Notice the lovely glowing 833As in the upper left corner.

 

Holy cow! I love those open, air-core coils. Used to have much smaller versions in my "27-1/4 MHz" transmitters in the early 1950's.

John

 

I'd like to know the background story. This rig seems excessively kludgy and haphazard, even to the point of being intentionally so, as a demonstration of improvisational skill perhaps. Even the poorest ham stuck in a leaky garden shed knows how to tidy up his cabling better.

 

I don't see a radio (receiver) in there anyplace.

 

Bug zapper.

 

That transmitter belonged to Clyde Denton, K4UXK, Columbia, TN. He was a retired college professor; before retiring he taught study skills classes whose purpose was to bring unprepared high school graduates up to a level where they might have a chance to succeed in university courses.

The rig in the photo ran a single 833A in the class-C final, modulated by a pair of 833As running class B. I knew Clyde, having met him in person numerous times, but I never visited his shack. We had always talked about some day visiting each others shacks and swapping some of our unused parts inventory, but that never happened. I worked him several times when he was using that transmitter, which put out an excellent quality signal with near broadcast grade audio. I think that was the last rig he ever put on the air.

The problem with Clyde was that whenever he got a rig going and got all the bugs worked out, next time I would hear him on the air he would have a crappy signal, saying he had dismantled the previous rig and was working on another one. I think he enjoyed building transmitters and getting them to work more than he enjoyed using them on the air.

Unfortunately, Clyde went SK several months ago, following a long period of failing health. I met him for lunch a couple of years ago and hadn't heard any more from him until I was informed of his passing.

(Originally posted on QRZ by K4KYV

 

A good spirit.

 

big tubes that glow. some oh the older radio station engineers around here say they prefer the tobe type transmitters, they fight back with thunderstorms. the newer solid state transmitters trip out too easily with nearby lightening. the old "firebottle" transmitters fight back. there are stories of WLW 's antenna getting struck and all that happened was they had to turn the teansmitter off and on to stop the arc across the arrestors.

 

Sorry but a simply awful mess to me.

 

check out the rca 867 tube, capable of more than 100,000 watts output. it glows, but here isnt anything solid state what aproches its ratings. tghere have been some more powerfull tubes made since.

 

check out the rca 867 tube, capable of more than 100,000 watts output. it glows, but here isnt anything solid state what aproches its ratings. tghere have been some more powerfull tubes made since.

Hola alfacliff

The last oportunity I had the chance to see high power xmtrs was 40 years ago.

I recall some brand new Collins just after commissioning, IIRC capable of something like 10 KW (but not sure at all). Navy's coast station.

In the final stage they had valves tubes similar to the one below with handlers to pull them out. (Those were much wider than taller).

I was fascinated with it, that seemed to be state of the art at that moment.

Awful how much I forgot about RF.

 

I've been to a few SK estate sales with shacks similar to that. Made me realize how much knowledge is being forever lost to progress.

KI4DOG

 

around here, the only high power rf stuff is the sources for the rf excited lasers, a box about the size of a suitcase putting out somewhere around 45 kw, all mosfets and water cooled. just sits there, no drama at all.