[Collins] Hilmer Swanson - In Memory

[Gerald]

On Tue, 2005-08-02 at 13:51 -0400, Sheldon Daitch wrote:
> 
> In Memory:
> Hilmer Irvin Swanson, 1932 – 2005
> 
> Legendary broadcast innovator and retired Harris senior scientist
> invented every modulation technique used in modern AM broadcast transmitters;
> credited with slashing global AM transmitter power consumption costs by well over
> 100 million dollars during the past 20 years
> 
My first day at Collins, back on July 1, 1963, Hilmer was the first to
greet me and to give me a project to work on. We both worked for Lloyd
Winter who was absent that day.

In the next 39 months I saw the many fine qualities of Hilmer. I should
have kept up with his exploits later.

While we were testing the 821A-1 (sometimes chasing "Hilmer's sausages")
he was the first to discover the transformer in the transmitter lab's
substation had blown its top literally and watch the lid of the
transformer float back to earth. He was the first to be shocked in the
"low voltage" compartment of the driver. I was the second.

I helped that spark of the series switch modulation when Hilmer asked me
to research the availability of series switch tubes for RF section arc
protection. The state of the art was to divert power from the RF section
by shorting the power supplies. In the 821A-1 a group of triggered ball
gaps did the shorting job with a lot of noise a a great deal of stress
to the power supply components. A series switch tube could have cut off
power even faster without the noise or the overload to the power
supplies (which is what lead to that transformer's dramatic failure).
Unfortunately there didn't seem to be any suitable tubes that could be
cost effective only serving as the series switch tube.

Hilmer, Lloyd and I were among those transferred from Ceder Rapids to
Dallas one day in 1964 following up on a whim of Art Collins. Lloyd had
a 6 month nervous breakdown over the move, Hilmer soon found more
friendly territory at Gates and I left for graduate school. Had Art not
had the whim to separate RF and power supply people into the two
divisions and then not compounded that error by shipping us south, its
likely that Collins Radio would have been the vendor of those Hilmer
innovations providing that Art would have accepted them as useful.

Hilmer was surely unassuming, but astute. Fun to be around and full of
innovative ideas.
-- 
73, Jerry, K0CQ, Technical Advisor to the CRA
All content copyright Dr. Gerald N. Johnson, electrical engineer