I was looking back through some old posts and found a few mentioning issues with pipes, especially bent pipes, “gurgling” as moisture accumulated in the pipe while smoking. I’d tried drying the tobacco, smoking slower, and so on. Some pipes still seemed to have problems.
Since i’ve been blending my own pipe tobacco using home-grown and unadulterated whole leaf tobacco, this “problem” has been largely nonexistent. I have come to the conclusion that the propylene glycol and possibly other humectants – glycerin and so on – that are used in virtually all commercial pipe tobacco blends to control moisture and prevent mold – are the reason. I don’t use any of that, nor do I add flavored “toppings” or heavy casing to my tobacco leaf. At most I’ll mist the leaf with some decent quality bourbon or something as I blend it, which seems to really improve some blends. I do not, however, add any humectants, which allows me to get the resulting mixture as dry as needed for proper smoking.
I’ll still get some occasional moisture in the pipe, especially if I’m smoking more quickly or if the blend is a bit more moist than usual. Some pipes are more probe to it than others. I have not, however, had any problems with excessive gurgling since starting to smoke my own blends. Plus, I know exactly what is and is not in my tobacco. I’m happy with that. I still have several jars of various commercial blended tobacco, but I’m not buying more – though I might be tempted into a tin or two of Escudo some day.
I’ve also started to broaden my horizons a little. I recently bought small quantities of tobacco leaf that I haven’t tried before, specifically some Burley and Maryland 609, which is commonly used as a cigar filler. I’d avoided burley blends because the commercial ones I’d tried I generally did not like, but I just mixed up a little burley, flue cured VA, and some Virginia Cavendish I’d cooked up in 2023. It’s not bad, and deserves further exploration, I think. Maybe a little of something else, some Oriental or Perique or Latakia might give it a little more complexity and make it really enjoyable.
A while back I was looking for a nice lighter for my pipes. There’s a rabbit hole you can go deep into! It’s amazing how much money a person can spend on a lighter. Eventually I picked up two of them. One is a silver plated ST DuPont Ligne 1, French made and really nice. The other is a gold plated Dunhill Rollagas, also quite nice. Good examples of these used vintage lighters can go for as much as several hundred dollars each. I got both pretty cheap, since both were supposedly non-working. The DuPont just needed some cleaning and it seemed to work fine. The Dunhill needed a complete rebuild of the gas valve and seals, but the rebuild kits are not expensive and it was a couple hours of fairly interesting and enjoyable work. It works fine now also.
Both, however, were finicky and difficult to light. I was using standard Zippo or Ronson flints, and it took enough work to get them to light that I eventually set them both aside and bought an inexpensive butane pipe lighter with piezo ignition. It works, it’s just not fancy. The other day I decided to either fix the two nice ones or sell them – or maybe both.
I ordered a package of genuine Dunhill flints for the Rollagas. Both it and the DuPont take a 3 mm diameter, fairly soft flint. The Zippo flints used by nearly all lighters are 2.5 mm and made of a pretty hard compound. I figured I’d spend the few dollars required to get the correct flints and see if that fixed the ignition issues. Well… yes. Yes, it did, and quite nicely. Both lighters now light perfectly on the first try, every single time. The new flints produce an impressive amount of spark that lights the gas instantly. I have both lighters equipped with “pipe flame” nozzles, meaning the flame goes sideways instead of straight up to make it easier to light a pipe or cigar than a standard cigarette flame.
Yes, the flints were $15 for a package of 9, instead of a couple bucks for a hundred or two – which would be more than I’d use in a lifetime, even if I were a heavy smoker. These will likely last me years anyway, and if I decide to sell either or both lighters I can now say with confidence that they are completely working as they should. I like the DuPont a little better from the standpoint of looks, feel, and style, but the Dunhill’s slimmer profile makes it a bit easier to use. The Dunhill is a bit more worn, though, with the gold plating quite thin in spots. Regardless, they’re both working well enough now that I’ll start using them again.
I have come to the conclusion that the RF board in the TS-850 is toast. After several repairs, it’s still deaf as a post. There has obviously been some damage to the components on the bottom of the board near the signal entry point from the antenna – at least. I don’t know what else might be damaged. I’ve looked for a replacement. I find a number of boards on eBay, but about 2/3 of them show the exact same sort of burns in the same area of the board, so I would expect them to be bad as well.
At this point I’m shelving the project. After an extended absence from ham radio I’m not even entirely sure I’ll want to get back on the air. From what I can tell, there doesn’t seem to be nearly the amount of non-contest CW traffic that there once was. I have no interest in contest style exchanges of nothing but call signs and bogus signal reports for POTA, SOTA, or whatever QSO party is going on. I haven’t seen any PSK31. RTTY might be interesting, but FT8 is of no interest to me. If I’m getting on the air, it’s to rag chew or at least have a little human to human interaction with the radio as the means, not the end, and preferably no computer required. I’ll get on the air with my FT-817ND and the old Heathkit HW-16 and see whether I want to pursue fixing the 850 or getting something more modern.
With the display fixed, I set out to do some alignment and adjustment on the TS-850. One thing I encountered was an issue with the attenuator. The 850 has two front panel buttons to switch in 6 and 12 dB attenuators, or both for 18 dB. One thing I had noticed was that the 6 dB attenuator seemed to work, but any time the 12 dB attenuator was switched in it completely killed the signal. Looking at the schematic, the only thing I could spot as a cause for that would be resistor R3 being open. I decided to pull the RF board and investigate.
With both attenuators off, relays K1 and K2 are both actuated. The signal from the antenna passes through K1 and K2, bypassing resistors R1 and R3. When the 6 dB attenuator is switched on, K1 de-energizes and puts a 6 dB resistive divider (R1/R2) in the signal path. The same method is used for the 12 dB attenuator (R3/4), activated by dropping relay K2.
Once I got the RF board out, the bottom of the board plainly showed that I was not the first one here. Portions of the board underneath the attenuator section were scorched, some SMT resistors were missing, and a 1/4 W resistor was soldered in place of R1. There were signs that some other components were damaged as well. I unsoldered and removed the “rework” resistor and found it to be the wrong value. Oddly, the board doesn’t match the diagrams I found in the service manual I found on line — a couple of the resistors have been replaced with pairs of resistors in parallel. That added some additional challenge to the process as I figured out the changes.
Eventually I found that something had damaged both R1 and R3. I found 1/8 W resistors of the correct values (51 and 150 Ohms – I had 50 and 150, close enough) in my parts stock. With those soldered in place of the defective SMT parts, I put it all back together and powered the rig back up, and got… nothing. Static. My little Elecraft XG2 signal generator was pushing 50 mV into the antenna jack, and the rig couldn’t hear a thing. I fed the signal directly to L3 and was able to hear it – weakly. So, back out comes the RF board.
Some probing with the DMM found a near dead short (1.4 Ohms) from the tail end of the attenuator at K2 to ground. Obviously that was a problem. Eventually I found capacitor C3, a little 100 pF SMT part, shorted. I removed it from the board and re-tested – now I can clearly hear the signal from the XG2, AND both the 6 and 12 dB attenuators work as they should. I don’t have a replacement for C3, but it’s part of a low-pass filter that I’m not terribly worried about right at the moment. I’ll pick up a 100 pF cap and replace it at my next opportunity. I also don’t know why it failed in the middle of a repair. It obviously wasn’t shorted before I started troubleshooting this issue, as I was able to receive signals off the air. All I can figure is that maybe it was physically damaged but not completely failed, and the probing or heat from the nearby soldering iron did it in. No matter – capacitors are cheap.
Now, on to the next issue — the S meter. It doesn’t “S”. Even with a 50 mV signal, there’s no reading on the meter; I’ll have to go through the alignment steps again to see if I can figure that out. Unfortunately that part of the procedure calls for a more capable signal generator than what I have. I should be able to get in the ballpark with the XG2. The service manual calls for 6 dB and 32 dB – or 1 uV and 40 uV. The XG2 will generate signals on 80, 40, and 20 meters at 1 or 50 uV. I should be able to set the S meter to read pretty close, assuming I don’t run into some OTHER issue that requires ripping the radio apart again.
Note: edited 7/28/25; I refined this by removing one diode and dropping the supply voltage a bit.
A few days ago, I replaced the dim and occasionally flickering CFL backlight from my TS-850 with a length of LED strip light. At first I was pretty happy with it – until the first time I tried to transmit, that is.
To recap, I ran power from the power switch white lead (switched input DC voltage) as I had seen in a couple of Internet posts. I ran that through a total of four 1N4001 diodes in series. The 13.8 V supply voltage really drove the LEDs too bright, and two diodes provided enough voltage drop to make it more reasonable — though as I used it, it became apparent that it really could have used another series diode. The second pair of diodes were bypassed by the display dimmer switch. All well and good; it seemed to work fine.
Then I connected a new power supply thoughtfully provided by a friend (thanks, Dan!), connected a dummy load, and went about setting up the rig for use and testing the power supply’s performance. I set the supply voltage at 13.75 V, and as soon as I started transmitting into the dummy load I noticed that the display would dim quite a bit. In fact, if I set the dimmer switch on (display dimmed) and transmitted, the display would blank entirely. Not good!! It turns out that the white wire on the power switch – well, I don’t know what all is between it and the input; the schematics in the TS-850 service manual are almost impenetrable. Wherever it’s coming from, that line will sag down to 11 V or even lower when the rig is transmitting. Totally unregulated. Obviously I needed a better solution.
It occurred to me that, since I’d replaced the capacitors on the display board, maybe the original backlight would be OK. I re-installed the tube and re-connected the inverter and fired up the transceiver – but the display was still pretty dim. After seeing it nice and brightly lit by the LEDs, I wasn’t about to go back to squinting at that. The serial number on my rig indicates it was manufactured in December of 1993; I guess thirty-odd years is a bit of a long time to expect a CCFL backlight to stay healthy. I spent a little time looking for a suitable replacement tube, but aside from not finding one with the right length, I have no idea what voltage is being produced by the inverter – and I’m really not in the mood to screw with it.
After some pondering, I settled on a new approach. I ordered some DC-DC boost converters from our favorite purveyor of just about everything (Amazon). These will take a wide range of input voltage – 2 to 24 V claimed – and convert it to a higher output voltage – 5 to 28 V they say. All I need is to bump the regulated 8 V power up to around 12 V to drive the LED strip. I can adjust the output to get the brightness I like, then switch in the diodes to drop it a little for the dim display setting. These boost converters cost well under a buck each, so I’ll keep a couple around just in case they don’t last as long as I do. I’ll make sure to bag one or two up, along with a replacement LED strip, to go with the transceiver when I (or my heirs) sell it. I’m not going to bother posting a link to the Amazon item because I’m sure in six months it will be a dead link. Just search for “DC-DC step up converter” or similar and sort through until you find a suitable model for you. You could also design one from scratch for extra ham credit.
I designed the circuit below to be as flexible as possible. You don’t need to modify the dimmer switch board; it remains entirely untouched. No soldering to the power switch. All of the wiring is completely on the display board. I happened to have a couple of small SPDT relays with 12 V DC coils on hand, but designed it so that you could use much any relay that has a normally-closed contact (so, SPST-NC or SPDT). These relays can be had dirt cheap. The coil voltage just needs to be 12 V give or take a little; nothing in this whole exercise needs to handle more than maybe 130-150 mA.
About the only inconvenience I ran into is that the DIM switch circuit doesn’t go directly to the CCFL inverter connector, so you’ve got to solder a wire to one of the ribbon cable connector pins. Not a huge deal. No major modifications to the display board are needed, but you will need to cut the small trace that runs from Pin 2 of CN1 (the display dim signal) to one of the SMT resistors in the board. That circuit feeds a PWM driver chip, and the circuitry there will prevent the relay from releasing once it’s turned on. That means that if you dim the display without first cutting the trace, you won’t be able to un-dim it until you turn the rig off. So, a minute with an X-Acto knife does the job.
In this circuit, the 8 V supply is picked off of the original inverter input connector and fed to the DC-DC converter. Adjust the output of the converter for 12 V or give or take a bit, whatever level gives an appropriate brightness for the LED backlight. The output of the boost converter is connected to the relay coil as well as the relay’s NC contact. The other side of the relay coil is connected to the DIM switch input from the front panel, which is grounded to dim the display and otherwise floats.
The LED backlight modification. After some experimentation, I removed one of the two series diodes.
With the display switch set for full brightness, the relay coil is not grounded and the relay is not energized. Current flows from the DC-DC converter to the LED backlight through the NC contact of the relay, bypassing the diode.
With the switch set to the DIM position (pushed in), the switch grounds one side of the relay coil and energizes the relay. Current now reaches the LED strip through the diode, which provide enough voltage drop to dim the display. Diode choice is not terribly important and can be changed to suit your individual preference for the difference between full brightness and “dim”. You could add a second diode in series if needed. My LED strip draws around 130 mA at full brightness; a 1N4148 would probably do the job as well. I just didn’t happen to have any on hand, which is strange given the thousands and thousands I’ve bought over the years for various kits I sold.
Installation is pretty straightforward. I removed the CCFL tube and slid the adhesive-backed LED strip behind the LCD, then used a piece of tubing I happened to have on the bench to reach through and make sure it was securely stuck down all the way through. A piece of dowel would be good too. I removed the inverter and its connectors entirely – no sense leaving that there with the tube gone. I used CN3, the inverter supply connector, for the ground and 8 V inputs to the boost converter. I soldered the diode assembly directly to the relay, then used some hot-melt glue to stick the relay to the board. The DC-DC converter then mounts onto the relay with more hot-melt glue – just be careful to keep anything from shorting. There’s enough room to sandwich a little spacer of balsa or plastic or something in there if needed. The converter I used has an adjusting pot that I made sure was facing upward, so I could adjust it from the top.
I left the LED strip disconnected during the initial power-on “smoke test”. I had no idea what voltage the little board would be putting out. It turned out to be 18 V. I adjusted that down to 12 V and powered the rig off. Then I soldered the LED wires in place and powered on again. I tested the dim function and found it to be too dim on that setting, so I tweaked the voltage a bit to give me a good display on both settings. This will depend on your particular LED strip, but in my case I ended up with the output of the DC-DC converter set to 13.3 V. My first iteration of this used two 1N4001 diodes in series; I later switched to using a single diode and reduced the supply voltage to 11.5 V. That gave me about 10.75 on the dim setting, and the display looks great either way.
Now, why so complicated with the relay? Can’t you just use the dimmer switch directly without the relay? Well… sort of. Unfortunately, the way that switch is connected on the little switch daughter board, isolating the pins to use for this is a challenge. I ended up having to de-solder it from the board, cut off a couple of leads, and re-solder it. It’s too much surgery and is irreversible. I ended up buying a replacement from eBay; fortunately, it was relatively cheap, but obviously no new ones are being made, and I wanted to present a solution that involved as little butchering as possible.
Since this is a modification that may confuse someone encountering it for the first time, my plan is to pack up the schematic, a spare boost converter or two, and a spare chunk of LED strip and keep it with the rig. Some day someone else will probably own this transceiver, and they may appreciate not needing to reverse engineer all of it.
And finally, yes, I did see the packaged solutions available from a couple of places. Both are coming from outside the US, with all of the delay and shipping expense (and uncertainty) that comes with it. They’re also pretty spendy. I figure I’ll have under $2 worth of parts wrapped up in this project, and a left-over pile of little DC-DC converters and several feet of LED light strip that will probably soon adorn my 3D printer or something.
While pondering new ways to enjoy the delicious, pure maple syrup I made myself from our own maple trees, I invented a new drink. I call it the Montpelier, named for the maple syrup capital of the USA. While perhaps not as famous as our cousins to the north, the US does produce its fair share – or some share at least. Vermont is number two in the world in maple syrup production, right behind Canada. I also thought the name was appropriate since the drink is to some degree adapted from the Manhattan.
If you like your cocktails a bit booze-forward, like an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan, this might be your new favorite. It’s not overly sweet, but has enough complexity and rich flavor to make it a solid pick.
Two measures of Bourbon (or rye, if you prefer)
One measure of sweet vermouth
A teaspoon of pure maple syrup. I use my own home-made syrup, boiled down from the sap of the maple trees in my own back yard. If you don’t make your own maple syrup, Vermont maple syrup is preferred over the Canadian stuff – just because it’s named the Montpelier, of course. Use what you must, though! Just not that fake garbage you see ten-year-olds pouring over their hotel lobby pancakes.
For a properly American garnish, try Peppered Maple-Glazed Bacon. Glaze a strip of thick-cut bacon with maple syrup and a bit of fresh ground black pepper. Bake until crisp, cut into short lengths and skewer it for the rim.
Add all of the ingredients to a mixing glass with ice. Stir until well chilled and properly diluted, about 30 seconds or so. Strain into a coupe, or serve over a large ice cube in a rocks glass.
Plenty has been written and said about the so-called Lakeland tobacco blends. These are a group of some fairly heavily flavored/scented flake tobaccos from the Lakeland region of England, produced by Samuel Gawith and Gawith & Hoggarth. The story I’ve read is that artificial ingredients were not allowed in English tobacco, but natural flavorants were – alcohols and flower oils. These tobaccos are fairly heavily topped with what is referred to as “the Lakeland essence”. Pipe smokers seem to either love Lakelands, or hate them. I will admit that in at least some cases, the scent of a Lakeland blend can be a little… unusual. Ennerdale has been compared to “Granny’s panty drawer”, for example.
I’ve tried two different Lakeland blends, Ennerdale and Bob’s Chocolate Flake. Ennerdale does, as people have claimed, have a sort of old-fashioned floral scent to it. Bob’s Chocolate Flake does have a distinct chocolate note to it in the jar. Both are dense, heavy flake tobaccos that benefit from a good bit of drying time before loading the pipe and smoking them, as they do tend to be a bit moist.
I may be an outlier, but I neither love nor hate the two I’ve tried. I was a bit disappointed by Bob’s, as I had hoped for at least a trace of a chocolatey note when smoked – and it’s simply not there. The topping lends a distinct aroma to the jar, but does not add a corresponding flavor to the tobacco. There’s definitely a flavor added, but it’s nothing like the aroma of the unlit tobacco. The same goes for Ennerdale – heavily floral in the jar, not so in the pipe.
Maybe my taste buds are just different. For one thing, I can’t say that I really “taste” any tobacco, not with my tongue as with food or drink. Any taste I get from tobacco really comes from exhaling it through my nose, which the online pipe community in their eagerness to come up with oddball quasi-technical terms for everything has called “retrohaling”. Last night I cracked open my jar of Ennerdale and tried a flake crumbled into the bowl of my nice calabash pipe, which I especially love for its cooling and moisture-abating capabilities. [Here the online community is convulsively clutching at its pearls, swearing that this will “ghost” the pipe forever with a floral, soapy taste. They’re idiots.] After months of smoking primarily my own home-made and partially home-grown English and VA/Per blends, I really didn’t find it enjoyable. I may try some Bob’s today, with more drying time, perhaps in a corncob. I’m just glad I didn’t buy some massive quantity of this stuff. I started with two ounces each of Ennerdale and Bob’s Chocolate Flake. Even if I’m not crazy about it, I’ll eventually work my way through it.
I have a large, L-shaped desk in my home office that served me well for the last decade or so that I was working. I’ve got a pair of computer monitors mounted on a dual-monitor arm, and my old but still quite serviceable PC under the desk. There’s a KVM switch so I can connect another computer and switch between them – I used to just have my work laptop plugged into that. There’s enough room for a pretty good assortment of equipment, once I get al the junk cleared off of it. I’m experimenting with ways to arrange the shack. I have the TS-850 with its matching speaker. Then there’s the FT-817ND; quite useful since it covers not only ham HF but also VHF and UHF to include aircraft and AM & FM broadcast frequencies. I’d also like to bring my Heathkit HW-16 and its matching HG-10B VFO up from the basement. I’ll need a spot for a keyer or two, a paddle or two, a straight key, computer keyboard, mouse, SWR meter, antenna switch, power supplies, a dummy load, and who-knows-what-else. I want to make sure that however I set it up, it’s convenient and ergonomic to operate – that means operate the radios, use the key and paddle for CW, and be able to use the computer keyboard. I don’t know how much (if any) I’ll be operating using digital modes, but I’ll also want the computer for logging contacts and looking up information.
While I work on that, I also have a new call sign. I checked the availability of some “vanity” call signs and much to my surprise found K0DB available! Unfortunately, several people had already submitted applications a few days earlier, and I knew one of them would get it. But – K0DLB was also available, and I got it. So after thirty-plus years as N0XAS, I am now KØDLB.
I presently own three HF radios. The most capable of the three, the one I plan to use first, is a Kenwood TS-850SAT, which was manufactured in Japan some time in the 1990s. At the time it was at or near the top of their product line; one of the last of the non-DSP radios. It really is a pretty nice rig; maybe not quite as posh as a TS-930, but the power supply doesn’t die every time you look at it sideways.
Unfortunately, after several years sitting in a closet in my office, a couple of the front panel buttons were balky. Also, the display is an LCD backlit with a small CFL tube; as one would expect, either the CFL tube or its power supply is starting to fail, meaning the display occasionally goes blank. Time to take it apart again.
The switches were relatively easy to fix. With the switch board removed, they’re just common 6m square tactile buttons. I replaced the UP and DN buttons – only one was bad, but the new switches have a different actuating force than the originals, and I wanted the button feel to match between the two. You want, I think, 130 gram force tactile switches, and I think mine are 160 gf. I bought them in a cheap assortment from Amazon, so it’s not documented but these are a little stiff.
I removed the display panel and found that the inside of the plastic lens over the display was pretty well coated with a grungy tan film of dirt or, more likely, tar from a previous owner’s cigarettes. You can tell where the air flows through the radio by the brown deposits on the parts. It’s not bad bad, but I’ll clean up what I can while I’m in there. I spent a while with some lens cleaning solution, Q-Tips, and a microfiber cleaning cloth getting that cleaned off again.
While I had the radio apart waiting for the LED strip, I checked the DDS chips – these are Direct Digital Synthesis chips that generate the various frequencies used by the radio. Early TS-850s are known for developing problems with the carrier board that these chips are on. Fortunately, mine has the newer part number chips that are supposed to be good and not prone to failure.
The new LED display backlight was relatively straightforward. With the strip cut and stuck in place, I wired it to the white wire from teh front panel power switch. Too bright. It’s a 12V strip, and the power supply is at least 13.5. After some fiddling and experimenting, I ended up de-soldering the dimmer switch and removing two pins to isolate it from ground. Power now comes from the supply switched line (white wire of the power switch), through four 1N4001 diodes in series to drop the voltage to a good level for a dimmed display. The dimmer switch is wired across the second pair of diodes to bypass them for full brightness — in other words, two diodes for full brightness and four for dimmed. It works quite nicely, and the display is now nice and crisp and easy to read.
I still have no antenna up, but last night with about 8′ of wire strung across my office the receiver seemed to work a well as my FT-817ND receiving the very, very few signals I could hear.
I’ve been a licensed ham radio operator, off and on, since about 1981. Early on I learned Morse code and the required knowledge to pass my Novice license test in ’81, and was issued the call sign KA5MSS. I passed the exam while we were living at Fort Sill, OK, but didn’t actually receive the license until we’d already moved to Atlanta for a six-month stint. Living in an apartment with nothing but a Heathkit HW-16, I didn’t get a chance to get on the air. In fact, I held KA5MSS for five years until it expired (and a Korean call sign, HL9CA, for the yer I was in Korea), having never gotten on the air
Later on, in the late 80s or early 90s, I took the Technician exam and was issued a new call sign, N0XAS. I upgraded to General class in 1994, and to Extra in 2002. I’ve operated with that call sign ever since it was first issued, making a lot of contacts. I primarily operated CW (Morse code) and much of that was QRP (using low power, 5 Watts output or less), but I’ve operated SSB (voice), VHF and UHF FM voice, packet, PSK31, and probably a few modes I tried once or twice and forgot about. I never got into contesting.
I could write a book about how I drifted away from operating – though a lot of it involved a new side business developing and selling ham related kits and even a fully assembled Morse keyer. It was nice, but it did eventually consume all of the time and energy I might have devoted to operating. A new steel roof over my attic dipole antenna drove the final nail in the coffin.
I’m hoping to get back in the air before winter sets in, so I’ve been working toward that. I need to get my station set up again, get an antenna up and working, get up to speed on changes to the regulations and operating practices since I was last active, and get my Morse code copy speed back up to snuff – at least 10 WPM solid, preferably 13 or better. More to come.
