[ARC5] [Milsurplus] Gibson Girl question ( BC-778 ? )

[Christopher Bowne]

Enjoyed the story of the kids with the Gibson Girl transmitter and the subsequent venture into pirate AM radio.  I remember a kid who put a 1000 kHz rock and a suitably sized pi network coil into an Ameco AC-1, which was modulated with the primary of a small 6.3 VAC filament transformer on the B plus to the 6V6 and audio fed in to the filament side winding, antenna was his 80 meter dipole.  His brief venture into pirate radio was cut short after his dad heard him on the car radio about 6 miles from his house!

73 de Chris AJ1G
Stonington CT

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 21, 2023, at 03:47, millerke6f--- via ARC5 <arc5 at mailman.qth.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> In the middle 50s when I was in the 6th grade I bought a Gibson Girl at a local rag merchant surplus store in Eureka California for 5 dollars.  No knowing it's exact purpose I and some of my fellow urchins 
> strapped it down to an old work bench in the garage, cranked the rascal and played with the knob and damned if the little lamp behind a plastic lens didn't start to blink.  We were able to
> receive the unit's transmission on the bottom of the BC band on a little AC/DC table radio and boy that was quite a surprize.  we did open up the unit and in doing so we damaged a coil in the
> unit but it did not stop it from transmitting.  A local Flying A service station near the house played music all day and night on outside speakers and when we added a long wire antenna that ran 
> the length of our alley we were able to hear the thing on that station's speakers.  Drove the owner, E.P. Ray, nuts.
> 
> While we never knew we were causing problems for the Coast Guard, the Skipper of the Youkona (spelling) did mention it to member's of my dad's carpenter's Union meeting and that the
> clandestine SOS messages were driving them crazy.  That we were always  moving our little yellow toy around the neighborhood and even took it to school (Lincoln Grammar School) and found
> out that you could burn your finger on the little pig tail wire inside the circular antenna storage compartment.  We eventually grew tired of the thing and it was replaced by a Bud Phono Oscillator
> which was a real hoot as what would be classified today as a Pirate AM station.  It's amazing how far that little rascal with it's 117L7/M7 tube could transmit with a long wire the length of our alley.
> 
> Fortunately, Ham radio finally got our attention(s) and the CRT3 and the Bud Phono Oscillator ended up somewhere at the Lolita Dump.
> 
> Bob, KE6F
> 
> On Thursday, July 20, 2023 at 08:09:39 PM PDT, Tim <timsamm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> FWIW, the Gibson Girls (presumably the CRT-3 morph) was aboard P-3 Orions in the mid 1970's with the parachute pack.  We had one aboard my ship (Minesweeper) in 1986....Routine PM was done on it while I was aboard but I don't know to what extent ....
> Tim
> N6CC
> 
> On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 3:31 PM Hubert Miller <Kargo_cult at msn.com> wrote:
> >Okay, I'll scan that page and send it to you.  I do not know when they were removed from use, but I recall when I was stationed at Tinker AFB in 1974-1978 that a surplus store near the base had some for sale in a large soft sided container that was probably at least 2.5 ft square and looked to be designed to float.  Tinker AFB would have been the logical place for such surplus equipment to be excessed, since it is the depot for B-52 and KC-135.
> Wayne
> 
> Wayne, the manual page says this radio was strapped to the wall of the plane near an emergency exit. I kinda don't get that. I thought they were always
> somehow packed with the liferaft. I am thinking if it was indeed strapped to the wall, that might make exiting in a hurry somewhat iffy. What think ?
> -Hue 
> ______________________________________________________________
> ARC5 mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arc5
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:ARC5 at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: https://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> ______________________________________________________________
> ARC5 mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arc5
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:ARC5 at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: https://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> ______________________________________________________________
> ARC5 mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/arc5
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:ARC5 at mailman.qth.net
> 
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: https://www.qsl.net/donate.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.qth.net/pipermail/arc5/attachments/20230721/a4468674/attachment-0001.html>