The Amalgamated Wireless Ltd. (AustralAsia)
This short article about the AWA Forestphone was the last one put on the Midwest Classic Radio Net website by for former webmaster George K9GDT before he unfortunately became a Silent Key.
Now that a longer version has been published in Electric Radio magazine I thought I'd include it here as well.
Throughout most of the 20th century AWA was Australia's leading electronics company, providing a wide range of radio, television, and audio equipment as well as broadcasting services. Over that time period the company partnered with other companies including RCA, Thorn, Rediffusion, and others to broaden it's product offerings. But as an Australian company, the Forestphone FP-1 no doubt was it's own creation, a small, easy-to-use, portable transceiver designed for use by forestry crews and similar commercial endeavors back when HF radio was the primary means of communication beyond line-of-sight. According to the seller, the FP-1 I recently acquired was "Originally built for the Forestry Commission in the state of Victoria, the last user of this rig was a gliding club, before gliders and balloonists were compelled to move to the VHF air band in the 1980s. They were also used by mobile bee-keepers, inland waterways craft such as houseboats and dredgers, and local government operators in the inland."
The FP-1 is all solid-state, a big plus for battery operation in the field, and being a mid-1960s design uses germanium transistors, including a pair of 2N301As as the modulator, a transisitor I remember scavenging from hybrid car radios as a young ham! The PA uses two 2N3879 transistors in a push-pull neutralized output stage which uses a toroidal inductor having 11 taps and a second inductor for antenna tuning/matching. Two output connectors are provided with a switch to select between taps that have been set for mobile (presumably close to a 50 ohm load) and as a loading coil for a portable whip. Unlike some similar sets, the FP-1 uses an external battery, which I see as a plus given how often battery leakage causes damage to portable radios. As the pics show, the interior of the FP-1 is very clean and quite interesting to look at, since many of the locally-sourced components look a bit different from the ones we're more accustomed to seeing. The frequency range is 2-5 Mhz
The receiver is a single-conversion superhet that requires a crystal 455Khz above the desired operating frequency and is very sensitive (Under 2µV). Fortunately for me, the radio came equipped with transmit and receive crystals for 3888 Khz, which the seller said was outside the AM allocation in Oz and thus he never was able to use the radio on the air. It took only a slight tweaking of the IF cans to peak it up 3Khz away, on 3885. For transmit, I merely substituted one of the inexpensive HC-49/U crystals from N4ESS, which did not oscillate to begin with. Fortunately again, the radio came with a complete technical manual where I saw that a 33pF cap had been placed in series with the crystal in the Colpitts oscillator, and which was reducing the feedback too much. Bypassing this cap brought the oscillator to life with full output of 12-15 watts with 13.8V supply, or a solid 10 watts from a 12 volt battery. Transmit current drain is as high as 3.8A but the receiver draws only 20ma in standby yet produces lots of audio. For this reason we plan to have the Forestphone "guarding 3885" during next year's Hamvention at Xenia, OH ? so calls on 3885 AM might just be heard!
I found little information about the FP-1 online but the pic shows one with the cover and canvas carry bag which I do not have, as show in photos here with permission of Ray Robinson who was more than a little surprised to see mine at the Dayton Hamvention!
Small AM (and later SSB) field radios like the Forestphone were the mainstay of the Forests Commission in Australia until the mid-70 when VHF took over. But HF still plays a role in remote regions of the world, and when used with a decent antenna, radios like this are still capable of communication over several hundred miles.
In the modern era when satellite communications are available virtually anywhere on earth, it is still fun to remember when HF radio was really the lifeline for anyone more than line-of-sight away from civilization and to recognize the trials and tribulations of that form of communications by restoring and using this equipment on the ham bands. Here's a 30 sec. video from Vkthreepi doing exactly that! WATCH
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If, like me, you enjoy flipping through old issues of 73 magazine from the 60s, you're bound to have at least seen the ads for the Transcom SBT-3 three-band SSB tranceiver. Being made in Escondido CA in the mid-60s, my guess has always been that engineers from other San Diego SSB compnanies such as Don Stoner, Les Earnshaw from Southcom, Herb Johnson, founder of Swan or Faust Gonsett may... READ MORE
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 01/16/2021
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Alexander M. Lewyt died in 1988 at the age of 79, a holder of patents on scores of inventions. His penchant for invention, he once said, was so strong that he had chronic insomnia from lying awake at night envisioning new products. When he learned of undertakers’ difficulty in fastening neckties on corpses, the teen-age Lewyt devised a new kind of bow tie that clipped on. He sold 50,000 of t... READ MORE
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 01/08/2021
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The Korean-war vintage AN/GRC-9 is one of the most useful and fun military field radios for ham use, as with AM and CW modes and 2-12 MHz coverage and a VFO it's all ready to go on several ham bands. The battery tube superhet receiver is also power-friendly and sensitive and stable enough to copy CW and SSB but has one annoying flaw - the 4 volt bias battery used by the audio... READ MORE
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 01/03/2021
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Halogen type MR-16 lamps are commonly used in track lights and other spot lighting applications so what would be cooler than to drop in LED replacements! A lot, as it turns out. The LED replacements are HORRIBLE RFI emitters that totally trashed several ham bands when I unknowingly installed them.Halogen spot lights are 12 volt devices so it's long been common prac... READ MORE
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 01/02/2021
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Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill companyHammarlund was an industry leader for generationsCategory: Historic
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 12/12/2020
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Ham radio operators honor legacy of Mars Hill companyHammarlund was an industry leader for generationsCategory: Historic
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 12/12/2020
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The Japan Radio Company JSB-20 SSB Radiotelephone10 watt portable SSB lunchboxCategory: Vintage Ham Radio
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 12/12/2020
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Like most people who received a catalog from International Crystal in the 60s, I was always intrigued by their assortment of PC board kits. There were boards for every stage in a radio transmitter or receiver and they could be combined to make almost anything - from converters to complete radios. But little did I know that International actually did just that when they went... READ MORE
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 12/01/2020
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Incredible trove of Radio and Electronics BooksFree for downloading - pdf filesCategory: Vintage Radio
- Robert Nickels (ranickels), 11/02/2020
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