[Boatanchors] Re: [Milsurplus] Re: [armyradios] OT: Foxhole Electronics

[David Stinson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "J Forster" <jfor at quik.com>
Subject: [Milsurplus] Re: [armyradios] OT: Foxhole Electronics


> What amazed me was that two way RADIO communication would have been barely 
> possible across
> the lines using mostly telephone bits in WW I...

I read somewhere that- besides "whistlers" and 'spherics heard on
the WWI field telephone lines- that, in places where the trenches
were close together, the combatants could cuss each other via
inductive crosstalk, and that this was the genesis of the
inductive "wireless" sets fielded late in the war.
It's a good bet that the miserable, wet conditions lead
to unbalanced conditions on the telephone pairs
and that would mean crosstalk.  Besides that,
many telephones worked "line to ground,"
so were inherently unbalanced.