wrote:
The whole thing is so simple that at first I wondered why it wasn't
more common back then.

Ever watch an ART-13 tune itself?
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

On Mar 7, 9:17�pm, Cecil Moore wrote:
wrote:
The whole thing is so simple that at first I wondered why it wasn't
more common back then.

Ever watch an ART-13 tune itself?
--
73, Cecil *http://www.w5dxp.com

Heh, I have, about 20 years after it first came out. That, and
I used to align R-391s...which were much more fun to watch.
ADA had one commercial Collins Autotune transmitter for
about two years, three racks wide, all the Autotune rotary
power came from a single quarter-horsepower reversible
motor. Fastest-reversing motor I'd seen up to 1953.

73, Len AF6AY

On Mar 8, 12:17?am, Cecil Moore wrote:
wrote:
The whole thing is so simple that at first I wondered why it wasn't
more common back then.

Ever watch an ART-13 tune itself?

Yep, Cecil, quite a show!

But the Collins Autotune is really a form of mechanical
memory re-tuning, like the mechanical pushbuttons on
an old-style car radio. A human operator tunes up the ART-13 manually,
locks the settings into one of the Autotune 'memories' then the
Autotune remembers the exact settings of each control and resets them,
when requested.

What the Autotune does not do is to adjust any of the controls to some
electrical parameter in the rig itself - plate current, low SWR,
resonance, etc. It just puts all the knobs back where they were.

Still very impressive, though. And about a decade before the articles
I mentioned.

73 de Jim, N2EY