- 2025
- Nov
- 13
The Fort Wayne Hamfest - Fort Wayne, IN - November 15th and 16th.
This is a show I’ve been attending for some time, and it’s usually pretty decent. Last year was, unfortunately, a lot smaller than normal - probably 2/3 regular size if that. Not sure what was going on there, but I’m waiting to see how this year’s show goes before I make plans to attend in 2026.
This is a completely indoor show at the Allen County War Memorial, a large event center. It occupies one of the large event halls. There’s usually some arena style food on site, if you need that.
Fort Wayne Hamfest
Allen Country War Memorial Coliseum
4000 Parnell Ave
Fort Wayne, IN 46805
November 15 16
Hours vary by day, opens at 9AM
https://www.acarts.com/hfmain.htm
Admission is $10 and the venue itself charges $8 for parking. See you there!
- 2025
- Nov
- 13
My 2026 Hamfest and Show List
With 2025 coming to a close, I find myself thinking about each show I attended this past year, and which ones I want to go back to. While the first answer is “all of them!” - I think I’m going to cut back some this year. The smaller shows are cool, but I started seeing the same vendors and the same items over and over. This will give things a chance to cycle through.
So - instead of 15 hamfests, I think I’ll probably drop back to 8 or so. There may be a few others in there - Athens, OH and Clearfield, PA, but those will depend primarily on “if I feel like it,” and perhaps Fort Wayne if 2025’s show turns out better than 2024.
As before, not all shows have updated at the time of this posting, so check back or check the Ohio ARRL section page for current event times Links to pictures will be posted as soon as I can after a show, and there will be a year-end wrap-up.
Cuyahoga Falls Amateur Radio Club Hamfest
Emidio & Sons Party Center
48 E. Bath Road
Cuyahoga Falls, OH 44221
April 11
8A - 1PM
Admission $8
https://sites.google.com/cfarc.org/cfarc/hamfest
Event photos: Coming soon.
Dayton Hamvention
Greene County Fair and Expo Center - The Whole Thing
210 Fairground Road
Xenia, OH 45385
May 15 16 17
Hours vary by day, opens at 9AM
https://hamvention.org
Friday Photos: Coming soon.
Saturday Photos: Coming soon.
Sunday Photos: Coming soon.
Breezeshooters Hamfest
Butler Farm Show
625 Evans City Rd
Butler, PA 16001
Date TBA, usually June
8A - 2PM
https://breezeshooters.org/ns/
Event photos: Coming soon.
Shriner’s Hamfest
Aladdin Shrine Center
1801 Gateway Cir
Grove City, OH 43123
Date TBA, usually August
8A - 1PMish
https://aladdinshrine.org/hamfest/
Event photos: Coming soon.
Johnstown Swapper’s Day
Johnstown Community Sportsmen’s Club
7357 Sportsman Club Rd NW
Johnstown, OH 43031
Labor Day Weekend (Fri Sat Sun)
7A - 6P
https://jcscohio.org/swappers-day/
Event photos: Coming soon.
The Cleveland Hamfest and Computer Show
Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds, Eastland Entrance
160 Eastland Rd
Berea, OH 44107
Date TBA, usually September
8A - 12P
https://www.hac.org/
Event photos: Coming soon.
Early Television Museum Fall Swap Meet
The Early Television Museum
5396 Franklin St
Hilliard, OH 43026
Date TBA, usually October
10A - 2P
https://www.earlytelevision.org/swapmeet.html
Event photos: Coming soon
Scott Antique Market November
Ohio Expo Center (State Fairgrounds)
717 E 17th Ave
Columbus, OH 43211
Usually Thanksgiving weekend
Hours vary by day, check before you go.
https://www.scottantiquemarket.com/
Event photos: Coming soon
Johnstown Swappers Day and the Scott Antique Market aren’t really hamfests, but enough electrical and other goodies show up that it’s worth going if you’re in to general flea market type items. The Early Television Museum is a swap meet that happens during one of the venue’s open work days, so who knows what will show up there.
Always check dates and times before you go, and I’ll see you there!
- 2025
- Nov
- 12
Photos from the 2025 MARC Hamfest
This show, held at the MAPS facility in North Canton, Ohio, seems to have “the stuff we want” - piles of radios, tables of things, and generally a good selection set up the way you remember shows being. This year was no different, and - while the show itself is of moderate size, they sold out every table. The museum exhibits that you can view while at the show are kind of cool, too.
I didn’t pick up much at this show, some parts and a book, but there were a lot of things I would have liked to have. They have to stay where they are, however - I have enough projects for now!
This is what I saw at the show:
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This is the second-to-last show I’ll attend this year, not counting the local antique shows. Next and last is Fort Wayne, which happens the weekend of the 15th and 16th of November. See you there!
- 2025
- Oct
- 28
A Viz WP-705 Power Supply part 4: The fix is in.
We left off with the regulator issue fixed, but still having a problem. There’s not that much more that can be wrong, so let’s move on to the isolated supplies that feed the regulator.
This is a simply supply consisting of two transformer windings (one for each side,) a diode, and a capacitor to make a half-wave power supply. Originally I thought that it might be dried out capacitors, but there’s no reason not to check everything in there. Diodes and transformers all were in acceptable ranges…but in the process, it showed itself.
The ‘ol “Vertically mounted heavy transformer (with short leads) on a PCB” trick.
You can clearly see a crack in the solder, and that’s in the side of the supply with the issue. You can also see the other leads beginning to develop cracks, so it wouldn’t be long before those leads were also broken. Since I’m in there, I replaced the capacitors I originally suspected (they’re old) and reflowed every joint on this board.
And, it works.
I want to replace the main filters at some point as well, but that’s a higher voltage part and I don’t have any in stock that fit the area. I’ll order something and revisit this unit later.
That pretty much takes care of this unit, but it still needs some tweaking on the display calibration. Hopefully the manual is close enough on this that I can assume a cal procedure from it. One more part on the way, stay tuned!
- 2025
- Oct
- 27
The 2025 MARC Hamfest - 11/02/2025
There’s a hamfest happening at the Military Air Preservation Museum hanger in North Canton, Ohio this weekend. This was good local show last year, and the included museum admission was quite the bonus. If you’re in the area, it’s well worth the time to visit.
MARC Hamfest
Military Air Preservation Society Hanger (MAPS)
2620 International Parkway
Green, OH 44232
November 2
8A - 1P
http://w8np.net
https://mapsairmuseum.org/events/hamfest-2025/
See you there!
- 2025
- Oct
- 22
A Viz WP-705 Power Supply part 3: Troubleshooting in stages.
In part 2, we discovered that the 5V rail for the display was bad. At this point, I decided to pull the regulator out and see what was going on. I wanted to get a manual and find some LM309H spares before going further than part removal, and I found both.
The manual, unfortunately, wasn’t helpful, as it was for the wrong revision of device. I found some LM309H regulators, so off we go.
I started by measuring the regulator itself with a simple ohms test. The part I have read 2KΩ from terminals to ground, and that’s not right. A new part reads about 30MΩ to ground from each terminal, so the part in the unit is defective, and is probably causing the output voltage to be low.
Before I put the new part in, however, I wanted to check the A/D and driver. So…out comes the trusty old Heath/Zenith supply, set to 5V.
I injected 5V into the regulator output terminal pad, and the display came back without issue. That’s good - those chips are expensive these days, and while I have a spare, I’d rather not use it unless needed.
The new regulator is installed, and main power is applied while monitoring 5V. There’s still an issue, the display is still rolling. Measuring the input reveals the problem, you can’t regulate 5V from 4.5V…
So, what’s wrong here?
The 5V supply is provided by an unregulated supply that floats at about 9V under load. It’s a simple affair, a transformer, diode, and a capacitor for each side. This provides isolation from the main supply and doesn’t bleed off your supply current to run the device itself.
There’s only really three things that could be wrong:
1: The transformer is bad.
2: The diode is bad.
3: The capacitor is bad.
Chances are…it’s number 3. I’d guess if I scoped this, I’d find that the output of the supply is nothing but ripple because the filter is dried out. I need to get some 470μF parts of known quality to replace the ones in here in order to check, as all I have in stock is what I purchased at Radio Shack from one of their parts kits - back in the 90s…
In the meantime, I disconnected the unregulated input, and applied 10VDC to the input of the regulator.
And the device came right up, and I was able to use it’s input to measure 5V from the external supply. It’s quite a ways off (this should be closer to 5.8VDC) so there’s going to be some tweaking needed once we’re all back in operational order.
Stay tuned for part 4 where the capacitors in the supply’s supply get replaced.
Next part of this series: Coming soon.
Previous part of this series: https://wereboar.com … 2-musings-on-faults/
- 2025
- Oct
- 19
Photos from The Early Television Museum 2025 Fall Swap Meet
This was the first time I’d gone to this show, and - while small - it offered quite a bit of television focused vendors. The usual flea market tat that shows up at hamfests these days was absent, even though the show was free to set up and enter.
I did end up spending about $45 and taking home a few project items which may show up later, depending on what I have scheduled. Regardless, here are the photos I took. I don’t have much to say about them, so there’s no description, just enjoy the glory of old television.
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We did a museum tour as well, and that is well worth the admission price. I highly recommend that if you’re in the area. We didn’t stick around for the auction, while there were a few lunchboxes I’d like to take home I already have examples of them and do not need more.
I’ll be heading back to this one again.
- 2025
- Oct
- 15
The Heathkit AG-7 Audio Generator part 9: Final Thoughts
The Heathkit AG-7 is rebuilt, and is working - as far as I can tell, as designed. Internal oscillator measurements show that the wein-bridge is working as expected.
This was the main issue from before - the amplifier was being overdriven as it was fed back into the circuit, and the bottom was being cut off. This was due to almost every resistor in the circuit being out of tolerance. New parts corrected all of the issues.
This unit was purchased at Breezeshooters Hamfest in Butler during the 2023 show. (Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of the device on it’s table…I think that was because we were walking out, I saw it, and took it home.) I didn’t need it, but it has some interesting markings - primarily that of GTE (General Telephone) indicating that it was owned by said telephone system, and that it sat in a rack somewhere. There were also holes on the front panel that would be about the size of a strap that would hold knobs in place. I assume this unit was probably sitting in a rack generating a tone for craft access during it’s lifespan. There were several repairs inside, indicating to me that the unit had a long life.
Inside was the normal array of wax-paper poppers and drifty carbons.
Pretty much everything in here had to go. And it did.
After some checking and corrections, I brought the unit up:
Inside, there are two small trimmer capacitors that you need to adjust to bring the frequency in to something useful. The manual suggests beating the device against line and doing some other stuff, but the magic of a good scope and frequency counter allowed me to adjust the device right in. I chose 400Hz as the adjustment point, as this is probably what it would have been used at during it’s life - 400Hz was the test frequency of choice before 1kHz was settled upon.
And that’s it. The device is buttoned up and working as expected for a device of this era.
The rebuild process
As stated, this device had a lot of work done to it, and had some small parts changes. One resistor was a pair with a higher value, most likely to drive the oscillator’s signal down in order to get rid of the flat bottom. This worked, but as the device aged the problem re-appeared and only a rebuild would solve it.
Selecting parts was fairly straightforward, except that some of the resistor values were harder to get than others in the tolerances I wanted. 820Ω, 2.9kΩ, and 3.9kΩ proved to be a little difficult to get in a 1/2W rating that wasn’t carbon film. I eventually found these, however, and installed them during the rebuild.
The filter capacitors were good here (for now!) so I left them alone, but moved the parts that would have attached to them off of the lugs. That way, if the filters need replaced (and they will!) it will be much easier as the only thing on them is wire connections. Everything that was on them is now on terminal lugs.
I ran into a couple of issues during the final check, but both of those were my fault.
First was two no-solders where I had removed things from a tie pin and didn’t re-solder the connection. That was easily taken care of. Second was the output Hi/Lo switch. I didn’t pay attention to the orientation of the switch and wired it opposite the wiring diagram. That, also, was easily corrected and just involved moving those connections around. After that, it tested fine and provided a nice, clean output. - after the standard spray of Deoxit in the switches and pots, of course.
Issues
During the rebuild, I noticed that the switch did not follow OEM wiring. There was a crossed wire on one of the terminals, which wasn’t indicated on the schematic. Why was this done?
Well, if you put the switch in the “Hi” position, you get a nice, strong output. You also overdrive the amplifier tubes and you get to about 50% and it starts to clip. This is in the sine output position, the square output position is of much lower input level and probably is fine. In the “Lo” position, you get nothing.
The “Lo” position connected the output to the cathodes of the amplifier tubes. There’s probably nothing there because there shouldn’t be anything there - the signal input is on the control grid of the 6J5 tubes. I’m not really sure what they were attempting to do here, but whatever it was didn’t work. I believe what the previous owner was trying to do with the wiring mods is actually get a useful signal out of the device. As I didn’t have much time to analyze the entire thing before smoke appeared, I’m not sure if that worked. Regardless, I wired the output as shown in the schematic.
The oscillator itself is somewhat not on-point, so the frequencies are off as you get farther away from 400Hz. It also has the lovely wein-bridge issue of stalling if you change frequency quickly. If I ever feel like it, I’ll adjust the trimmers to the manual’s specs - but I don’t think this will help. It’s the way it is.
There’s a big issue, however, and that’s of the DC on the output. While there is a blocking capacitor on the output, the output floats around 110VDC as measured on a high-impedance meter. When you load it down, it approaches 0VDC. This is fine for tube devices, but a high-impedance load like a transistor circuit isn’t going to like that. So…this unit is not going to be happy in a solid-state world, or rather the solid-state devices aren’t going to be happy in it’s world!
That’s pretty much it. As stated, the device appears to be working as designed. I may revisit this unit at some point in the future, but it doesn’t necessarily have a place on the bench other than as an artifact.
The entire series
Stuff I brought home from Butler 2023 https://wereboar.com … uff-from-butler-but/
Part 1: Observations https://wereboar.com … part-1-observations/
Part 2: Testing https://wereboar.com … ator-part-2-testing/
Part 3: Diagnosis https://wereboar.com … or-part-3-diagnosis/
Part 4: Repairs https://wereboar.com … ator-part-4-repairs/
Part 5: It needs everything! https://wereboar.com … na-need-everything/p
Part 6: Removing everything https://wereboar.com … -removing-everthing/
Intermission: That’s not right! https://wereboar.com … ion-thats-not-right/
Part 7: The Rebuild https://wereboar.com … -part-7-the-rebuild/
Part 8: Finishing up https://wereboar.com … up-and-final-checks/
Part 9: Final Thoughts - You’re reading it now!
There’s a Viz WP-705, another Hallicrafters S-38C, an Eico VTVM, and a big TRF radio on the way. Stay tuned!
Previous part of this series: https://wereboar.com … up-and-final-checks/
- 2025
- Oct
- 13
The Early Television Museum Fall 2025 Swap Meet - Hilliard, OH - October 18th
The Early Television Museum is something on the West side of Columbus that I’ve wanted to visit for some time, but just never found the time. Well, there’s no time like the present, and now is time. (Are you sick of the word time yet?)
They have a swap meet in the fall with free admission for both vendors and attendees, and I’m going to make the trip over there this year to see what they have. No idea what will be on offer, will it be more in line with the museum’s offerings, or will it be general hamfest stuff? Who knows, but I’ll find out this Saturday. See you there!
Early Television Museum Fall Swap Meet
The Early Television Museum
5396 Franklin St
Hilliard, OH 43026
October 18
10A - 2P
https://www.earlytelevision.org/swapmeet.html
- 2025
- Oct
- 13
A Viz WP-705 Power Supply part 2: Musings on faults
When I opened this Viz WP-705, it seemed to be a fairly clear cut case of the A/D failing. But, after some more tracing circuits, there are a couple of other things here.
Each side of this device’s displays are driven by their own regulator, so each side has a LM309H LDO 5V device in a TO-5 package. So, that could also be a problem. I decided to wait until I received the manual I ordered for it.
The manual arrived eventually after being scanned delivered on one day and showing up the next. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped, and I’m not sure why it is like it is. The manual copy is dated 1978, and my power supply is dated 1980. Since RCA was obviously no longer slapping their name on the units, you’d think that, eventually, all of the RCA parts would be removed in favor of other commercial equivalents. The manual does suggest this, as it’s using different A/D / Driver pairs than what my unit has.
My unit still has RCA parts. I would think a later model would have the non-RCA parts, but I guess not. Perhaps they made these with multiple variants depending on what chips were available? Regardless, other than the power supply portion itself which seems to follow the manual, the actual portion I’m interested in isn’t laid out in the manual I have. Oh well.
Anyway…
I decided to check the 5V lines for both sides, since I now know there are two individual rails. The working side is ~5V. The non working side is down near 2.6VDC, and the input is about 4.6VDC. That’s certainly wrong.
Time to pull it out.
There’s some crusty flux under the device, I’ll clean that off with some alcohol. Now the input reads about 12VDC, which is probably fine as it’s input is unregulated. I decided to pull the small capacitor beside the regulator, it wasn’t shorted but it had an ESR of 28Ω so it’s dry. I’m sure the other one is too. I have a couple of 4.7μF parts laying around, I’ll replace both.
Something is drawing the voltage down, but is it the regulator? I’m not sure - I didn’t feel anything getting hot during testing.
I’m going to go ahead and check all those transistors for shorts, and try to do some comparative measurements with the other side. I also have some LM309H parts laying around somewhere, it’s just a matter of figuring out which bin I put them in. Stay tuned for part 3 and hopfully a full diagnosis.
Next part of this series: Coming soon.
Previous part of this series: https://wereboar.com … ply-part-1-analysis/