Jerry,
You've got me curious. Do you know if it was a tuned transmitter? Or -- which seems more likely under the circumstances-- a broadband "spark gap" transmitter, like the original Marconi equipment?
I never built one of those, but I recall from childhood that putting one of those bimetallic flashing bulbs into a "night light" could cause enough RFI to really mess up AM reception for the whole house... and, more usefully, annoy one's older brother no end (sorry, Carlton ).
Frank McKenney
It was a spark transmitter. My colleague had no receiver. He had set up a broken wing as a wind break, and sat for about an hour sending their last known position in Morse. His "key" was a wire that he held in hand to tap the battery with. He weighed nearly 300 pounds and it was probably his blubber that shielded him enough from the cold to continue to function. A light plane flew over but couldn't land, so it dropped sleeping bags, a first-aid kit, a tent, and food. Just before dark, a helicopter evacuated them. When he was debriefed, he remarked that he had had no way to know if his signals had been heard. The response was, "Heard you? Hell, nobody could hear anything else! We had to get to you just to shut you up."
Good on you, Frank!
Jerry
In my poor starving student days I flew in the arctic for a summer. (They actually paid me to have that much fun) A friend of mine had the dubious distinction of having the northern most helicopter crash, 53 miles from the N pole. After several search planes came and went the next time he saw a plane he tossed his lighter in the fuel tank of the helicopter, the resulting fireball got the reassures attention. My friend did in fact get burns from the inferno
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