PING: Michael

You're welcome. I got to see inside, and touch that transmitter in

1970. :) It was just down the road from the Mason, Ohio VOA "Bethany" plant that I saw the same day. The original WW-II Crosley transmitters were being replaced with National Radio's custom designed self tuning units, and the antennas on wooden poles were being converted to steel towers after numerous fires kept putting them off the air. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures in either site. Also, that VOA station had a HUGE curtain antenna strung between three large steel towers. The stations ten, 50 KW transmitters could be paralleled for higher power, and in any combination from 1.8 MHz to 30 MHz, continuous. The engineer turned pale as a sheet when I suggested that some night shift when one of the transmitters was down for maintenance that they tune it to Ch 19 and yell, 'Watch it, eighteen wheeler, there's a Smokey on your tail!' to test it. ;-)

The Chief engineer at WLW told me that he was a kid working there when they were running under the experimental 500 KW license. He said the whole engineering staff was in tears when the order came to reduce power when the FCC terminated the experiment, thus ending high power AM broadcasting in the US. He talked about having to hacksaw the brass bolts and copper buss bars that connected the transmitter cabinets, to prove that the transmitter was permanently disabled. The 50 KW transmitter used as an exciter, and standby transmitter was then used as their main transmitter.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I'm going to spend some time and search for some reading on old WWII transmitters especially some of the German design. I don't know what the fascination is, maybe all that juice flowing, hundreds of amps in just the heaters, the rarefied air, ozone, volatility. When I was a kid i used to love to look at a tube amp in the dark, watch the blue behind the glass of the outputs change with the music. Kind of like sitting around a camp fire if that makes any sense to you :)

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