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Digi-key

 

Nice piece this morning on NPR regarding Digi-Key.
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I didn't know it was started by a ham (AE5E)
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Jerry
KI4IO
Warrenton, VA
 

Digi-Key's first product was a digitial CW keyer: https://www.digikey.com/en/resources/ham-radio/ham-radio.
 

Tumbling down the digi-key internet rabbit hole - I came across the April 1968 edition of QST which featured the digi-key keyer.? See:
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Astounded at the difference between this 1968 issue and the current QSTs.
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Also, this site seems to be an infinitely better dive into the QST archives than currently provided by the ARRL.? This is not intended to be a slam on the league, which provides a pretty nice search feature....but holy cow!
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Jerry
KI4IO
Warrenton, VA
 

Wow, great issue.? I was going to try to track down that legendary keyer but you saved me the trouble. I'd recently been researching early keyer designs while I was engaged in my Accu-Keyer project, but I missed this one.

And wow, I had no?idea that QRP was such a hot topic in 1968. In this issue, there's both a 40 meter, 1-watt transceiver, and a "milli-gallon" (1 watt) 15 meter amplifier by Wes Hayward.

And as a bonus, an RTTY audio filter by Ed Weatherhold W3NQN with his 88 mH telephone toroids.

Also of interest is that the electronic projects are all solid-state. I noted that the keyer used the 2N4888 high voltage PNP for grid block keying. Same thing the Accu-Keyer used a half dozen years later. So these things propagate.

73

Nick




On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 4:01?PM Gerald Wolczanski via <jerrywlinux=[email protected]> wrote:
Tumbling down the digi-key internet rabbit hole - I came across the April 1968 edition of QST which featured the digi-key keyer.? See:
?
Astounded at the difference between this 1968 issue and the current QSTs.
?
Also, this site seems to be an infinitely better dive into the QST archives than currently provided by the ARRL.? This is not intended to be a slam on the league, which provides a pretty nice search feature....but holy cow!
?
Jerry
KI4IO
Warrenton, VA
 

On Fri, Apr 25, 2025 at 02:01 PM, Gerald Wolczanski wrote:
Astounded at the difference between this 1968 issue and the current QSTs.
That's from the time when there was a variety of different radio and electronics publications, all containing plenty of construction articles. You could walk into the magazine section of any good newsagent and find several general interest radio/electronics magazines filled with construction articles. I grew up in the 70's and miss that.
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The article in that QST by W6DMK, titled "A Transceiver for 7-Mc. CW" is typical of the kind of article I'd gaze at for hours as a teenager, and dream of building. Back then, I didn't have the chops to succesfully tackle a project like that, so I spent my time constantly thumbing through the pages, reading and re-reading the articles, staring at the circuit diagrams, and thinking that if only I had a little rig like that, I would completely rule the airwaves!
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QST was more interesting then. Endless pages of full-color advertisments for brand new commercial gear makes my eyes glaze over. That's why I subscribe to SPRAT.
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Dave
AA7EE?
 

On Sat, Apr 26, 2025 at 08:37 AM, Dave AA7EE wrote:
QST was more interesting then. Endless pages of full-color advertisements for brand new commercial gear makes my eyes glaze over. That's why I subscribe to SPRAT.
Alas, I yearn for the [late] 70s when I semi-accidentally subscribed to Wayne Green's 73 Magazine. From 1977 through the early 80s, each magazine was chock full of projects, tech articles, and general interest stories.
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Apparently Wayne had set up a collection of articles and, rather than do expensive cover pictures, from 1979 through 1980 or so, he ran a billboard table of contents type cover like shown below. Around 1981, this reverted to the picture covers and the articles thinned out. But there were a lot of interesting articles even then.
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Mine were the CB to 10 articles which caused a lot of false starts for me along with a buildup of those old HyGain CB boards offered by Fair Radio Sales in Ohio.
I remember having a stockpile of them -- a bunch purchased at $2 per board Still have a couple lying around!
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But, like Dave says, "them? whar th' days"!
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Personal opinion: what has happened to QST (and the ARRL) is dreadful! Makes me glad resources like QRP Tech and other groups exist!?
--
William, k6whp
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"Cheer up, things could get worse. So I cheered up and things got worse."
 

I looked forward to Doug Demaw¡¯s articles. I built a two band version of the progressive communications receiver from about 1981. I remember how impressed I was that the direct conversion part worked as well as it did and eventually moved on to finish the superhet. Photo etched the boards and plated with a powder mixed with water called tinnit. Had a lot of fun building. Bought a lot of parts from a place called DC Electronics in Arizona. I got the newspaper to shoot Kodalith negatives of the art on their process camera. Different world.
73s John N4HNO

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