[davet753]

As a big 6 meter guy (and boat anchor aficionado), I've been using a Gonset G50 Communicator on AM but wanted a tube rig for sideband. I turned up a Clegg Venus at the Dalton, GA hamfest last winter and recently got it back on the air.

The Venus is primarily a SSB transceiver, but it will do AM in a pinch. Of course, the receive side is sideband only so you have to tune one or the other sideband when listening to an AM signal. Thankfully, it has a short bandspread (50.1 to 50.4 MC) so tuning is easier than it should be. The Venus was one of the first real "transceivers" to gain traction for 6 meter operators. Like most Clegg equipment, they were obviously built with quality and longevity in mind. In 1964, they sold for $605 ($495 for the transceiver and $110 for the separate power supply/speaker chassis).

Mine had four weak tubes, several resistors that had drifted high, and a coupling capacitor that had opened up. The only real problem was finding an intermittent bad connection that was causing it not to transmit after getting hot. Since I took the picture, I picked up a parts unit that had two good looking meters to replace the fogged up ones in mine.

The performance is kind of surprising considering the age of the Venus and the technology of the early 1960's. This month, I've took advantage of the summer "E-Skip" on 6 meters and used the Venus to work guys in New England, Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana. Not bad for a 53 year old radio that puts out about 40 watts.