That conductor that you thought was thread is probably (almost certainly) Litz wire. It's essentially a bundle of braided, individually insulated, very thin wires that together function as a single wire for conducting AC at a high frequencies. High frequencies can't be conducted easily by single wires due to the skin effect. The skin effect is that when AC is put through a conductor, the electrons flow mostly on the outside of the conductor rather than throughout the cross-section. The higher the frequency is, the more pronounced the skin effect is. At 60 Hz (wall AC in NA), the skin depth (the depth above which almost all the electricity is) is 8.5 mm. This means that if a conductor is thicker that 17 mm diameter, then the center of the wire won't be used at all. This means that if you need wire thicker than 17 mm, you should use pipe with a thickness of 8.5 mm. At radio frequencies, the skin depth is practically microscopic, so big conductors are practically worthless. For example, 100 MHz, the skin depth is 6.02 μm (0.0062 mm). Litz wire is a good way of dealing with this problem at high frequencies. Furthermore, you can make good Litz wire for high frequencies by coating a non-conductive material with a few microns of conductor, and then an insulator, and then braiding those conductors together. This will feel like a weird sort of string. This is probably what you saw.
The funny adjustable can may have been adjustable caps for fine tuning the frequency. if so there should be many thin 3/4 circular plates . probably silver plated as skin effect is shallower than the plating. pwm question wouldn't the 20k Mh be an on/off signal and the motor position would dictate phase of AC ? if so the frequency would be pole count * phase * rpm ,having very little to no skin effect . The 20k is a quasi RPM limit. Pole count*phase* rpm =20k . even if you hit it with more pixie dust your PWM can't switch any faster. With high tork /pole count motors this becomes an engineering consideration.
These were used all over the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic. When I went to work in the NWT in 2007 they were still being used here and there. I decommissioned the last ones in use by the company I worked for in around 2009. This is part of the interesting history of one of the last frontiers on Earth. You knew you were experiencing a part of a dying part of history when you: - Flew with Joe on Buffalo - Crossed your first Ice Road - Did all your laundry the day before the water truck came - Sat on top of misc cargo with a sled dog or two in the back of a bush plane - Went out to a fish camp in an old bombardier - Made a radio-telephone call
I've seen this video multiple times as I am a Patreon of yours, but I decided to send it to a co-worker of mine and he has direct experience with this company back in the 70's and 80's. He is one of those dark magic RF dudes through and through. Just thought I would share what he sent back: "That radio is a Spillsbury Tindall SBx-11 and believe it or not I used to tune them up and put them in the field in Yukon back in the late 70’s! They were a great HF radio, a bit fussy to tune, but really good with a long wire dipole hooked up to trees….. Also used to install them in helicopters with a horizontal whip antenna that was inductively tuned to band and fined tuned with the capacitor in the built in tuner. I don’t know if I could tune one now, but I do know that the guys at the arctic institute used to have several. Before Sat phones people would wait for the right conditions and could talk over several hundred miles, under the right conditions. Single side band so AM modulation with lots of distortion but readable. A great radio in its day. 25 Watts out and powered by D cells!"
I was a taxicab dispatcher in my early 20s and I spend a good week figuring out what I would say the first time I came on the radio to 500+ drivers - gotta be coooolll!!
This is a valuable piece of Canadian history. The manufacturer was in business for over 40 years (From the 1940s till the 80s or 90s), and the model you are in possession of (SBX-11A) is known to have served at the North Pole as well as the summit of Mount Everest.
My memory of PCB layout in that era was using "crepe tape", wrinkly/springy stuff which could be bent into the shapes we saw on that radio board. That was succeeded by mylar tape, which couldn't be bent; you had to do overlapping angled joints. CAD made it all easier, of course, and especially being able to enforce design rules for trace length, spacing, etc.
Wow. Haven't seen one of those for about 35 years. I used to work as a Pixie Wrangler (radio tech) in the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Northern B.C. I've got a whole drawer full of those Buss fuses with springs. The metal cans are tuneable inductors with a ferrite core - the metal can is an RF shield. There was a whole network of these, along with some even older Canadian Marconi tube rigs, all the way down the MacKenzie and across the Northwest. There were a couple of daily radio nets where "outpost" stations would do a daily check-in. They were also used by aircraft landing at isolated strips (2.8 MHz band). As is mentioned in the video, some stations - ones that had a link to the telephone system by wire or microwave - would patch telephone calls through the operator. (All the land mobile telephone networks, even VHF, in Northern Alberta, Northern B.C., and NWT used operators). I've had my mitts into a fair few of this model radio, and seeing this really takes me back. I HATED the Marconi HF radios that used tubes - these were a fantastic improvement. Reception ranged from good (occasionally) to dreadful. The newer radios like this one were really well made, expensive as hell, and didn't break too often (except for the mic cords). I'd love to put "hands on" one of the rigs AvE's got again - they were damn near bulletproof, as radios went back in the day. The 2.8 MHz frequencies are still used on HF (High Frequency) radio on commercial trans-Atlantic airline flights. There's a web site - LiveATC.net - where you can monitor the Air Traffic Control Centre in Gander, Newfoundland, and sometimes Shanwick in the U.K. as well as the aircraft. Between 5 PM and 1 AM Mountain time, literally hundreds of airliners check in with Gander on HF, most heading East. Later on, you hear the West-bound aircraft checking in with Gander when they reach 30 degrees West Longitude. The frequencies change with the time of day, but they still use that real low-frequency radio band among others. Don't know how you came by it, AvE. but thanks for the nostalgia.
Yes, tunable Inductor! My old Heathkit FM section has a huge tunable inductor and the tunable slug in it is so soft that it crumbles when you put in the plastic hex tool. The fix is a harder less magnetic slug adding a static inductor in series to compensate for the inductance loss or switch the LC oscillator to a static inductor with a tunable capacitor. The Bible for this stuff is "RF Components and CIrcuits" by Joe Carr. Great addon to the Art of Electronic Book. Friggin Skookum
Jim Baritone So its just a hopped up hf radio? Seems interesting but is it tunable when using the phone patch? Id hate to be trying to land a plane, talking to the ground, and having to listen to a guy talking to his wife. Pretty cool tho and thanks for the info
I grew up in the NWT and maintained our radios. We had the Marconis at first, CH-25 with tube finals, and then we switched to a Daniels all solid state. When I went to university in the south (Winnipeg) I took the CH-25 with me and laid a dipole on the roof my residence building. Worked like a charm! At the time Bell Canada ran the phone service out of Frobisher Bay, that was shut down in 1983.
The Sex life of an Electron by Eddie Currents One night when his charge was pretty high, Micro-Farad decided to seek out a cute little coil to help him discharge. He picked up Milli-Amp and took her for a ride in his Megacycle. They rode across the Wheatstone Bridge and stopped by a Magnetic field with flowing currents and frolicked in the sine waves. Micro-Farad, attracted by Millie-Amp's characterisic curves soon had her fully charged and proceeded to excite her resistance to a minimum. He gently laid her at ground potential, raised her frequency and lowered her reluctance. With a quick arc, he pulled out his high voltage probe and inserted it in her socket, connecting them in parallel. He slowly began short circuiting her resistance shunt while quickly raising her thermal conductance level to mill-spec. Fully excited, Milli- Amp mumbled "OHM...OHM...OHM" With his tube operating well into class C, and her field vibrating with his current flow, a corona formed which instantly caused her shunt to overheat just at the point when Micro-Farad rapidly discharged and drained off every electron into her grid. They fluxed all night trying various connectors and sockets untill his magnet had a soft core and lost all of its field strength. Afterwards, Milli-Amp tried self-induction and damaged her solenoids and with his battery fully discharged, Micro-Farad was unable to excite his field. Not ready to be quiescent, they spent the rest of the evening reversing polarity and blowing each others fuses.
As soon as I saw the little orange box, I got all nostalgic. My dad was the foreman in the metal shop of Spilsbury and Tindall, and when I turned 16, had my first official paying job in that metal shop. This was 1966, and the company at that time was located at 120 E. Cordova St.. Worked there for may years, and the SBX 11 was developed during those years. I remember cutting, punching, bending and welding those aluminum parts, including that cute little riveted shield. Thanks, AvE for the trip down memory lane. Sid
Hearing chickadee’s sweet little voice brought a “happy tear” to my eyes and a big smile to my face, reminding me of similar moments when my kids were little and everything was good in the world. You’re a great dad. Thanks for sharing these videos.
+AvE The Slo Blow fuse you have is fairly common. The ceramic ones you refer too are usually for high heat applications. The spring isn't for vibration, it is made of relatively high resistance material, helping to heat up the lump of fusable material on the fuse element, and pulling it rapidly apart when it melts. The combination of lump and spring, with its relatively high thermal mass, also allows the surge to pass, but provides the protection for longer term but lesser overloads. The silver "WTF are these things?" are tunable coils (inductors) for adjusting the oscillator frequency.
That is great, I loved the Frontier Helicopters sticker on it, they used to put these things in helicopters way back, you had to be careful if you got to close to the huge long antenna sticking out the front of the helicopter when they were transmitting it would zap you good.
I never understood how something that where I live is used fairly regularly and for mundane weather reports and conversations in the native tongue could be so expensive, but hearing you enthusiastically explain the tech makes me appreciate it far more
Thats because your teachers dont care about you half as much as AvE. Same boat. This is why we watch him religiously. He is the magnificent uncle Bumblefuck.
Jim Spilsbury is a legend in British Columbia. He provided HF radios to the coast and serviced them from his boat. His travels and a lot of BC history are documented in a series of his books called "Spilsbury's Coast". Later he founded Queen Charlotte Airlines which morped into Pacific Western Airlines, once upon a time the third largest airline in Canada. His stories make fantastic reading
I used to love having my daughter working with me in the garage I had her mig welding at 7 years old she 18 on the 4th july and a beauty therapist now guess she didn't want to be a diesel fitter then.
Hi AvE. The spring loaded fuse is not for shock dampening, the spring is to force the fuse element to clear when the fuse blows, it also acts as an indicator when the fuse is blown. The thread is Litz wire. They use multiple strands of fine wire to reduce the self-capacitance of the inductor. Electronics is an art, the trouble is understanding why someone chose to do something a particular way, a lot of times it's to cut-corners, or cost savings, and sometimes its just an outright mistake. the mistakes are the funny ones to find, and sometimes very complicated to fix.
Amen brother! I still have my original Muir book and whenever I find a used copy, pick it up and give it out to new car enthusiasts I know. Lots of great info, easy to understand!
I have always assumed that crystal oscillators contain pixies that are bashing against each other in a regular time intervals. Today I have finally understood (more or less) how they actually work. Thanks, AvE.
I believe that the spring in the Buss fuse pulls the contacts apart when pixie resistance melts the fuse's low temp metal. A work of art! Thanks for a great demolition, er, dismantling!
Fun video. It took me back many years to when I was playing with Gonset Communicator ham radios. Those old rigs were also rock bound and finding rocks for them was getting hard to do so we would open the cam and rub some graphite pencil onto the crystal to get them to go lower in frequency and lap the crystal to get them to go up in frequency. Those were surly very intresting times in my amature radio hoby years. Oh and the mechanical filter was a 6 KHZ wide am filter. A lot of those style of filter were made by Collins radio and worked very nicely.
This video is heart-warming to me for several reasons. I'm a sucker for old electronics, so I find that thing to be beautiful. It was so nice to hear your interaction with your daughter and to hear you get so happy about electronic components.
I really enjoy how much you genuinely enjoy discovering the inner workings of the things you take apart. All the other stuff aside, watching you go through that radio gave me joy.
My god, your daughter is so cute. You're an awesome dad. It's so nice to see someone teaching children about the wonder of tech and learning how things work together.
+AvE thanks for the look into history. I work in telecom and some of the old switching and test equipment amazes me. The creativity needed to invent some of the electro-mechanical gear is just astounding.
These tear downs are great! It ain't what you do it's the way that you 'splain it that keeps me wanting more AvE electronics stuff. I'm no expert, but I do massively appreciate the steady pace and thoughtful care you take in explaining things and the encouragement you give. Bloody priceless as far as I'm concerned. If it's fucked anyway there is nothing to lose, and the occasional success despite my inept incompetence is priceless.
"I'm talking to you Wikipedia editors!" LOL! - Great video Ave. Super cool device, loads of Ave lingo, cameo by Chickadee...what more can you ask for? 10-4! :)
Just in case anyone was interested in the textbook, I don't know what edition he was using, but the 3rd edition is available in PDF format here: www.pdf-archive.com/2016/03/02/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition/the-art-of-electronics-3rd-edition.pdf
As a French Canadian it warms my heart that speak to your daughter in both English and French :-) The more Language she speaks the better it is for her ! :-D
There are about 1000 amateur radio operators out there cringing on how you mangled the inside of that radio. Most of them would like to fix it and put it back on the air. And quite a few might pay good money for a portable radio like that.
One of the best vids you have ever done. Learned some stuff, had a few laughs, and saw the guts of a really cool bit of old gear. Oh, and chickadee is getting big enough to "help" you with wrenches in electronics. Cutie!
These were still used in 1999 in Nunavut when I was in Pond Inlet at the north end of Baffin Island. We would travel across the sea ice to southern Bylot Island and stay at a hunters cabin and chat with other folks around.
Wow. Excellent explanation of crystals in radio wavelengths. Nobody, nobody has ever attempted to explain the magic crystals of radios. This is very informative.
Haha! I remember my first radio call at 18! I screwed up sooo bad on the "cool factor".... "can I uhm...can I get a copy for so and so?........over...."
Horowitz & Hill !! Sitting right here on the shelf behind me, leftover from my electrical enginerding days in Berkeley, building particle detectors. Brings back the memories. Thanks
The ones from his collection aren't crystals, im not sure what they are, but you can see crystals further in the unit, described by AvE as "oscillators in cans", 5 of them next to each other and one of on its lonesome to the right.I used to play with radios like these my old man bought for a few $ back in the 80's , to keep me entertained! Sure I don't know what the big cans are, just that they aren't crystals.I guess some kind of trim-pot.
Definitely slug-tuned IF cans. This seems to be an SSB rig (clarifier knob gives it away) operating in the 60-meter band. It would have good ground-wave performance, sensible for boonies operation.
I just finished a big trip around AB, BC, YK & NWT and flew right by Telegraph Creek as I was between Smithers and Atlin. It sure is in the middle of nowhere!
Jim Spilsbury was a legend on the BC coast...not just some guy making radios in East Van! You've got to read his books. He started the radio company during the second world war and even owned an airline...
Dude, so much nostalgia! I'm a child of the 80s, dad worked logging camps in Bella Bella, Rivers Inlet, had many a radio phone call with him as a kid, even up into the early nineties. Great vid.
AVE I would like to say I have learned a great deal from your videos and appreciate the work that goes into them. I am a father of a 4 year old boy and I appreciate the time you take to show chickadee how things are made I wish more parents did the same thank you and please keep up the good work
In the 70s, my Dad was a doctor with a 3-channel radio telephone in the car. It connected to an answering service in town. We used to called "Fifty Five to Seekers". They'd reply "Go Ahead Double Five" and we could then ask them to put us through to a telephone number. It wasn't duplex, and we'd call "over" each time we finished talking. This was the coolest thing EVER, all those years ago. And it was line of sight, so I could call home from the ski field. :)
This is probably my favorite You Tube video. What did I like you ask? The honest excitement about how stuff works. I like a lot of your videos (language, attitude, curiousity), but this is my favorite. I'll probably go buy the book and read up on "Pixies" and stuff. Thanks
She's definitely has the cute factor. And you never know the out come. You can never turn your back on them in the shop. You cant turn your back on them for a second. 6 yr old daughter had gopher cheeks, told her to spit it out. She just shook her head NO. She started coughing out electrical connectors, raced her to ER, x-rays showed she didn't swallow any. 8 yr old boy, proud to run garage door opener for the old man. Old Craftsmen garage door opener came down on his trike. He's laughing as the motor gets ripped off his mounts. Now at 22 the daughter, wants to do all the work on her van, I was always told, if I need your help I'll ask. Start them early, they will definitely entertain you.
Hey, would you like to get rid of the remains of that radio? I've been looking for one for a while - I've got a Spilsbury from the 1950s, all chock full of tubes. It doesn't work, and I think it'd be pretty cool to display the newer version on the shelf next to it!
You are the only person, outside of my family, I have ever heard reference the red green show. It warms my heart like the sound of a 454 or the glow of a 300 watt incandescent light bulb to hear you reference the comedy of Steve Smith. Might be because I live in Florida. Keep up with the tear downs, by far one of the best things out there for a former pixy wrangler to be watching.
mikeselectricstuff Basically, it pulls out a pin that is locked inside the solid block, when the block melts. The block size gives the delay time. Also, the fact that the fuse is in clear glass rather than (often ceramic tube) and in both cases filled with some sand tells that the fuse is limited to 32 V circuit use. It appears there are 3 voltage ranges for these small (glass or ceramic tube) fuses. What I have seen are 32 V, 125 V and 250 V. A system running at 9 V battery does not need more than 32 V rated fuse. Or it does not need the sand to extinguish an arc.
I paused the video at 13:54 to grab the FCC ID for this radio and found all kinds of information. I'm kind of sad that this got the treatment it did on your bench, but as the tag inside seemed to indicate, something was already damaged in the radio that may simply have been determined to be beyond economic repair. If anybody is curious, this is a single sideband HF radio but it's not a ham radio so to speak. That is, the frequency ranges this radio typically operated at sit right between the amateur radio HF bands. It looks like less than 10,000 of these radios were ever produced and most likely not all of those were sold which makes this a pretty rare radio. I'm sure it's been thrown out now but might have been an interesting thing to have a go at with a soldering iron to see if it could be resurrected.
Man, I love hearing your little one in the videos. Reminds me of when I'm out there working on something and my little girl comes over to to "give me a hand" or pull me away to do something more fun. Keep it up, dad!
My love of radio wouldn't allow me to watch the rest of the autopsy. It was as if I was watching an old friend getting the final inspection.. Au revoir.. Awesome videos! Please for the love of what’s left of RU-vid.. KEEP IT COMING!!! And thank you. Love the vids
Thanks for the explanation of how the crystals were used, I couldn't quite understand how they are used to make the frequency and it makes it a lot easier to go back and have a look at how the old radios work.
Hey I took out the the little incandescent back light bulb in my radio and put LEDs their place. the light came on for a split second the went off. nothing looks blown or on fire. this seems like the place to ask, what happened?
Use 2,2K (triple red band) resistor in series with the LED and you don't have to replace it for a while. Sometimes power supplies are not exactly 12V (in automotive vehicels it is more like 13,5V) and blows those LED's within few years. Also watch out for the polarity.
I enjoy watching your videos, even more so that you don't mind your daughter coming into the shop and your happy to drop a project to go and play. Good on ya man 😀
Well worth the price of admission for the oscillator lesson! I previously relied on, if its working and I can't make it or fix it then lets just believe it works, but it was nice to get a straight forward explanation.
