60's: The very
first circuit that Hamtel has successfully built and tested
was AM middle wave transmitter. It happened in mid sixties
of the 20th century, in a fast growing city of Tuzla, in a
peaceful valley among Bosnian mountains. The main designer
was 6 years old. The device has been lost long time ago, but
it is known that it was made with one germanium transistor
AC550, some strangely shaped Russian resistors and capacitors,
a piece of ferrite stick and coal type telephone microphone.
Best DX was about 20 meters (Hamtel research lab was located
at 7th floor, and signal was successfully received at 3rd
floor of the same building). Of course that Hamtel radio labs
was not known by that name then, the name changed with passing
years very often, as well as location. |
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70's: Anyway,
some new, more sophisticated projects followed. Headphone
stereo amplifier, mosquito-repellent-audio oscillator, a lot
of small audio devices used mostly for educational purposes,
and finally, ten years later, the first ham radio receiver.
Bingo. Regenerative receiver with only one Si-transistor.
And the first real antenna as well - about 20 meters long
piece of wire. This receiver was used extensively, mostly
for monitoring local SSB QSOs at 80 meters band. And it worked
fine. Even better after some modifications. And more modifications.
This modification attitude was adopted as standard operating
procedure for Hamtel labs later on. The first commercial project
followed - thyristor based light show device.
In late seventies another field was discovered. It was 2 meters
band. What a difference. VHF contests - portable operation
at the dawn of SSB era on VHF. (Mostly) linear amplifiers
with QQE06/40. Preamplifiers with ultra-modern BFT66, and
BF981. High speed CW MS QSO's. Memory keyer with more than
10 TTL circuits, completely made in ugly construction technique.
4CX350 linear amplifier and GaAs FET preamplifiers.
Another commercial project - no name QRP transceiver for 80
meters band.
80's: Next decade most of the time the key
personnel (me) spend at electrotechnical university getting
degree, and learning about computers. Not much design activities,
mostly microprocessor based system design, 8085 and 8051 families.
90's: Last ten years of the century were
strongly influenced by the last Balkan war. One great 2 m
band SSB/CW transceiver was designed (Hamtel was located in
Germany at that time). It was very stressful decade, finally
ending in a Linux world of system administration, and a couple
of PIC based projects.
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