BoatBanter.com - View Single Post - FT-857 vs 706 MkII ?

Larry

Bruce in Alaska wrote in news:bruceg-
:

How many Marine Radiomen still alive remember using an RF Ammeter....
Old Chief Lynn??? maybe........

After restoring the TBK transmitters aboard USS Everglades (AD-24)
(started at end of WW2 but not completed until Korea broke out), and
tearing down and rebuilding the antenna structures between the aft king
post yard arms and main mast yard arms, some serious wire antennas, I had
a problem on many freqs Radio asked me to put them on....too MUCH antenna
current for the hot wire ammeters in the tuner on top of the transmitter.
(It transmitted into a single terminal in a trunk overhead with a copper
pipe on porcelain insulators through a grounding knifeswitch in the trunk
to a big brown feedthru insulator out to the longwire monsters, making a
lazy L antenna laying on its back...very long.

After burning up a couple of hot wire ammeters, I decided to parallel two
of them, one inside the tuner and one that showed through the panel in a
window so you could read it. The whole meter was at RF hot! I put "X2"
on the window with a labelmaker to remind anyone of the unauthorized mod
noone cared about....or these old beasts in Radio II.

Man, with a little care and cleaning the TBKs and TBMs could turn the air
blue around those wires! I spent many a fun night on 75M AM (plate
modulator was a separate audio power amp in series with the DC Motor-
Generator providing plate volts to the finals) and on 40M CW from the
test local operating position in Radio II aboard "Titanic". To have the
feel old radio operators must have had on their ships in WW2 was simply
PRICELESS. The blue arc from the key contact, themselves, was most
impressive.

WARNING to DECK FORCE: DO NOT REMOVE GROUNDING WIRES ON RIGGING ABOVE
DECK WITHOUT TALKING TO ET1 BUTLER __FIRST__!
(Many got burned...(c;....It makes ya SO proud!)

Larry
--
Vista has been out a week.
Is Service Pack 1 ready yet?