The YESTERTRONICS portion of this site has to do with old electronics hence the name. I became interested in electronics when I was very young. My Dad and I built a crystal set when I was about five years old and we also built a small telephone system between the house and the garage. These were both kits of some sort. When I was 14 my Grandfather gave me a Heathkit VTVM as a Christmas present. It was my first piece of test equipment. I began fixing radios for neighbors. I also obtained my Radio Amateur license when I was 14. I began as a Novice as WN6QEY and then passed the General. I went in one day to the San Francisco FCC Office with my Novice and emerged with my General signed right there. No wait. I remember coming home with my Novice ticket and turning on the transmitter I had built. It was a push-pull 6L6 circuit with a crystal between the grids. I pushed down the key and I heard the crystal crack. So I had to wait to make a contact until I could buy a new crystal. I put a 60 mA bulb in series so that I could monitor the crystal current by its brightness. The bulb acted like a fuse a protect this new crystal from cracking. When I did finally make my first contact I was so nervous that I could not finish it. A few months later I contacted this ham again and apologized for not finishing the QSO. He was very understanding.
My first receiver was an S-38A that I bought from Montgomery Wards. I could not get my parents to loan me the $50 to buy it so I sold my stamp collection to a friend to get the money. I have always regretted this as my Grandmother started my stamp collection when I was very young and we visited the stamp store many times. I cannot remember the receiver that I used with my VHF-152A and SCR-522 for Two Meter operation. I remember that later I got a BC-348 and used it with a Filter King Six Meter converter and a home brew transmitter. I had a Six Meter beam and spent many hours working DX on Six. It was at this time that my wife Liz got her ham ticket. She was home with the Children while I worked and she actually worked more states on Six Meters than I did. Eventually I purchased a Heathkit Seneca and that really was nice. The big problem was TVI on Channel Two. Our neighbors were not very happy campers.
"The workbench" Christmas 1952. Can you find my Hallicrafters S-38A?
So now that my wife and I are retired I am enjoying getting back into ham radio. When someone at work asked who wanted an old box of tubes, I was always first in line and picked up the box as soon as I could. I wanted to collect old radios but we always had a small home and there just was not room for them. Tubes however take less space and over the years I collected many of them. Now it is time to go through these tubes and save some for a nice display, save others for repair jobs and sell or trade the remainder. I registered the URL yestertronics.com and am trying my hand at a simple web page.