Welcome to the Ham Website for KK4FAL

My first hobby is Amateur radio. My second hobby is experimenting and home brewing the antennas I use on Amateur radio. I have a nice OCF Dipole for 10 through 80 meters that averages 2.8:1 up to 3:1 all across the phone band without the tuner. I hope to soon finish what started out as a 5/8 wave CB Vertical with ground mounted radials and a nice UNUN to balance things out. It will, with a tuner, utilize 10 through 80 meters also.

Everyone has favorite brands. Mine are ICOM 746 PRO, Yaesu 840, and Swan, in that order. I have been working on and with Swan and Siltronix 1011 radios for years. Recently I got an opportunity to get an ICOM 746 PRO and I have really been impressed. I have found I like Solid State radios for everyday use. This rig covers 2 meters, 6 meters, and 10 through 80 meters all in one radio. I am selling my Swan 700CX and one Swan 700CX SS-16B Special. I have power supplies for this stuff, one was roughly treated and poorly spliced on the cable so I have work to do there. Then there are the parts rigs. Since these radios are from the 60's and 70's parts are always a problem. So I am selling off most of the tube types, going with Solid State and enjoying less tuning and repairing. 

I found this out and wanted to pass it along!

A repeated warning. It just happened to me on one of my Swan 700 CX radios, left a nice mess to be repaired.

If you have a 6GK6 driver tube in your Swan (Siltronix) rig, make sure that pin 6 is not connected. On most of the rigs, it was connected to ground, as at that time of manufacture, the pin was not used by the tube manufacturers. In later years the newer 6GK6 tubes have pin 6 connected to the (I think) control grid. Using the newer style of tube will result in failure of a 100 ohm resistor and usually an RF choke.