#nems-clarke 1302a

[commodorez]

Nems-Clarke 1302A Special Purpose Receiver

[commodorez]

Nems-Clarke 1302A

A special purpose vacuum tube radio receiver, built to last.  Even so, it’s due to have the passives and wiring replaced before its next use. While most of it is vacuum tube based, it has a single custom-printed PCB with a few transistors and a single integrated circuit on board.  All of the tubes are encased in protective metal shells with springs to prevent the tubes from inching out of their sockets.

The 1302A is from the 1960s, and it is designed to be hooked into a unit with a special oscilloscope (also rack mounted).  I’m told that the combined units intended purpose was to monitor telemetry data from Soviet ICBM tests and other Soviet rocket launches!  And now it’s mine! How I got it is stranger than most items in my collection.

My friends watched a construction worker toss this heavy thing into a dumpster our freshman year of college.  After the worker left, my friends climbed in and retrieved it, and brought it over to one guy’s dorm room.  They tried figuring out what it was before giving up and calling me in.  I came over a half hour later with my toolbox in one hand and pack of oreos in the other.  Seems that even after being thrown a good distance, all of the tubes were still intact.  I figured out that it was a radio receiver, so I hooked up a makeshift antenna and hit the power switch.

It actually turned on just fine, and let us tune in the campus radio station!  My friend gave it to me as a present at the end of that semester.  I found a reason to turn it on every so often, and scanned through its extended tuning range above the normal broadcast FM band.  I’ve found some stuff that completely puzzles me as to its purpose and origin. 

For now, it sits in deep storage.

[commodorez]

Mismatched Audio Gear

[commodorez]

lrgfmt replied to your photoset: Nems-Clarke 1302A A special purpose vacuum tube...

Passives really need replacing, you wouldn’t want to burn up the transformers or red plate anything. Good find! Really like!!

It’s a quality piece of gear, and I don’t want to destroy it.  Plus, learning how to restore vacuum tube based equipment is going to be a useful skill for me, based on some of the other things I’ve got in my collection.