was dated 1870.  One hundred years of family.

I was captured by the handwriting.  I was fascinated by the personalities.  I found myself going to the library instead of breaking into apartments, which did not endear me to the gang.  I had to know about these people, what were they like?  What did they do?  What occupied their thoughts? How much of a role in their lives did this Bible play?  How were they affected by the British Occupation of Philadelphia?  Did they know the Anthony Waynes?  Could they have met Baron Von Steuben or Washington himself?  Or did they, as many of their neighbours, lean to the Crown?  St. Davids Church was after all, in their day, the Church of England. 

I located, in time, their graves at the St. Davids Church Cemetery.  Consequently, all through the summer of 1970, I spent my time hiding out from the gang in the peaceful shade and pleasant properties of  St. Davids Church. A stream passed by the grave yard, and a stone foot bridge traversed it's banks. With paper and pencil and the Leamy Bible in hand, I would copy, and copy, and copy and copy those remarkable pen strokes.  There were several places around the old church property to sit and concentrate.  By the foot bridge.  On one of the many boulders that projected from the slants of the surrounding hills.  On one of the benches by the church's stone walls. Alternately, I would stroll the cemetery itself, and read....no, memorize the epitaphs inscribed upon the old stones.  They were like pleasant conversation, each inscription revealing a little about the person being memorialized. I recognize now, as a Believer in Jesus, that what I was reading were their life verses and testimonies, all pointing to a living Hope in Him.  I missed that then, but I got it now.  I think God knew that someday I would remember them, and the words from the Talking Stones.

On one of the rocks near the St. David's Cemetery.

The entries in my bible metered much like those inscriptions on the grave stones: 

"Sacred to the Memory of Mary Leamy, wife of John Leamy, who departed this life on the twenty-siscth (and 'x' was formed by backing an 's' against a 'c'.) of November, 1789, aged forty-nine years, sisc months and twelve days, being eight o'clock Sunday morning."

"Suzanna, daughter of John Leamy and Mary, his wife, was born on the thirtieth day of March, 1779, it being one o'clock Tuesday afternoon".

"Lydia Leamy, daughter of Robert Leamy and Abigale his wife, was born on the 10th of May, 1830, being about seven o'clock Friday morning."

The Rector of St. Davids noticed me there, day after day, and invited me into the old sanctuary, built in 1715. He showed me the graves beneath the pews. He showed me the church's mini-museum, with artifacts found on the property going as far back as the 1600s. There were even a few newspapers, the Philadelphia Enquirer, printed by Ben Franklin at Hall & Sellers!  One article told of a pastor, from this church, who covered several churches in the area.  They found him and his horse frozen to death under a tree one particularly bad winter, while en route from one church to the next.

Over time, I picked up still more books from that little store in Berwyn on the Main Line. One was Lydia Leamy's confirmation Prayer book, given to her, according to the inscription on the now all too familiar handwriting, at "Radnor Church, 1845". I already knew her well from the genealogy. I knew her parents. I located their graves. The children's graves, all buried at St. Davids...which prior to the Civil War was indeed called "Radnor Church".

The Old Rectory, St. Davids Church, Radnor PA.

All this time spent in the peace and quiet of St. David's church, learning how to write in that beautiful hand that was apparently handed down from father to son, according to the Rector, all that time finding and reading 180 - 230 year old Colonial books, all that time tracking and locating the graves, riding daily between the Devon Horse Show where I lived, and down Sugartown Road to Dorset Road, past the old colonial homes and properties, down Darby Paoli Road, reading the stones, talking to the Rector.....I became very conversant with a family long departed, yet loomed so importantly in my life. The guys around where I lived wondered where I was, I had stopped "hanging out".  

The more I spent time practicing my handwriting, copying the Leamy Family Bible, and the more time I spent riding past the old colonial homes and farms on the way to St. Davids, the more time I spent in the St. Davids museum, the more time I spent talking to the Parish Priest and the Rector, the less time I spent getting into scuffs with the law.  Correspondingly, the more familiar I became with the Welsh and German people who lived in the area, and whose graves I would read and re-read:

Here Lyeth the Body of Elizabeth Wayne,

amiable consort to Gen'l Anthony Wayne. 

"Friends for me, lay doon and weep,

I am not dead but goon to sleep

In the dust I must stay

Until the Resurrection Day,

Beneath this stone I shall remain

Till Christ shall rise me up again!"

The Old Stones spoke to me of a Faith in a Saviour which these people of the Delaware Valley possessed, a Faith that they lived . . . and died by.  Death was very close, every day.  But so was their Joy, as expressed in their hymnology, the hope inscribed upon their stones, and assurance of their future in Christ, where we read:

Beneath this stone a loving form

is laid in silent dust to rest

his gentle Body neatly borne

to Jesus' Home among the blessed.

A mother's love could not him save

from that long cold and dreamless sleep

He's won a vict'ry o'er the Grave

and now he plays 

at Jesus' feet.

 At the intersection of two paved foot-paths through the cemetery is probably the oldest stone in the yard...  A fellow named Isaacs is buried there.  His stone calls to passers by:

Behold, oh Man

as you pass by,

as you are now so once was I,

as I am now, so Thou shalt be:

Prepare therefore, 

Eternity.

My friend, George Hansel, posing by a stone in front of the entrance to the old sanctuary, which was built in 1715.  The old Isaacs grave is straight ahead, and off to the left, at the footpath intersection.

My eighteenth century books became like time capsules to me.  The Bailey's Etymology, printed in London in 1732, and inscribed "J.B", 1735, was my portal.  Learning to handle the language as an 18th century English Speaker proved quite helpful when researching period publications..  Researching William Young, the printer of that Bible, and it's retailer, was another point of interest.  Philadelphia was the printing capitol of the Revolutionary War era, with the likes of Ben Franklin, Hall & Sellers, Dunlap and his Pennsylvania Packet, Kristof Sauer and his German publications, printed from out of what is now called "German town".  The 1700s seemed very near, walking where they walked, reading the literature that informed them, visiting the homes left so close to the way they were, that whole neighborhoods will tell you that George Washington himself could ride up on his charger, and have reasonable expectation to find a familiar face coming to greet him.

As for me, all this activity  kept me off the streets!  It weaned me from the gang,  You could say that the Leamy Family kept me from getting into trouble.  I attended Conestoga High School for about one year, whereupon my father decided to relocate us to Florida by 1971.  But it was my interest in the 18th Century and the books I had collected and poured over that sparked a complimentary interest in Letterpress, which was taught in Conestoga, courtesy the Northern Chester County Technical School. I have been printing ever since.

Alas!  My move to Florida resulted in the loss of my beloved books.  My Baileys Dictionary was destroyed by vandalism.  My Bible was stolen, along with several other books.  All I had left was the Prayer book given to Lydia Leamy, who was confirmed at Radnor Church (St. David's Church) in 1854.  That little book was re-united with the Leamy Family in 1998, when I met Don Leamy on GenWeb.  When I discovered that his was the originating family, I had to send it to him.  

I love to think back on those days at St. David's.  And the amazing connection that we who are in Christ now, can connect so personally with believers who were, but are not now, but one day soon will be - in our presence at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.  I want a seat next to the Leamys.

Thanks for keeping me out of trouble.  Two hundred year time lag notwithstanding.

gary / the Paper Wren.

A 1930's Deco Card for W3PR.

Martin, W3PR, contacted me a time back asking if I could help him with a project.  He had a design that originated with Mel Wood, appearing in the February issue of R9 magazine.  Martin already had the design all set, all I needed to do was to duplicate the elements in a vector file. Which meant re-drawing the entire card to exact scale, as much as I could determine.

Diagonal and asymmetric linear lines, spheres and hemispheres were the iconic design elements of the 1930s. They spoke to slogans that sparked hope for a depression-weary society, greatly wishing for new things to replace the old.  A new economy.  A new deal.  A new world.  

Probably the best known examples of these 1930s elements, the sphere and the obelisk, were the dominant features of the NY World's Fair of 1939.  The focus of the Fair was the new, the modern, the futuristic.  Many forget that the first televised Presidential speech was viewed at the New York World's Fair via a closed circuit line from Washington   (actual TV broadcasting did not commence till after 1946.)  In the postal commemorative above, we see the Obelisk and Hemisphere, the symbols of  the World's Fair.  Note also the parallel lines.

These designs found themselves in the world of graphic arts, from Vogue to Saturday Evening Post to even National Geographic. QST, R9, Short Wave Craft, and Radio Magazine were not immune from these elements of modernism either.  What was the inspiration for "30's Deco"?  How were these elements arrived at?  It was the synthesis of the original Art Deco, that spawned from the Pre Raphaelite movement of the 1880s - 1900 (the Paris Metro was a great example of Art Deco integrating with Construction Design!) - along with the aerodynamics of the new Century's greatest invention: powered flight.  Aerodynamic art deco, essentially.  

Correspondingly, our language was affected with terminology that resulted from the burgioning aeroplane technologies, including jet propulsion technologies which grabbed the fantasy of the public.  Chrysler introduced an autombile model, the Chrysler "Air Flow".  Things became "Stream-lined".  In fact, one might call the "Jet Age" designs, the wing tipped tail lights of the 1950s, the points on harlequin styled eyeglasses commonly called "cat eyes",  and the swooping linear lines in 1950's graphics as a sort of extension of the 1930s taste for aerodynamics....briefly interrupted by a tragic world war.

Printing the Card

The very same printing mode, technique and apparatus was used for W3PR's card as would have been employed back in Mel Wood's day.  The press is a 1936 Chandler & Price New Series Letterpress, one of the first machines of the Industrial Revolution that was ergonomically designed.  The dies used for the printing were created by Owosso Graphics, Owosso MI, using the same development and mounting techniques in vogue eighty years ago.  Wood mounted metal dies.  Only these days, the computer has replaced the repro camera in producing the negatives.  However, the making of these dies is still a contact negative and chemical development affair.

The photo above shows the die that carries the black ink, mounted - or "locked" - in the chase, ready to be inserted within the type bed of the press.  The wood used for these printing dies is cherry.  Instead of zinc, magnesium or copper is used.

There are three colours involved in this card, which means three runs through the press, followed by one more run to print the reverse side of the card, a total of four runs.  Since the red and silver/grey hemispheres are lighter in colour than the black, they are considered "behind" the black.  That is, these lighter colours will have the black ink printed on top of them, in the "foreground". I determined, therefore, to run the silver grey first, then the red.

The grey having been printed, is left to dry a bit before being passed back through the press for the next run, the red hemisphere.  It took about an hour to mix and level the right mixture of white, black and blue, which would interact with the warm hue of the card's vintage white colour, to produce a grey that renders the impression of silver.  I opted to not use actual metallic silver to save the client about a hundred dollars or more....and, frankly, myself a difficult clean-up because metallic inks dry quickly and are murder to clean.  As it turned out, the predominate oil based white also dried, making the changing of colours on the press about a two hour affair. But who's in a hurry?  You don't rush in a Letterpress Shop!

Colours are mixed directly on the ink disk.  What you see here is about 95% opaque white with about 5% black, which was later reduced to about 3%.  Then a dash of process blue.  While the ink disk turns with each succeeding pass of the roller, very interesting patterns emerge on the disc. They make for fun camera shots!   It takes about ten minutes to mix and level out the ink in this manner.  Again, I don't rush things.  Letterpress printing is a very natural-sort of art, which is why I tend to resist modern innovations in my shop such as I can.

After the colour mix levels out., proofs are taken.  BTW, this is how I mix ink at the Paper Wren...by use of primary colours and by eye and colour wheel. And ...a lot of testing.  We are, you might say, "pre Pantone".  Some call it "CYMK".....which isn't quite accurate, but it's the same idea.  CYMK means Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Key Black, which are the colours used for colour separations.  That speaks to a four-colour print process designed to print colour photos on a page.  We do only high contrast line imaging at our shop.  No continuous tone images.

The registry of the red and grey could have been a bit touch and go.  Technically there is an allowance of about 1/128 to 1/64" variance which I allow for.  This works for "trapped" colours, but here I would be called upon to park two matching hemispheres side by side to form a perfect sphere, and hold that position for over three hundred impressions.  As such, the hand feeding of the red run was done slowly, to insure precision placement of each card on the platen.  The press behaved well that afternoon.  I swear that press has moods!  I might surmise that my press was in a good mood .

Finally, the black, or "Key" die colour, is laid down, partially over the grey hemisphere.  The colour is quite dense, and "pops".  We have a stunning QSL card here, gang!  At this point we are about nine hours into the printing, and we still have one more run to go: the back side of the card where the contact information is recorded.

Three hundred plus cards are laid out in stacks of  fifty to avoid what is called "set-off" (no, not "offset"), where the ink of a printed piece transfers under pressure to the stock placed above it.  If the stacks are too heavy, the weight of the stack will encourage such 'set-off'.  Set Off = bad.  We don't see an awful lot of this, fortunately, because the image is impressed into the paper, which minimizes card to card contact when stacked.  The paper used here is a harder stock, the depressions are not very deep, and I did not wish to tempt fate, so precautions were taken.

Here is the final run.  You can magnify the image to see the fine print at the bottom and center.  Martin was gracious so as to permit my advertising on the center line.  Attribution to Mel Wood is printed on the very bottom.  A tip of the hat to Owosso Graphics for holding such a very fine detail line with such small typefaces. 

Summary

I was very impressed with the results.  I posted the above photos on both my own FB page, and as well the Novice Rig Round-Up FB page, and the SKCC page.  The responses were impressive.  As a result, in lieu of interest, I may begin to develop a Vintage Letterpress QSL card line of some sort.  I will post such if I do.

Some of you may be interested in such cards for your vintage station? Perhaps you may wish to represent your vintage station with authentic era QSL cards?   If so, contact me at  paperwrenpress@gmail.com

If you have a vintage radio station..... why not vintage cards?  Let's face it. Having a 1930s, 40s, 50s, or even 60s station....and using modern techniques to graphically represent it....is a bit of a departure, no?  If you invest a lot of bucks in your station, hey guys.....invest in your cards, too.  Complete the circle.  Have a real card (even if it's not me that does it.)

That's it for now, folks.  Hope you enjoyed a bit of the history, background, and fun of the "Old School".  It's a good School. 

Hey! Can I throw in a shameless plug for Novice Rig Round-Up?  We are a group that celebrates the first rigs that gave us our first voice on the air.  Get your Novice On!!  Join us on our Face Book Page by clicking here!  Or, go to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/NOVICERIGROUNDUP/

Click here to view our website, or go to:

http://novicerigroundup.com/

73.

de gary, wd4nka
Paper Wren Press.

Post Scriptum:

Many of you may not have seen the video I made of the last vintage QSL card that I printed, so I will reprise it here.  It's a bit longish, but it will give you a good idea of what goes into a letterpress run such as what I did with Martin's card.  

 

Dolly.

I thought a might share an article I wrote years ago.  A few regional Ham Radio club journals picked it up.  I think it dates to around 1997.  I just copied and pasted it directly from my old Radio site that I used to use to post my stories.  Publications would pick the stories they wanted from there.  But that was long ago, when I was a free lance writer for the electronics hobby industry.  But this story came to mind recently, and I thought I might re-air it here.  It's a story about a very special triode that I picked up about thirty years ago.

 "Dolly" 

From the Radio Rescuers Journal, entry #2.

Not too long ago, at the Orlando Hamcation, I happened upon a ballon type '27 triode. Just your garden variety a.c. tube. Probably dated to around 1929. It had lots of dust and some kinda smeary stuff on it, making it look really bad. I offer to pay a buck for it, and the guy behind the table says "sure."  Off I go with my little treasure to hopefully use it to give life to a rather dormant Doerle regen I was reconstructing.

Old glass tubes are a funny sort of device, with a charm all their own. Mostly they are mirrored with a silvery internal coating, and I would be a liar if I told you that I knew what caused it or even what it was.  Just one of those mysteries I choose to retain as a mystery.

Very simple devices they are, little more than a dim lightbulb with extra wire stuffed in to form an anode, filament, an indirectly heated cathode and a gridiron. All this is mounted internally on a single glass pillar, usually bearing the hand written mark of some unknown quality inspector. A cypher of a sort, usually a number or a number-letter combination. Locked in a vacuum of time for the life of that tube. I wonder if they had any idea how long some of those tubes would last?

Well, after coming home, I began to work on cleaning off that tube, using dish washing liquid and a soft cloth. The smeary stuff came off, but the dust had hardened into a thin filmy concrete which took a little elbow grease. "Uhh-ohh", I thought as I began to hand polish off the surface:  " There goes any decal or print on the envelope!" But I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least I would still have that classy silvery stuff, whatever it was.

And then I saw it!

Behind the silver! There was an area in the silver coating that was very thin, exposing the central pillar of the tube. Almost like looking thru a keyhole, the silver framing the view. There, written on the pillar for all to see, a single name.

"Dolly ".

No cypher, no number, no arbitrary letter, but a name! Immediately, this became no ordinary tube! It became a link to a person. I began to wonder who this person was. Did she work part time for Philco to get thru school? Did she fare well thru the Depression just about to befall her? Did she take pride in that tube as she carefully painted the five letters of her name on that tiny, tiny pillar before it was sent in for the envelope and evacuation process ? Am I getting carried away ?

I had a suspicion that of all the '27s in the wide world, THIS one would be among the best performing. It had to, it bore her name. . . and it is.

Remember, whenever you affix your name to something, that something may last well beyond your puny years. Remember too, that the performance or quality of that thing will be forever inextricably linked to you. Whatever you do, do your best.

And Dolly, wherever you are . . .
. . . thanks!

vy 73

The Lafayette Dyna-Com: Part 3, Battery Spacers.

As mentioned in Part 2, the higher power Dyna-Com series utilized what I consider a somewhat unconventional battery pack system.  Let's take a look again at what the manual shows:

It clearly shows, and clearly tells you, to use either twelve 1.2v NiCads, or ten 1.5v AA cells, even to the degree of specifying the actual AA cell!  And .... to the chagrin of many that I can tell by reading the forums....the AA cells simply do not fit!  Not satisfied with just one, I tried three such Dyna-Coms.  No Bueno. Die gehen nichts!  The AA cells do not fit!  Now, if memory serves, the NiCads actually are a tad smaller, and that is literally all that is needed: about 1 - 2 mm length reduction for the entire four column series of batteries.  Take that 1-2mm and divide it by four, and that's all that's needed for each battery to be reduced in length by.  Was there some manufacturing shift in the past 40- odd years that made AA cells a millimeter longer??  One of y'all find out and get back to me, I've gotta move along here.

Before we leave this page in the manual, let's take one more closer look:

Clear enough, right?  

Since in the past, I only had the three watt DC's, I never had to deal with this.  The lower watt DCs used a standard 8-clip AA battery pack ....which also took AA NiCads!  Hmm ....

So, what to do?   I have been picking up Dyna-Com HTs for some years now, and never once have I seen the spacers offered as a featured item along with these units on eBay or other auction venues.  So I have never seen the actual stock item in the flesh.  But the drawing gives me a clue: they appear to actually look like a battery after a sort.  So, here's what I did.  I located an aluminium tube the approximate size of a penlight cell (AA size battery), and then I found a solid aluminium rod that would fit nicely inside of that tube.  I cut the rod and tubing to 3-3/4 inches, the tubing just a touch smaller than the inside rod.  This was the length I arrived at, which is just a bit smaller than two penlight cells end to end.  The measurement proved accurate.  

Any hack saw can be used, I am fortunate to have a mitre saw with a metal cutting blade, so I used this to do my cutting.  I also have a grinding / polishing wheel.  The grinding wheel is fine grit for sharpening hatchet and large knife blades, the polisher is actually a wire brush wheel.  All I wanted was to even up the saw kerfs and bevel the edges.  The wire wheel got a lot of oxidation off the tubing and rod (they were laying in my antenna scrap pile for years!) and smoothed out rough edges.

Soon I had what you see here.  The makings of what I think will be a dandy battery spacer.  All I need is to heat shrink some tubing as a nice looking jacket, and wow, maybe they will look like the actual stock item!  I sorta like going over the top on stuff like this.  Just me.

So here we go!  Ready to slide into the clear plastic battery tube.  They fit quite nicely, with good tension.  Now, for the other two channels holding batteries, I used three AA cells and one AAA battery.  This way I have at least the proper voltage.  The current will be a touch less, I should think, but not enough to make much a difference.  And to be sure, the battery indicator is behaving the same as it did with 18v, and twelve batteries in tow!  

So, there you have it, gang!  Now you, too, can be just that much less dependent upon someone else to make something work.  I particularly like that aspect of DIY.  But then, that's what Homebrewing is all about!  

BTW, thank you for your kind comments on FaceBook!  I know that many hams cringe at the idea of putting CB oriented stuff up on the ham radio FB interest groups, but as an Amateur myself, who is a Tube/ Valve homebrew jockey, totally cw oriented, a Mill op with a J-36, I can understand that.  It's just that I also see the surplus market drying up and parts that were once plentiful and cheap disappear.  It makes precious little sense to me to not take advantage of resources that are still with us, and still affordable, and I place the CB equipment, or at least a lot of it, in the catagory of  "ready resource". Especially these portable rigs.  Talk about fun QRP that you can take with you hiking, hunting, climbing, canoeing, biking, even parachuting (use a bolt-on base loaded whip antenna if you are gonna jump.  The poor telescopic antenna is good for about a 30mph gust.)

A look ahead: A college friend and myself will do an actual road-test and distance check between the three watt DCs, and the 5 watt DCs.  Also, a DIY "Dyna-Charger".  Lafayette made two, one sports a cradle for the Dyna-Coms.  The other does not.  We will explore the construction of the one that does not.  If you can build that, then use your imagination for the cradle-type.  And let me know how you make it, ok?

I am currently in conversation with ICM crystals, Quartz Slab, and am looking to approach a crystal manufacture in Northern Italy to see if I can get a decent price for 29.000 MHz xtal pairs.  These will be expensive.  But I think the expense will be worth it.  But even if these remain on their native Citizens Band, I intend to have a blast with mine!  Maybe talk a couple of the local 2m simplexers to join me.  Heavens!  Could you imagine that!  Hey, it could happen.  Just like we had those late night round table discussions on CB channel 11 back in '69.  It wasn't dumb then ..... we had a few hams that joined us back in those dear, dead, pre 10-4 goodbuddy days!  In fact, guess how I got into Ham Radio to begin with?

-gary // wd4nka.

The Lafayette "Dyna-Com", Part Two

My own personal Dyna-Com arsenal is actually quite a recent acquisition.  I have owned several over the years, but usually they fell prey as trade collateral.  Seems the mystique and attraction is rather widespread and somewhat unexpected. So I would buy them.... only to trade them for something else within about a year.  

I always had an attraction to these "Bricks", and purchased my first one in 1977 (I think.)  The reason was pretty surface: Our local Lafayette, in downtown Orlando, FL., carried crystals for what was then called "Channel 22a".  Back before the FCC opened up 40 CB channels, we had 23 channels.  Channel 23 was used on a shared basis with class C remote control devices.  I recall that channel 23 was almost useless in the Philadelphia area when I lived there, because the traffic signals utilised channel 23.  Or, so was the popular opinion behind the mass of tone signals.  Between CB channel 22 and 23 was 20 KHz, or two channel spaces.  These we referred to as "Channel 22a" or "Channel 22b".  These were shorted out on the channel selector of synthesized CB rigs, so they could not be used.  There were countless schemes describing the magic wire to cut to access these "super secret" channels.  It was just too easy to simply buy the high power Walkie Talkie and insert the "super secret" channel crystals!  And so, that's what I did.  Me and the guys (the guys and I . . . sheesh . . ) would hang out on 22a, much the ire of others from whom we wished deliverance from.

Later in years as a Ham, I purchased a couple Dyna-Com 3Bs on this new medium called "eBay".  I used them when I was on my roof working on my 40m vertical antenna, and needed something to both keep me company up on the roof, and provide a way to shout down to the control op when doing remote adjustments at the antenna feed point.  I always got a kick out of working hand-held portables out in the open. And, sorry, it was more entertaining to listen to the CBers than the diminishing crew on 2m.  In fact, I have as of the past five years seen our local amateur VHF community all but vanish.  The CBers are still having their morning coffee on the air.  What gives, guys?

Just as an aside, the longest distance I ever talked point to point on a hand held unit at any time on any band, was using that very Icom 2AT in the photo.  I used it atop Brasstown Bald's ranger station look-out, and raised Thomasville, GA.  Essentially, I was up in north Georgia almost at the Tennessee line, and I talked down to the Florida Line, spanning the whole state of Georgia from north to south, on one watt, two meter FM simplex.  I have also spoken point to point with parachutists at twenty thousand feet in a free-fall drop. Rigs like the Dyna-Coms are fully capable to perform these same amazing point to point contacts, conditions permitting - of course!

So, let's talk about these devices, generally.

These radios were designed to have similar receiving and transmitting characteristics as Lafayette's CB base units, the Comstats 19, 23mk5 and 6,  25A, 25B, the HB series bases and the Telsats.  They have single conversion superhet receivers utilizing ceramic filters.  Adjacent channel rejection was about the same as the big bases and mobile units.  They had a speech amp circuit Lafayette referred to as "Range Boost", which focused increased audio into the amplitude modulation sideband envelopes. I might call it an early form of speech processing.  It was not simply increased gain.  The Comstats had the Range Boost function as well.  It made quite a difference when copying a 3 watt AM signal through heavy QRM.  

They have provision for external mic, external speaker, external antenna, and external power.  Channel switching is a side panel function.  They carry a battery indicator that would indicate both voltage and signal strength . . . to some degree.  On the lower right of the above photo you can just see the external power and charger jacks.

The two and three watt units carried a battery pack for eight AA cells.  The higher power systems used the whole rear panel of the unit as a battery holder for either ten AA cells or twelve equivalent NiCad batteries.  When Alkaline or any non-NiCad batteries were used, a battery spacer was inserted into one row, as seen in the diagram above.  This served the purpose of keeping the voltage to 15 volts (the rated voltage for the five watt Dyna-coms).  The spacer made it possible to use only two batteries in one of the rows.  NiCad batteries were 1.2v each, so twelve NiCads were used.  More on this later.

There were a few accessories available for these units.  Of course, no thinking person who just dumped fifty or more bucks into a walkie talkie in 1969 would just take her naked into the woods.  No, you had to get that genuine cowhide case.  That really dressed her up, and more: they provided genuine protection!  These were cowhide cases that would themselves cost as much as those walkie talkies were we to purchase them today!  Kenwood was the last company to make cases like these, for their TR2400 HTs.  Those were made by Gucci, believe it or not!  The Dyna-com cases, well . . . not Gucci, but I wish my boots were made like these.  Oh, and bringing up boots: you keep these cases supple with saddler's soap and protected them with Kiwi shoe polish.  Just a hint.

Another accessory that was a must is the power supply.  The units rested in it.  Unlike the stand-up chargers for VHF/ UHF rigs, there are no charging connects at the bottom of these units, so you plugged the charger in at the side mounted charging plug.  You plugged external power into the external power jack provided right next to the charging plug.  Two different plug heads.  Lafayette would tell you that you needed their power supply, but any supply 12 - 15 vdc would work for the 5-watt units, for the 1 - 3 watt units,  no more than 13 vdc.  The higher power units would work at 12v, but much below this starves the system.

You could also get an external speaker and an external mic.  For stateside systems that were channelized by individual xtal pairs, which would include all the Dyna-coms up to the 12 channel types, the external mic used a single mono 1/8" mini phone plug.  This enabled you to use what amounted to a small speaker as a carbon mic.  It's the same mic as the speaker-mic used by the walkie talkie itself.  But you still have to key the PTT (push to talk) on the walkie talkie itself.  You could not key the mic.  I found this next to useless.  Not entirely useless, but next to it.  The 23 and 40 channel systems used the standard four-connector mic plugs so you could plug a regular mobile mic and key by it as with a regular mobile or base unit.  The foreign export models such as the Dyna-Com 3F also came with a standard mobile/ base mic plug.  I wish they were used on all the Dyna-coms, but then these foreign models were AM/FM units.  That may have had a bearing on why they did this.  It could have been contracted by the services that intended to use them, such as law enforcement or military.  Dyna-Coms were not used by military or law enforcement in the US, but rather by private citizens or companies, such as construction companies or marine facilities.

There is a drawback to using a keyed mic.  Your body is figured into the design of these walkie talkies.  You, dear user, become the counterpoise for the antenna!  This means that to make your little unit an effective radiating device, your own body, capacitively coupled to the metal body of the walkie talkie by your holding it, provides the ground it needs to see.  How can you tell?  If you have a working Dyna-Com, turn it on, pull out the antenna to full extension (always!  Whenever you use these, pull that 'tenna all the way out!) and set it on a table.  You will hear the S/N, native to the receiver, fall off as you back away.  When you pick it up, those signals become significantly louder.  That's the way almost all such hand held units work!  Of course, with the external antenna (another accessory!) body contact is not necessary.  Mentioning the external antenna jack, let me say that it is also a 1/8" mini-jack.  Great for audio. Not great for RF.  I found that I needed to build a small patch cord converter with an SO 259 at one end to use my external antenna, which uses RG58-U coax for the antenna feed.  My old Sears 1.5 watt CB HT used an RCA jack, which was still inadequate, but not quite SO inadequate in that actual converter plugs were made for several units out there that also used the RCA jack for RF output.  The Johnson "White Face" Messenger One, to name one.  To my knowledge and in my experience, no such adapter was made using the mini plugs.  I may be wrong.  Such a converter plug is not mentioned in the Lafayette catalog....unless I missed it all these years!

There is also a provision for a PA system.  I still can't figure out that one.  Why a PA system from a walkie talkie?  They are not bull-horns.  But . . . I'm sure some one may have used one at a private party or a bingo game, so sure.  Public Address away!  But for crowd control - I'm still trying to form that mental image.

Let's revisit the battery installation for the five-watt units again.

As mentioned earlier, these sets were designed to take NiCads and AA cells.  There is no mention in the manual that there is a slight difference in cell size between the two battery types.  Yet every 5-watt unit I have ever seen will not fit AA cells as shown in the diagram supplied by the manufacture.  Just to make sure, I checked out the AA cells specified that are still being made!

Specifically the Eveready E-91.  The exact same size as the Dura-cell AA batteries.  No bueno! They absolutely do not fit.  Lafayette, what gives??   Let's take a closer look at that spacer deal shown in the manual:

The spacer is a conductive cylinder, like a short metal rod cut to the size of two AA batteries.  It's purpose is to short the negative end of the battery in series above it to the negative terminal of the battery holder section in which the battery "tube" lies.  Yet this only affects one of the three battery "channels" (the troughs wherin lie the batteries when slid into their holding tubes) !  So this spacer reveals nothing.  We are still stuck with two channels that will not hold the specified AA batteries!  So, here are the solutions I came up with.

I simply made three spacers from aluminium rod about the same diameter of  a penlight cell!  One for each channel.  This way I still had 9 batteries, or 13.5 v.  The rods were actually a tad thin, so I built up the thickness by wrapping masking tape around it to build up the diameter so it fit snugly in the home-made "battery tube", which I made by simply taking a sheet of photocopier transparency film, available at any Office Depot or Office Max, and cutting three strips approx three inches wide and long enough to permit the two ends of the battery series within the tube to make contact.

The tubes are held in place with masking tape.  So far, my cheap home-made tubes seem to be doing the trick.  If anyone out there knows of a source for thin walled tubing that will snugly hold penlight batteries in place, let me know, and I will post it.  The purpose of these tubes is to keep the batteries from moving.  Four batteries in tandem can create an avenue for slippage which will, in turn, create a scratching sound through the speaker.  So the batteries and your spacers need to be held in place.  Obviously, the spacers that I made were short enough to make the remaining three batteries in their respective series physically fit!

Now, I did something else that might be...well....maybe not kosher, but it has worked so far.  Noting the voltage being lower than the 15v these sets were designed for, I replaced my spacers with AAA cells!  I then wrapped tape around them to build up their diameters to snug well into their tubes.  So, now we have 1.5v x 12 = 18v!  What th....?   Yes, friends, that's what I did.  And with no apparent issue.  I will need to pull one or two out and place the spacer in two of the channels, but just to show that it can be done, there you are.  I might recommend one AAA cell and two spacers, to be absolutely "kosher" (my Hebrew background popping in there.  Oi!)

Here is a close-up of the battery tubes, the penlight (AA) batteries, and one of the AAA cells in place with masking tape wrapped around it to secure a snug fit.  And again, while I inserted an AAA cell in all three battery tubes, producing a voltage of 18vdc, the current will be different.  Just a head's up.  All this means is that the power discharge from the two different batteries ( I/R drop) will be different.  What this spells is probably a shorter battery life than if all the batteries were the same.  I do not anticipate this to be significant.  But then, we are making do with what we have on hand: parts for these rigs are not made anymore.  So, use your own judgement regarding mixing batteries and cutting and using spacers.

So, that' it for this installment, gang!  Stay tuned for the Great Road Test!

-gary // wd4nka.

The Lafayette Dyna-Com and Other Anectdotes. Part One.

When I went to Junior High (Tredyffrin Eastown Jr. High, fondly referred to as "TE") I became fascinated with the idea of remote electronic communication.  What began as hard-wired intercoms between apartment buildings between friends (these were made from magnetic telephone receivers, which required no batteries) eventually bled over to wireless experiments with spark-plugs and broadcast band table top receivers tuned between stations to copy a crude buzz in the form of a primitive code.  This in turn, bled over to the inevitable: Walkie Talkies.  Specifically: 100mW superregenerative walkie talkies that I picked up from a neighbor kid.  A few improvements were readily apparent over our experimental spark-buzzer: no code was needed, and we could talk almost one whole city block.

These walkie talkies were almost universally placed on CB channel 14 (27.125 MHz).  Their receivers were so wide that almost everything on 26 and 27MHz could be heard at once.  But this was 1968.  Not a whole lot of folks on the Citizens Band back then, thus what we heard were actual conversations, not a mass of heterodynes.  In fact, it was outright entertaining. The only problem was that in time, and without much provocation, these walkie talkies would surreptitiously break.  Like magic. But then, I guess, one contributing factor were our continued experiments.

It was pretty obvious to me that if we wanted to have a range beyond our block, we would need either a bigger antenna or more power.  Ideally both.  What to do?

A bewildering assortment of antenna wires were strung hither and yon, from bedroom window to balcony, across our "court yard", various groundings were explored, all of which helped to extend our range a little bit.  To increase power, best as we could understand the nature of power from a transmitter, we would series up one 9v battery after another. More volts, more power, right?  Burn-up usually happened sometime around 54 volts, as I discovered. All through these experiments, we managed to break the one-block barrier, and talk to a CBer on the next block!  It was during this conversation that I discovered the 54 volt barrier. Wow.  The great DX chase was on! 

My parents were pretty quick to pick up on my radio activities. And it didn't escape them that I was up until midnight listening to my walkie talkie.  It also didn't escape from them my disappointment when my little walkie talkie gave up the ghost.  

Christmas was coming.  Christmas 1968.  The new Holiday Season issue of the Sears Catalog came out.

What I opened up that Christmas Eve was the most amazing Christmas present: a very heavy-metal 1.5 watt Walkie Talkie from Sears!  It had two channels, channel nine and eleven.  Thirteen Transistors!  Wow.  Late Christmas Eve, and on into the wee hours of Christmas Day, I was talking on my new power house.  Mom and Dad had gotten me a power supply so I didn't have to worry about replacing batteries all the time.  The telescopic antenna was HUGE!  It had to be over forty inches.  And the range!  I could be heard all the way down to the end of the street, and . . . beyond!

Mind you, we lived on the middle, or second floor.  I set up my walkie talkie near my bedroom window.  I had a little elevation.  From that telescopic antenna I discovered I was able to talk between one and two miles out. This floored me.  I was using a superheterodyne receiver now, not a superregen, with increased sensitivity, lower noise floor and signal-to-noise ratio, and hugely better adjacent signal rejection.  

All the cold winter, and through the spring and into the summer was I on the air every day after school and weekend evenings.  Our apartment complex custodian, himself a CBer, gave me a mobile antenna sold by Lafayette called the "Tiger Tail", a center loaded CB mobile radiator mounted on, essentially, a metal box with a knob and an SWR meter.  You could literally tune out the reactance right at the feed point.  The neighbor upstairs let me bolt it to his balcony, the highest floor available, the third floor.  With that outside antenna, I managed to work from Wayne/ Devon, over the Old Eagle School Hill, and down into the Von Muehlenberg - King of Prussia area.  That was about eight to ten miles!!  One watt output, radiating from a center loaded quarter wave whip bolted to the steel rail of a balcony seventy five feet from the ground.  Not too shabby!

I was wholly absorbed.  I cannot express the thrill it was to break that one block barrier.  And then, the indescribable rush of working into the next two blocks.  Then working one mile!!  Then three.  Five.  Eight.  One mobile on the Main Line (Route 30) guesstimated he was about ten miles from me once.  I entered that into the log book I was keeping.

I began to notice those other Walkie Talkies in the Lafayette Catalog.  We had an LRE (Lafayette Radio Electronics) at the King of Prussia Mall.  They carried these solid steel and chrome walkie talkies.  One was an amazing 100mW two channel with a tone alarm and superhet receiver, called an HA-73.

Eventually, years later, I would buy one of these, but what really caught my eye among these Lafayette walkie talkies even more was what I considered my next logical step up in my radio endeavors, right there on page 459 in the Lafayette Catalog : the Three Watt, Three Channel Dyna-Com 3.  My 1.5 watt Sears Walkie Talkie was great, don't get me wrong - but the Dyna-com 3 shown in this catalog was a beast!  I just knew that with one of these, I could work my way out to Paoli and Berwyn, a good ten to fifteen miles, with ease, and possibly even all the way down the Main Line to Villa Nova University, almost twenty miles! Especially if I could also get that Range Gain II antenna, also shown in the catalog!!  No telling what horizons I could explore.

Now mind!  I was anything BUT bored with my Sears rig.  It was fantastic. Every night was a new adventure. But it is human nature to want to go just . . . just . . . one more step. To push the envelope.  As such,  I opened up a proclivity from which I suffer to this day, one which has dogged me all my Ham Radio life : just one step more.  One foot higher.  One watt more powerful.  One more QSO.  One more mile.

The Dyna-Com 3B.  This was the Daisy "Red Rider" of Walkie Talkies!  There was a kid out on Old Darby Road that I would be able to reach from time to time, who had one, with a 102" stainless Steel mobile whip mounted on his rain gutter.  It seemed that I could always hear him better than he could hear me, a range of about three miles.  He was considered DX in my log, btw.  I rode my bike over to his house once, carrying my Sears walkie talkie, and saw his Dyna-Com with my own eyes.  I got to hold it.  Wow . . . it was heavier than mine, and my Sears was no light weight. It had an S-meter of sorts.  And like mine, it had a leather case, only his was more robust.  Everything about his Dyna-Com seemed over-the-top.  The chrome and steel body.  The three channels.  The three watts.  The notably longer telescopic whip.  Even the case!

I want you to know that at the time my parents purchased my 1.5 watt Sears walkie talkie (or HT - Handy Talkie), the price tag was about fifty dollars.  That was 1968.  This amounted to one quarter of my dad's weekly take home pay.  That was a lot of money.  Seventy Dollars for a Dyna-com was nigh unto impossible, so I never breathed a word about my wanting a Dyna-Com to them.  I may have been an ignorant kid, but not a stupid kid.  My parents gave me an awesome gift at great sacrifice, and I was determined to be satisfied.  And, really, I was.  Nonetheless, that Lafayette catalog sure was fun to look through, though.  Especially the Walkie Talkie section.

In the 1960s and on into the 70s, Christmas brought forth a whole raft of kids, being gifted with toy walkie talkies.  Almost universally they were on CB channel 14.  At one watt, I found that I was the loud voice the kids were mystified by, and listened out for.  I would greet these kids with a "Merry Christmas", which was quite an exciting thing for them. Over the years, this had come to be quite a tradition with me, to listen in over Christmas Day to Channel 14, to send a Christmas Greeting to the kids with their new walkie talkies. Some of these kids were eventually likewise bitten by the radio "bug" as did I, and they persisted in their radio activity, becoming themselves part of our on-the-air regulars.  Some of these kids, like me, continued to upgrade to the larger walkie talkies.  Some, in the ensuing years, became Hams, just as I did. All had their seed-bed experience using these amazing walkie talkies, and pushing the envelope with them.

Lafayette had quite a run with their Dyna-Com line of  walkie talkies.  They were specifically designed for public service or private/ professional field use, which is why they were so ruggedly built.  They ranged from the 2 watt two channel, up to the the fully featured 5 watt 12 and 23 channel models. There were models available only in certain countries that used FM on 27MHz. All of them built like Panzer tanks. You might notice if you have the catalog,  the hard-hat wearing construction worker, shown on the pages where are the Dyna-com walkie talkies.  That was your clue what sort of environment they were intended for.

These higher watt rigs usually worked on 15 volts, and carried 10 AA cells, or 12 nicad cells.  They had an odd battery "spacer", which took up two AA cell lengths in the holder, for use with Alkaline batters, which was omitted when using Nicads.  The batteries and spacer was slid into plastic tubes which helped to hold the batteries in place, in case they may be prone to wobbling in the rear battery compartment. You could directly recharge the nicads through the charging jack.  The crystals in the 12 channel Dyna-Com were accessed by the front steel panel.  These units were spaciously designed.

As I draw this segment to a close, let me provide a link to download the Dyna-Com 12A owners manual. In later installments I will chronicle in greater detail the Dyna-Com walkie talkies as I go through the paces with both the 3 series and the 12a series.  We will be looking at their set-up, examining and solving the "Battery Dilemna", listening to their audio, doing point to point range tests, and then replicating my own early set up with an external power supply and antenna.  Just to see what these "bricks", as I fondly call them, will do.  At one point I hope to convert these rigs up into the Amateur Ten Meter "AM Window".

My point and purpose in this article, Part One, is to provide a little background as to why I have a special fondness for these hand held marvels, and the significance they played in my having become a Radio Ham.  There is in reality very little on the web regarding the Dyna-Com hand held portables, their practical use or known modifications.  It is my goal to help meet this deficit.

Stay Tuned!

de WD4NKA.