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?

Just a point : the COSPAS-SARSAT constellation is made possible throught
international cooperation (former USSR, Canada, France and USA). The
satellites both GEO's and LEO's are : indian, European, and US weather and
communication satellites not military, it's a civilian matter. The Air
Forces uses another system call C-SAR.

Cheers,

Rémy F5LRR


e Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:20:36 +0100, Larry a écrit

"Bjarke M. Christensen" bjarkeNG@grevestrand_punktum_danmark wrote in
:

I could be just because I'm from an old sailor nation, but I think you
should do something to fix your CG problem.

Once the TV people made the story into a series of some pretty scathing
reports, the government bureaucrats couldn't just paint over the scratch.
Some definate changes were made, but that will go slack as time goes by.

The USCG thinks itself a drug enforcement agency, now, not a real service
to the marine community taxpayers. They love flack jackets and waving M-
16 automatic rifles around dressed in dark green suits like the SWAT
team. The South Carolina state bureaucrats even have dark green SWAT
boats to put their cowboys into.


However I do agree than an epirb is the most valuable security device.
Worldwide ....


Just make sure it's not a 121.5 Mhz EPIRB of old. Airliners don't
monitor that any more...no ears at sea. Here it's just used as a
localizer for the RDF on the helos to pinpoint your lifejacket floating
with or without you. The US military satellite constellation is at your
service on 406 Mhz with your MMSI. The GPS gets that fix down to 3-6
feet, which makes a real difference in awful weather.


Larry

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

Oh, yeah! When voltage fed 600 ohm open wire feeders were tuned by
drawing a pencil arc to current fed antennas were tuned with a series light
bulb!
The old BC-375 had an 8 amp thermocouple ammeter with a logarithmic
scale that wasn't much use with anything short of a quarter wave whip
starting right at the transmitter. Then there was a lower range model that
most of us carried, from the ARC 5 antenna relay box. (wasn't it a 3 or 4
amp?) I'll have to go out in the shop (storage room) and look today.
Heck, a good, well tuned, re-tubed N-550 could kick up almost 2 amps
with a good long whistle!
Of course, since the current node of a vertical did most of the
radiating, you had to get that current node out of the pilothouse (or radio
room) and out into the clear. (where, pray tell, is that on a well rigged
fishboat?)
Auto tuners are for wimps.
Old Chief Lynn

"Lynn Coffelt" wrote in
:

Of course, since the current node of a vertical did most of the
radiating, you had to get that current node out of the pilothouse (or
radio room) and out into the clear. (where, pray tell, is that on a
well rigged fishboat?)


Over on www.qrz.com put my call w4csc into the search box and bring up my
webpage. That insulator I'm holding in my hand was the bottom half of an
antenna feedthru insulator that fed 70KW on HF from the fish hold on an
old Canadian fishing trawler to a T cage vertical mounted between two
90' towers welded to the deck fore and aft. The T feedpoint was right on
the deck, offcenter about 20% of the flattop.

That little black mark down the side of this 360KV porcelain insulator
was what happened when they lit off the Technical Materiel GPT-40K inside
the fish hold. It fed the antenna from its 600 ohm open feeder output on
top of the cabinet with 3/4" copper tubing sort of in parallel. One of
the tubes simply ended 2' under the hatch this insulator was mounted
through and the other tube was bolted to the bolt at the little end of
this insulator. Here's a picture of the transmitter before Reverend
Stair of Overcomer Ministries bought it from VOA Greenville, NC:
http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc07.jpg
Rev Stair runs a religious commune out of some trailers in Canadys, SC,
and buys lots of radio time on WRNO and other shortwave broadcasters:
http://www.overcomerministry.org/
He's a scallywag and parttime sex offender:
http://www.christianmediaresearch.com/stair-01.html
http://www.clrc.net/brostair.html
http://www.freewebs.com/brotherstair/
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/s/commun...geid=21724&ck=
Jim Jones is alive and well in many places in South Carolina....(sigh)

The idea was they had permission to anchor the ship in international
waters off Belize and Belize would allow them to microwave relay
programming to the ship from Belize. The FCC used their little tests
from the Wando River shipyard as an excuse to confiscate everthing before
they could leave the country and try it.

I was standing beside the transmitter during the failed test. The
insulator was my souvenir...(c; The boat's captain was a ham from St
Kitts and had invited me aboard to show off. He wanted out of the
project because he was afraid the "brothers" were going to dispose of him
at sea as soon as he got the electronics running with his engineer.

Glowing blue inside the fish hold just before the flashover to the hatch
was most exciting. The whole place glowed blue from the intense RF on 41
meters just above 7.3 Mhz. The flashover didn't harm the massive
transmitter, at all. It simply tripped out on load impedance....(c;

All in good fun....Every flourescent tube at the boatyard lit up REALLY
BRIGHT, even though the little ship was anchored out in the Wando River.
It wasn't going to work. The intense RF current from the hull to the sea
was eating holes in the steel hull. First indication of that was when
the fresh water tanks in the bilge started tasting like SALT and filling
themselves. Attempts by Brother Stair's divers to weld up the holes the
RF was creating as massive electrolysis were proving unsuccessful. 70KW
into a 13 ohm feedpoint impedance creates an impressive current as well
as voltage nodes. The insulator is in my trophy case...(c;

Larry
--

In article ,
"Lynn Coffelt" wrote:

Auto tuners are for wimps.
Old Chief Lynn

it is with very "Fond Memories", that I am happy that I learned about
Maritime Mobile Antenna Systems, in the School of Hard Knocks, by
tuning the N555 Antenna Tuners, on various hull materials, vessel sizes,
RF Ground Systems, and Antenna Designs. Just how many ways, is it
possible to tune an N555 to be a almost Perfect Dummy Load, at some
Marine Frequncy between 1.6 and 22 Mhz? I am not sure, but I must have
found most of them, in 35 years of practice.

Real Marine Radiomen always used Manual Tuners.....

Bruce in alaska
--
add a 2 before @

Bruce in Alaska wrote in news:bruceg-
:

Real Marine Radiomen always used Manual Tuners.....

Bruce in alaska
--

I love it! Thanks, Bruce...(c;

The most radiation was from the light bulb....hee hee.

Larry
--
I have a new strategy to protect the Mexican border. From the border
to inside the USA, 1 mile, we turn it into our OPEN PIT nuclear
waste dump, turning it into a no-mans-land for tens of thousands
of years. Anyone attempting to cross will simply be eaten alive
by neutrons! Problem solved!

Real Marine Radiomen always used Manual Tuners.....

Bruce in alaska
--

I love it! Thanks, Bruce...(c;

The most radiation was from the light bulb....hee hee.

Larry

Don't knock the light bulb Larry! Late 50's sunspot cycle, I worked W7LAN in
Washington State from Tucson, Arizona running 60 watt homebrew SSB/6146 rig
into dimly flickering 50 watt light bulb. "5x9+ 20" he lied.

Your pirate ship's antenna must have been an adaptation of the venerable
off-center fed zepp. There were two "birdcage" ocf Zepps in Anacortes pre
WWII. Both driven by push-pull Taylor TZ-40's on 40 CW. 866a's ghostly
blinking and transformers groaning in tune. Ah, yes!
Must have been close to 200 watts!

Old Chief Lynn

In article ,
"Lynn Coffelt" wrote:

Real Marine Radiomen always used Manual Tuners.....

Bruce in alaska
--

I love it! Thanks, Bruce...(c;

The most radiation was from the light bulb....hee hee.

Larry

Don't knock the light bulb Larry! Late 50's sunspot cycle, I worked W7LAN in
Washington State from Tucson, Arizona running 60 watt homebrew SSB/6146 rig
into dimly flickering 50 watt light bulb. "5x9+ 20" he lied.

Your pirate ship's antenna must have been an adaptation of the venerable
off-center fed zepp. There were two "birdcage" ocf Zepps in Anacortes pre
WWII. Both driven by push-pull Taylor TZ-40's on 40 CW. 866a's ghostly
blinking and transformers groaning in tune. Ah, yes!
Must have been close to 200 watts!

Old Chief Lynn



I have worked the old AT&T West Coast HF Marine Station, KMI, while
running an N550, with the covers off, and feeding a Bird Kw Dummy Load,
from the Engineering Department, of the Old Northern Radio Building, on
West Commadore Way, in Seattle, Washington, on both 8 and 12 Mhz,
with excellent Signal Reports. It is amazing what can happen when the
Band is open........

Bruce in alaska Lordy, those were the days........
--
add a 2 before @

"Lynn Coffelt" wrote in
:

866a's ghostly
blinking and transformers groaning in tune.

Er, ah, I've survived a few mercury vapor flashovers....(c;



Larry
--
I have a new strategy to protect the Mexican border. From the border
to inside the USA, 1 mile, we turn it into our OPEN PIT nuclear
waste dump, turning it into a no-mans-land for tens of thousands
of years. Anyone attempting to cross will simply be eaten alive
by neutrons! Problem solved!

"Lynn Coffelt" wrote in
:

866a's ghostly
blinking and transformers groaning in tune.

Speaking of flashovers...Have you ever seen this video of a transmission
line switch disconnecting a shunt inductor across a transcontinental line
in Colorado?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUdGZ9Qg62o
Most impressive....Even the power line guys were impressed....

The air starts ionizing when one of the switch insulators flashes over as
it starts to open, probably from inductive kick of the massive inductor,
then the ionized air heating to a million degrees RISES, drawing the arc
ever higher, way way longer than gap of the open switch at full open.

Plug "arcing" into the search engine on YouTube. There's lots of great
flashovers to watch....(c;

Larry
--
I have a new strategy to protect the Mexican border. From the border
to inside the USA, 1 mile, we turn it into our OPEN PIT nuclear
waste dump, turning it into a no-mans-land for tens of thousands
of years. Anyone attempting to cross will simply be eaten alive
by neutrons! Problem solved!