YB1SDL - Amateur Radio Station

The Turbo Encabulator Mk. VII – A Review for the Discerning Amateur Radio Operator

For many years now, the amateur radio community has struggled with the problem of effectively modulating the spurious gruntification coefficient of a standard dipole when operating in the presence of excessive band noise, solar flux indices above 200, and one's neighbor's plasma television. Previous attempts to solve this problem – including the sub-muffulated reactive wheatstone flange, the bidirectional SWR nullifier, and simply yelling at the radio – have all proven inadequate. It is therefore with tremendous excitement that I bring to your attention the Turbo Encabulator Mk. VII, recently acquired through an estate sale in Dayton, Ohio, for the sum of forty-three dollars and a working Heathkit SB-101.

The unit arrived double-wrapped in what appeared to be a 2011 QST catalog and a note that said "Good luck, 73." I took this as an auspicious sign.

The Turbo Encabulator, for those unfamiliar with the technology, operates on the principle of pentametric fan-forced logarithmic base-loaded ambifacient lunar waneshaft oscillation, which, as any Extra-class operator will immediately recognize, is simply the technical term for what happens to your signal when you transmit on 40 meters at 0200 local time and wake up the entire German amateur radio population simultaneously. The Mk. VII improves upon earlier encabulator designs by replacing the old single-pass hydrocoptic marzel vane with a dual-stage marzel vane pre-loaded with Teflon-coated spurving bearings, which are, frankly, the only kind of spurving bearings worth having.

The front panel is a masterpiece of industrial design. There are seventeen knobs, of which twelve are clearly labeled, three are labeled in a language that may be Finnish or possibly a regional dialect of Morse code, and two appear to have been added by a previous owner using a Dymo label maker and what I can only assume was a severe head cold. The labels read "GRONK" and "MORE GRONK." In practice, I have found that setting GRONK to approximately 3.7 and MORE GRONK to its maximum position produces excellent results on 20 meters, though it does cause my cat to leave the room.

At the heart of the device lies the differential girdle spring, which, in concert with the drawn reciprocating dingle arm, effectively prevents side fumbling of the panametric pump impeller. This is critical for amateur radio operation. I cannot stress this enough. If you have ever experienced side fumbling of your panametric pump impeller during a DX contest – and I think we all have – you understand immediately why the Mk. VII represents such a quantum leap forward. During the recent CQ WW contest, I operated for thirty-six consecutive hours without a single instance of side fumbling, which is the best result I have achieved since 2015, when I briefly owned a fully-functional unilateral phase detractor. (I sold it for beer money. I have regrets.)

Installation is relatively straightforward, provided one has access to a non-reversible tremie pipe and is comfortable working in close proximity to a sinusoidal replenishment coil at elevated voltages. The manual cautions, in bold red text, that under no circumstances should the operator attempt to insert the grammeter into the phase adjutant flange while the unit is energized, as this will result in "complete discombobulation of the waveform and possible violation of FCC Part 97 regulations regarding malodorous RF emissions." I attempted this once, purely in the interest of science and a YouTube video, and can confirm that the resulting waveform was, in fact, thoroughly discombobulated. The FCC has not yet contacted me, but I remain watchful.

The receiver section of the Turbo Encabulator incorporates a logarithmically-coned wake-shaft coupled to a hydrocoptic marzelvane for low-level audio extraction. In plain terms, this means the audio is extraordinarily clean – so clean, in fact, that during a recent 2-meter SSB net, I could clearly hear not only the station I was working in Vermont, but also, faintly but unmistakably, a repeater from 2009. I could not check in, as I was not yet licensed at the time, but I appreciated the nostalgia.

One notable feature of the Mk. VII is the automatically-refractive correlation ambipulator, which continuously samples band conditions and adjusts the spurving coefficient in real time. During a recent 10-meter opening to South America, the ambipulator detected elevated solar wind and compensated by increasing the reactive frambulation to 4.7 Hendersons per millisecond – a unit of measurement I was not previously familiar with but which is clearly printed in Table 3 of the manual alongside the conversion factor to millihenries, which is apparently "don't bother."

I have operated the Turbo Encabulator Mk. VII now for approximately four months, across all HF bands, on digital modes including FT8 (where the ambipulator had to be temporarily disabled, as it kept trying to log contacts that hadn't happened yet), and on a brief but exciting foray into moonbounce (EME), during which I am fairly certain the unit briefly achieved sentience, worked a station on the far side of the moon, and then thought better of it and erased the log entry. The SWR remained at 1.1:1 throughout. I have no explanation for any of this.

In summary, the Turbo Encabulator Mk. VII is the finest piece of amateur radio equipment I have owned that does not actually exist in a conventional physical sense. It has improved my signal reports, eliminated my RFI issues, and caused my neighbor's plasma television to start displaying what he describes as "a kind of purple." He has not complained, possibly because the television is now also receiving 17 meters.

Rating: 73/73. Highly recommended. Buy two, in case one of them achieves sentience and leaves for a moonbounce expedition. It happens.

73 de YB1SDL – "When in doubt, gronk it out!"