The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

On Aug 6, 8:21 am, "Tam" wrote:
"K7ITM" wrote in message

...

On Aug 5, 7:31 pm, "Walter Maxwell" wrote:
Do really believe that there was a transmitter in the 1920's that could
deliver
500 kw?. The first station that could come up with that amount of power
was in
the 1930's,W8XO, the experimental station of Powell Crosley, that became
WLW
again when the experimental period was over. Are you aware of the
technical
difficulties that obtained in just getting that monster to work? General
Electric and Westinghouse supplied most of the parts, the rest by RCA,
and RCA
was the company that strived and strived before it was workable at that
power
level. I once worked for Harold Vance, the RCA engineer in charge of the
project. Certainly this didn't happen in the 1920's, and not in
Schenectady.
Somebody's been
feeding you horse hockey.

Walt, W2DU

On the other hand, there were spark transmitters well before that in a
similar power class. As I understand it, the powers actually achieved
as output were often either not well known or were kept quiet for
various reasons, but they were clearly in excess of 100kW. Apparently
the Oct. 1920 issue of "General Electric Review has an article by
Alexanderson about a 200kW alternator-driven transmitter. I
understand that there were also some high-powered (Poulsen) arc
transmitters (quite distinct from the shock-excitation of spark). I
found one reference to a Poulsen arc transmitter that ran at 3.6 MW
input power which was "still active in the early 1920s..." It ran on
~50kHz. Pretty much all this early stuff was below 100kHz, which of
course yields very reliable propagation if you put enough power into
it.

But WLW ran 500KW of 100% AM modulation. I understand just the modulation
transformer was the size of a room in order to handle the 250 KW of audio. I
believe it was on 700 KHz. See the link I gave above.

Well, admittedly I was taking it a bit out of context, but my posting
was a response to Walter's "Do really believe that there was a
transmitter in the 1920's that could deliver
500 kw?" And the answer is, yes, I do. Maybe not valve-based, but
more than one transmitter, and capable of modulation as well:
apparently Poulsen arc transmitters were FSK, since they couldn't be
keyed on and off. And apparently the alternator based transmitters
could be keyed at up to 100wpm. I'm pretty impressed with what the
radio engineers of that era were able to achieve.

Cheers,
Tom

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

On Aug 6, 1:10*pm, "Tam" wrote:
"christopher" wrote in message

peed... On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 20:05:32 -0400, Ed Cregger wrote:

.................................................. ....................
In my wild and misspent youth when I was using 11 meters, I used a VERY
large amp which would cause some neighbors to hear my voice coming from
electric sockets, refrigerators, light bulbs, radios, TVs and such. I
would also voice over anyone close who was recording on tape.

My electric bill was rather large as I had to unplug the stove to use the
220 socket.
.................................................. ..........................*...

The other day I was operating on 40 m SSB with 1KW+ output. Antenna is an
inverted V at 50 feet. My mother told me she could hear my voice coming out
of somewhere on the second floor. There was nothing with a speaker in it
that was turned on, not even a PC. I will have to repeat that with a ham
friend present.

Tam/WB2TT

The UK back in the 1950s, post WWII.
They were investigating some complaints that a licensed amateur radio
transmitter was causing interference to some of the new fangled TV
sets (45 megahertz, AM sound, 405 line black and white system). The
fault was mainly the inabilities of the TV sets to reject strong
nearby signals in another band!
One elderly lady was asked if she was "Hearing anything" and replied.
"Oh yes. I hear him all the time" and was asked to show the
investigators her TV set.
"Oh no", she said, "I don't have a TV at all but I can hear him on my
electric heater whenever I switch it on or plug it in!".
Turned out that the heating coil of the heater was providing
inductance, there was a sufficiently high resistance (possibly where
the replaceable heating coil connected at each end) to act as
rectifier under the conditions present and the metal frame of the
heater provided a sound box.
The lady was not particularly concerned about having the heater fixed,
saying "She found his talking quite interesting!".
You never know do you?
Nowadays sort of wondering about cell phones and those bits of metal
that some people wear in their noses, faces and ears etc.

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

K7ITM wrote:
.. See the link I gave above.

Well, admittedly I was taking it a bit out of context, but my posting
was a response to Walter's "Do really believe that there was a
transmitter in the 1920's that could deliver
500 kw?"

I think the operative word here is "deliver", by which I would mean
"radiated into the far field". Dissipating half a megawatt in the
system is impressive, but not necessarily as a transmitter.


And the answer is, yes, I do. Maybe not valve-based, but
more than one transmitter, and capable of modulation as well:
apparently Poulsen arc transmitters were FSK, since they couldn't be
keyed on and off.

One scheme was to change the resonant frequency of the antenna (via taps
on a coil), which was the frequency determining part of the system, the
arc providing a negative resistance characteristic for making an oscillator.

And apparently the alternator based transmitters
could be keyed at up to 100wpm. I'm pretty impressed with what the
radio engineers of that era were able to achieve.

It IS very impressive, but whether they could *radiate* half a megawatt
is sort of a good question.

Consider for comparison the ELF transmitters in Michigan..several
Megawatts to radiate less than 10 Watts

Or Project Sanguine, which was soemthing like 800 MW to radiate a few watts.


I know of several Tesla coils that have average power inputs in the
hundreds of kW range, but they don't radiate a whole lot, even with 20+
meter sparks as an antenna.



Cheers,
Tom

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in New York State
 

"Tam" wrote in message
. ..

The other day I was operating on 40 m SSB with 1KW+ output. Antenna is an
inverted V at 50 feet. My mother told me she could hear my voice coming
out of somewhere on the second floor. There was nothing with a speaker in
it that was turned on, not even a PC. I will have to repeat that with a
ham friend present.

Tam/WB2TT


I've had old solid state console stereos at the place I worked spew forth
the local CB'er w/linear even when not plugged in. We figured that the
output transistors were detecting the signal and feeding it to the speakers.

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in New York State
 

Had the same phenomenon when the illegal, high-powered, CB transmitter next
door cut in--I picked it up through the magnetic cartridge on my turntable,

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

"Tam" wrote in message
. ..

The other day I was operating on 40 m SSB with 1KW+ output. Antenna is an
inverted V at 50 feet. My mother told me she could hear my voice coming
out of somewhere on the second floor. There was nothing with a speaker in
it that was turned on, not even a PC. I will have to repeat that with a
ham friend present.

Tam/WB2TT


I've had old solid state console stereos at the place I worked spew forth
the local CB'er w/linear even when not plugged in. We figured that the
output transistors were detecting the signal and feeding it to the
speakers.

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

J. B. Wood wrote:
In article , "Walter Maxwell"
wrote:

Do really believe that there was a transmitter in the 1920's that could
deliver
500 kw?. The first station that could come up with that amount of power was in
the 1930's,W8XO, the experimental station of Powell Crosley, that became WLW
again when the experimental period was over.

Hello, and I grew up in Cincinnati where Crosley might well be regarded as
Cincinnati's equivalent to Pittsburgh's G. Westinghouse. Don't know if
Cincy had a Tesla, though ;-) The operations of WLW over the years are
well documented in technical journals and newspapers so I would ask of the
OP what is his information source(s). Sibncerely,

John Wood (Code 5550) e-mail:
Naval Research Laboratory
4555 Overlook Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20375-5337

From Joe Rice's (W4RHZ SK) book "Early Cincinnati Radio, 1910-1970":

The history of WLW presents a story of American enterprise and ingenuity
as colorful as any story in the world. It has the distinction of being
one of the few radio stations in all of American of running 500,000
watts of power. This is did from New Years Eve of 1934 until 1939.
From a modest beginning of about 20 watts power to the super power
range is a real success story of one man. Growth of WLW was constant
and it operated on different wavelengths until 1927 when it stabilised
at 700 kilocycles and then in 1928 it increased power to 50,000 watts."

Dave K8MN

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

Jim Driscoll wrote:

Had the same phenomenon when the illegal, high-powered, CB transmitter next
door cut in--I picked it up through the magnetic cartridge on my turntable,


Same here. I got a 3 watt walkie talkie and and sent it all back to him.




mike
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The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

Walter Maxwell wrote:
Quoting from the original post in this thread:

"People in New York didn't even need radios. They could sometimes hear voices in
their furnaces
and coming off chain-link fences. Light bulbs lit up in people's houses even if
they were switched off. "

These are the phenomena reported from WLW's 500 kw operation in the 1930's.

Some posters on this thread mention spark, Poulsen, Alexander alternators as
sources of 500 kw and Mw power in the 1920's, which is true. On the contrary,
from the quote above, I believe the original poster was referring only to a
station broadcasting voice transmissions. This is what I believe to be untrue,
as I don't believe 100 kw tubes were available in the 1920's. In addition, the
WLW story indicates that WLW was the first station to transmit with 50 kw, and
then the 500 kw transmitter with multiple 100 kw tubes was the first one to
transmit AM BC at that power.

Right, Walt. Rice's book indicates that there were 31 tubes in the 500
KW transmitter, each costing $1,000 in 1934. The Cincinnati area
stories of people living near WLW's Mason, Ohio transmitter site being
able to hear the station on fences and down spouts were common.

Even at 50 KW, WLW caused problems for a number of hams who lived near
the transmitter site when they were operating on 160m.

Dave K8MN

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in NewYork State
 

Tam wrote:

But WLW ran 500KW of 100% AM modulation. I understand just the
modulation transformer was the size of a room in order to handle the 250
KW of audio. I believe it was on 700 KHz. See the link I gave above.

The modulation transformer at VOA's Bethany relay station (located quite
near WLW's Mason, Ohio transmitter site) took up much of a very large
room. If you stood in that room, you could hear the transmitted audio
from the laminations. The sound was so loud that it was necessary to
shout to be heard over it.

Dave K8MN

The Strange True Story of a Radio Station's Transmitter in New York State
 

Wow. We can learn something new every day. Joe Rice (W4RHZ) was one of my
idols when I had my first licenses during 1959-61. He was a key member of
NKARC (Northern Kentucky ARC). Google says his "Early Cincinnati Radio" was
privately published, so I am unlikely to run across a copy. (Ebay and
half.com, etc, have no hits for it.)

Bill
W2WO (Was K4DFO in those days)