[Boatanchors] rigs from antique QSL cards

[JAMES HANLON]

Ron,

I should be able to comment on the rigs from your QSL cards - I was licensed in 1952 and my rig was an HRO-50 and a home-brew 6AG7 tri-tet crystal oscillator driving a brand new 6146 to the 75 watt limit for novices in those days.  Please let me know what the cards say about those two rigs.  And yes, in those days people talked about their transmitters in terms of power input to the final amplifier rather than to RF power output.  Power input could easily be determined by multiplying the DC plate voltage by the DC plate current, both measurable by readily available meters of the era.  Output was harder to measure directly.  There were RF ammeters, usually thermocouple types, but we didn't know what the resistance of the load was that we were working into.  I remember loading my tx into a light bulb and comparing its output to a bulb driven from the 60Hz line voltage through a Variac variable voltage transformer and using a photographic light meter to set both bulbs to the same brilliance.  50 ohm loads, SWR meters and power output meters were still a few years away at that point.

Jim Hanlon, W8KGI