On Feb 27, 2008, at 2:18 AM, Shaun Oliver wrote:

> um. probably a silly question but, what does the crystal calibrator  
> do?

Arrrrrrrrrgh! These young whiper snappers these days. *LOL*

A crystal calibrater is a handy thing in older analog type rigs. It  
injects a signal every (usually) 100 or 25 KC to aid in more accurate  
tuning. So to get close, you just count heterodyns from the top or  
bottom of the band, then dial in from there. Naturally, this is  
somewhat more difficult, say, on 40 meters at night with all the  
international broadcasts but still very do-able. Ironically as it  
turns out these days, Ten-Tec had one of the best implementations of  
this I'd ever seen. Instead of just a straight carrier type signal,  
Ten-Tec had their calibrator switch off about twice a second so you  
got a very distinct beep-beep sound as you tuned through it.

Buddy, KB5ELV