My Millen GDO Jones..

Whilst fabricating my RX1, my ardor for collecting and owning other instruments morphed into a serious Jones and has had one significant outfall. My collection of Grid Dip Oscillators has grown substantially and, while not near the magnitude, if I do not take care, my obsession may cause me to overtake N4XY's museum I do fear.

(A catty comment on Mr Tanton's collection: he could sure use a few lessons on web site design. Basically, it's like viewing the wonders of the Smithsonian Institute through a peephole in the front door. Not to denigrate his efforts, but such a wondrous collection cries out for an expansive gallery of pictures and commentary, not the tantalizing promise of such beauty and the limited pictures of these venerable instruments.)

In any event, when my dad, N6ABV, passed away in 1992, I inherited his Millen 90651A. He also had a Heath HD-1250 and an Eico 710. for some inexplicable reason, the Heath and Eico were dealt off for a pittance at swap meets. Nothing wrong with them; they were in excellent condition and worked fine. It was just a case of too many "things" in my collection of junk that led to my regrettable decision to sell. I wonder how many other "things" I will dispose of and later regret having done so. You're talking to a guy who once owned at least a dozen Icom IC-22S radios (and their European and dip-switch front versions) and now they are all gone save for the best one in the set and one I got BRAND NEW IN THE BOX off of eBay. My guess is I will keep those as pristine examples of one of the finer radios in the nascent VHF FM/repeater era. I guess it is the software developer, but I had more fun devising ways and methods to effect the diode programming and running those little beasts all over the two meter band.

Eico 720 and Coils

I never let go of the Millen because it was a reminder of when I was first a novice -- WV6KJK -- back in 1960. I used to pore over my dad's QSTs and handbooks, dreaming about building and testing and working CW and all that stuff. The ads that just drilled me were the James Millen ads. Their products were so..so..so substantial. I mean these were built like brick crap houses and looked like they would withstand a nuclear attack. And, by extension, I always liked their logo too. You know, the block "M" inside that red gear; meant down-to-earth, no-nonsense, no frou-frou business.

Millen 90651 with coils and case (courtesy of the James Millen Society)

Their GDO was big and boxy and clunky and ran off of AC but it worked. You could find the resonant frequency of a frigging mayonnaise jar, it was that good. When it registered a dip, the meter pegged null so hard that it was recorded on the Richter Scale at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The other ones -- the Heaths and the Eicos -- had these epileptic meters that would shimmy and shake so much that one was never sure where it was reading.

Anyway, that's what it seemed like to me.

Millen 90651A (James Millen Society) Mine's cleaner; just did not have pics.

So, in keeping with the W6DQ First Law of Radio and Electronic Gear Possession ("Why have one of anything when you can possess two for twice the price"). I went on a jag to supplement my Millen 90651A and begin my collection of GDOs. I scored a beautiful Millen 90652 (the battery-operated, transistor model), a Heath HD-1250 (which I will probably NEVER sell), and an MFJ 203 -- which I got off eBay and that arrived DOA. It was a really, really strange instrument anyway. It was a band-switched GDO and, as such, had only one coil. Research on the circuit proved fruitless -- the MFJ folks would not give out the schematic -- so I am planning to gut it and build a "regular" GDO inside of it since the holes and markings are similar and I scored a PCB for a GDO circuit.

In another truly catty observation, I don't think that MFJ discarded all of their documentation for this product. I mean, c'mon! They must have had a schematic lying around somewhere. I'm betting that they don't want the public to know just how crappy their circuit design was on this baby.

Still, I needed to get myself an original -- the Millen 90651 -- to "round out" my collection. Two passes on eBay netted me a parts unit and one without coils. (I have two sets already.) That second one appears to not work. The drive is low and the tube lights up only when I hold the unit upside down. Not complaining, mind you, just letting you know that I will be digging into it to see if I can effect a repair.

Millen 90651 with Coils and Case

A tangential remark and then I'll close out this post and pick the subject up in a subsequent entry. In doing the research on these Millens, I came across a site called The James Millen Society. It is a group dedicated to their passion: Millen equipment. It was free so, naturally, I had to join up!

One of the outfalls of this membership is that one can say one belongs to the same organization as WB6ACU -- Joe Walsh of the Eagles. How cool is that, old son?

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