THIS PAGE CONTAINS MISC. PRODUCTS TO BE USED WITH VARIOUS RADIOS.

Here we have a Drake TR-72 crystal controlled mobile Transceiver.

This unit was donated to the museum by David Norris, W6CTM, thanks Dave. This is a blast from the past in several ways. First, I did not get involved with the 2 meter FM stuff until it was pretty far advanced. I had zero experience with such a crystal controlled rig like this. Since it has up to 23 channel capability I wonder if they also made a CB version (bite my tongue). It looks very much like mobile CB units from that era.

Next, note the neat box David built with the curved section to sit on the drive shaft HUMP in the front of a car. What, you never heard of a hump? Before all cars were made with front wheel drive it was common to have this hump in the floor as a tunnel for the drive shaft to pass through to provide drive power to the rear wheels.

Note also the keypad David built into the box. Pretty cool. He even has that cutout on the right for a Kleenex box and an opening on the left side for the microphone and note paper.

This is a Heathkit GP-11 vibrator power supply.

In the days of vacuum tube equipment, you would need a vibrator power supply like this for mobile operation from your vehicle. It could take the battery voltage from the car and use the vibrator to "chop" the steady DC into a square wave. That square wave would then be passed through a transformer and come out the secondary, at a much higher voltage, as a rounded sinewave which could then be used in a conventional rectifier circuit to create the B+ needed for some of the mobile rigs.