Who were the Big Gun AM stations?

Mark K3MSB

"David Stinson" wrote in message
news:GqI8e.14705$Zn3.13207@trnddc02...
Back from the W5E Special Event,
hosted by the Shreveport Amateur Radio Association and
the Eighth Air Force Museum at Barksdale Airforce Base
in North Louisiana.
What a great time! We ran the SCR-287 and SCR-274N
stations on Friday evening to "work the kinks out,"
and it's a good thing we did because there were
bugs to be found. The BC-375 didn't want to neutralize
properly. I didn't get that one fixed until
Saturday afternoon, even though we did log some
contacts on the 287 on Friday. By the "official" time
on Saturday, the rig was working and sounding good again.

The big scare on Friday night was the unmistakable smell
of roasted resistor coming from the BC-348-R,
which then crashed, stone dead.
I brought plenty of spares parts and started
"resuscitation" right away. This receiver had been running
flawlessly for a month (as had the transmitter), but now
*three* paper bypass caps failed, leaking to short.
This toasted two dropping resistors, failing them *low-Z*.
One 4.7 K-ohm was down to 200 ohms. The real scare was
that these were in the IF plate leads, right through
the hair-fine wire in the IF transformer windings.
The way the receiver suddenly died, I was sure one
of the IFs had gone open, but there must have been an
angel watching over us, because new caps and resistors
plus re-alignment brought it back from the dead.
We put the rig back together, warmed it up for a couple
of hours and it worked flawlessly on Saturday night
into the full-wave horizontal 80-meter loop at 40 feet.

*Gripe mode on*
Operation during the "official" time on 3880 KC
was, ummmm, "challenging." The AM ops from nearly
everywhere were courteous and helpful and we're most
grateful to them. Nevertheless, the QRM was vile-
absolutely horrible. The biggest problem was a group
down here in "5-Land" that, several years ago, decided
that they were the judges of what modes can and cannot
be used on 75 meters. They camp each night within 2 KCs of
3880 with the specific intent of causing as much grief
as possible for any operation in the AM window.
They make remarks about "ancient equipment,"
radios "so old that the knobs have frozen at 3880 KCs"
and about AM operators who are "too old and feeble
to reach up and spin their VFOs if they don't like it."
These room-temperature-IQ knuckle draggers
have been doing this for years. There is another SSB group
that does basically the same thing on 3898, but they're not
quite as nasty about it. I knew about them and that it
might be a problem, but 3880 was the best of bad choices
within the AM window down here on a Saturday night.
I was hoping that the bad actors would give it a rest
for one night for a veteran-connected special events station,
but no such luck. They performed their usual antics,
a couple of times even coming directly on frequency to
ask long and loud if "the frequency was in use."
Sheesh. To add insult to injury, at 9 PM, one hour before
we were going to officially end the AM try, two "big gun"
AM stations in the North East came down and plopped right on
top of us, ignoring dozens of guys telling them the freq
was in use. Their action effectively ended the AM event,
since nobody- even locals- could get past these guys.
I got the station back up after midnight and moved to the
then-clear 3890 KC and logged a few more before turning in.
The result of all this was that if you didn't have a really
good signal, you didn't get heard. I'm very sorry, guys-
I could hear dozens of stations calling, and I was able to
work some of the weaker ones through persistence,
but there was just no way to pull most of you more distant folks
out from under the few selfish clowns
who insisted on grinding their axes last night.
And once those two northeast AM guys dropped on us, it was over.
*Gripe mode off*

Nevertheless, we did make 97 contacts with the WWII gear,
including both coasts and Canada.
The guys with the modern rigs worked over 300, IIRC.
I've posted a picture of the WWII gear side of the
operation tent on alt.binaries.pictures.radio
and at:

And in case the previous gave you the wrong impression,
I had an absolute blast getting the old beasts running and
working all of you I could hear. The SCR-274N got in some phone
and CW contacts as well, but our 40-meter CW effort with the
274N was hampered by the Michigan QSO party. The rig was getting out
well into a vertical and worked several states.
We even had two SCR-274N-to-SCR-274N contacts,
as well as one with a fellow running a T-22/ARC-5.
Next time we'll try to pick a less busy weekend.

SARA did a wonderful job creating this event and
I'm very grateful for the chance to contribute.
Lots of good publicity, too.
More later- I need some shut-eye ;-).
73 DE Dave Stinson AB5S