robert casey wrote:
I dunno how many times I worked "6L6GB". "QSL
via the buro". Yeah, right.

ROTFLMAO!


You probably did work someone who had a 6L6GB vacuum tube
final in his transmitter....... :-)

No doubt. But most of the serious 80M dxers in those days ran "suds", a
lotta power, not just a lotta power but 'WAY too much power. Back then
the max allowable power was one kW input vs. today's 1.5kW output. Any
number of the Really Big Guns used homebrewed amps which tossed out a
kilowatt's worth of heat alone. Or more. And those beasts weren't lossy
linears either. Which is another example of blatent "impurity" in the
CW bands. Offhand I'd be willing to bet that there are far fewer
instances of busting the power limits today than there were back then.
The FCC took the easy way out of having to bother with enforcing the
power limits by roughly tripling the max allowable power input, clever
labor-avoiding folk that they are. That move plus economics, the drying
up of the WW2 parts sources and the need for linear amps have "solved"
the excesss power problem and brought most of those bad old boys and
their descendants into "compliance" today.


Others:
6u6gt
6w6gt
6w4gta
6y6ga
6k5gt
6k8gt
6j5gt
6a8gt
5z4gt
5x4ga
5r4gyb
5u4gb
3q5gt
2w3gt

"Tube callsigns" were a favorite but there were others and some were a
tad on the raunchy side. 4Q2?? showed up more than once. Whatever it
took to get some giggles.

w3rv