Lafayette HE-90 CB: Fun in the 1960’s

Certainly not a “military radio” but a radio nonetheless. Close enough. I bought this Lafayette HE-90 CB transceiver in 1964. After the Heathkit CR-1 Crystal Radio, it started my long road into learning electronics while in High School and beyond.

Next to Ham Radio, CB was THE vehicle for “Social Networking” for many in those days; well before “Smokey and the Bandit” started the national CB radio craze 13 years later. Internet? What’s that? Cell phones? are sometimes installed in Jail cells to call your Lawyer.

Many of my buddies and cousins had CB’s in the mid 1960’s and it was a lot of fun. Plenty of clandestine capers were coordinated on channel 13.

With the 1958 creation of Citizens Band radio, the FCC required a CB Class D license. However back then we were all under 18 and ineligible so we convinced our parents to obtain the required license.

Legit call signs were routinely in use back then – it was The Law and the FCC was to be feared! Unlike the free for all that followed a few years later on CB after the FCC gave up.

I bought this one at the Lafayette Radio store in Syosset NY for $89.95; that was a LOT of paper-route work for Newsday and odd jobs back then. That’s $913 in 2024 dollars!

This radio was made in Japan by Trio Corporation, later to be renamed “Kenwood”, you may have heard of them. Branded by Lafayatte, the HE-90 and dozens of their other CB radios kept Lafayette in business for many years and equipped the nation’s truckers, farmers, businesses, hunters, families, Good Buddies and curious kids.

Playing with this radio taught me a LOT about radio communications, antennas and electronics in general. This much abused transceiver was modified (ham-mered) by me to include an RF gain control, Noise Limiter disable switch and a nice red incandescent pilot light (LED’s had not yet been invented). And a VFO jack. The S Meter was our Video Game.

Driving that orange meter needle UP on both transmit and receive became The Quest. I learned a lot in the process.

We all did a lot of experimentation with antennas, microphones and audio processing (clippers, compressors) to “improve” the transmitted signals. I used the Argonne AR-54 crystal desk mic a lot. Most of us considered it superior sounding to the classic, expensive D-104 Lollipop mic.

Universally known as “The Green Hornet” microphone, at $3.95 it was a deal! (Not to be confused with the “The Green Bullet” microphone favored by harmonica players for its “warm, crunchy, south-side blues distortion”. LOL!)

The 6AQ5 audio stage can modulate the 6AW8A with Heising plate modulation to about 90% with the Green Hornet microphone. Clean, just a little flat-topping, can’t be overdriven, no “splatter”. It sounds really good.

Another modification was to change the 5-pin Amphenol microphone jack on the front panel and replace it with a 1/4 inch 3 circuit stereo type and a T/R relay for PTT. That made it compatible with the other microphone connectors I had available.

I also did that because I needed that 5-pin female connector to restore my 1950’s CIA RS-6 spy radio system which amazingly used the same connector between the transmitter, receiver and power supply. Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. But that’s another story.

But the fun didn’t stop there. I also had these two Lafayette CB walkie talkies, Bicycle Mobile. The 100 milliwatt HA-60 and later the GT-50. It was a 2 channel set with 500 milliwatts output (input?), a squelch circuit and a battery status meter. They were a solution looking for a problem. Lots of sneaking around town/school ensued. Night Ops…

Like the night Artie climbed up the gigantic water tower in town to see how far his walkie talkie could reach across flat Long Island. Until we lit him up with a gigantic spotlight. TURN THAT OFF! HaHa. That experiment ended quickly; no injuries or arrests.

The 500 milliwatts output required a license to operate (imagine the bedlam one could create with one of these). The HA-60 could be operated “unlicensed”.

“Checkmate King 2 this is White Rook, Over”. You remember.

After seeing a Korean War PRC-6 “Handy Talkie” I had to paint the HA-60 with Olive Drab spray paint (very tacticool you know) but the walkie talkie’s were both fun and handy. I often used these while fishing from a rowboat on Shinnecock Bay to talk to my parents a few miles away back at “The Base”. All over salt water, they worked great.

Conducting clandestine beach landings at 0200 from OD radio-equipped small rubber boats came later in life, but I digress.

I soon earned my Novice Ham radio license in 1966 and quickly upgraded to General and Extra Class while still in High School. Those higher licenses enabled me to use the HE-90 on the 10 meter ham band, specifically for participation in the Long Island RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service) AM radio network. (“FM” had yet to become widespread on 2 meters for these sorts of nets and general Ham use.)

FCC Regs required anyone “tweaking” a CB radio transmitter for use on the CB channels to have a First Class Radiotelephone Operators license. So off to the New York City Federal Building to take and pass that license exam. Check. But then, for me, it was Adios CB…

Ten Meters Ops: A hack my cousin showed me was to take the channel 9 receive crystal and insert it into the transmitter channel socket, realign and presto: operation on 28.715 mc for the 28.720 mc “Nassau (county) Net”. Close enough. (At this point, and to me, a “Wide Receiver” is indicative of the primary-secondary IF transformer coupling, not some overpaid NFL football catcher. HaHa)

The radio has an IF of 1650 kc so the “high side injection” receive crystal operated the transmitter on that 10 meter frequency. 27.065 + 1.650 = 28.715. Neat! CB rigs modified for 10 meters were common back then.

The red Dymo label above the tuning dial and the gray tape over the word “Citizens” (Band) on the front panel completed the conversion to 10 meters Ham ops.

I then figured out how to drive the transmitter with the VFO section of a modified BC-459 Command Set transmitter. I retuned its VFO to provide a signal near 9.5 mc which was then tripled in the HE-90 to enable VFO operation on 10 meters.

The HE-90 could even transmit CW by inserting a key into the PA cathode current monitoring jack on the rear panel. Injecting a 1650 kc BFO signal from my US Navy LM-14 frequency meter into the IF amplifier put this set on the CW band segment.

With my 4 element Cush Craft Yagi and even the 5/8 wavelength Colinear II ground plane antenna I was able to work some AM stations in Europe, Africa and many all over the US and Caribbean with this lashup. Ten meters was pretty hot back during solar cycle #20.

Early on, I even tried to inject the 28 mc signal into the BC-459 transmitter PA stage using the 1625’s as a “Linear” amplifier. This was before I understood the difference between Class C and Class A amplifier biasing. HaHa! That experiment thankfully ended quickly but I then learned about vacuum tube biasing and linearity (and filtering etc…).

With its external vibrator pack, the HE-90 spent some time installed in the family 1962 Chevy Nova and then many more years installed in my 1971 Ford Bronco, working on 10 meters. The 102″ whip antenna was the way to go but you rarely see them any more.

All this was a lot of fun for this kid and it quickly became a life-long interest in communications and electronics, both in further education, employment and operationally in the US Navy. The Magic of radio captured my curiosity; I wonder what captivates kids these days to propel them into the future.

The establishment of Amateur Radio in the US 100+ years ago had a probably-unintended consequence. It produced many thousands of electronics-savvy people just in time for WWII. Those Hams were quickly put to work teaching electronics, radio communications and the all-important Morse Code skills essential for the war effort. Likewise, how many of the later “CB-ers” also moved on and into today’s wireless and electronics technologies with those similar roots.

Epilog: I still have the HE-90 and it still sounds great. The receiver is “Hi Fi” with its wide IF bandwidth and it is very sensitive with its 6DS4 Nuvistor RF amplifier stage. It works great with the AS-1729 military vehicle whip antenna installed at the base station. But listening to today’s CB band is quite “entertaining”.

With the great “skip” propagation on the upper HF bands in 2024, signals from all over arrive here. “Ol’ Gator” in the Loozianna Swamp talking with “The Big Dingo” in Australia on Channel 18. Lots of pretty good music and endless “characters” abound. CB Lingo is alive and well, well.

No qualms about describing your Kenwood TS-990 transceiver driving your Ameritron Kilowatt amplifier either. “Which sounds better – this pair of 811’s or……click, this 4-400”.

Plenty of Viking Valiant’s, DX-100’s and Yaesu FT-101’s out there, and that’s just on AM! Some of these classic Ham rigs included 11 meters as original since 11 meters had been a Ham band before 1958. (Hams have not forgotten this!) Many of the first CB-ers were hams as a result.

The SSB “Freebanders” between Channel 40 and 28+ mc blast in. But some offer good advice:

“It’s not the Poooower, it’s what’s on the Tooooower” good buddy! (with max Echo Effect.)

“You be talkin’ to Da Man most IN Demand on Da Band”! DJ Wanna Be’s are everywhere.

Long ago and far away…… YOU remember….

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