[CW] Spark Paper from Bob Schrader, W6BNB (SK)
Guy Letourneau Owner
guy1656 at centurylink.net
Thu Apr 28 10:40:49 EDT 2016
My good friend from high school ran the school's amateur radio club, W1SW.
We've stayed in touch over the decades, and I passed along some of these comments.
He writes:
This is great stuff !
My Tesla Coil is essentially figure 5 without the antenna attached, and with a ball (or brass commode float) attached to the top of the output coil instead.
[M]ost of this is consistent with my Grandad’s old Ham set.
He had :
- A spark transmitter (as opposed to an arc transmitter), with very similar circuit to figure 5 only rotary spark gap to create an A2 emission having higher modulated t one frequency than 60 Hz. He would turn on the rotary as he started his transmission and turn it off as he was finishing so the tone would ramp up and down, giving a cue t o whom he’s having a QSO with that he’s about to hand It back over… There was a lot of charm in this – not much spectral efficiency, but definitely charm !!! J
- A regenerative single tube receiver, which used a variable coupler in the main tank to vary the coupled Q, and a grid tickler coil he wound himself over the input tank, which boosted the RX signal and produced every bit as much gain as a superhet system, and for CW, who cares if it’s flying ??!!. I still have his receiver and the cabinet that mounted it he made out of a soap crate and painted red. It used some O1A tubes !!
Man, those were the days ! Smell of warm tubes on electronic equipment that actually smelled like electronic equipment instead of washless flux neutrality.
There was always something creating a whiff of ozone too – either the keying, the spark-gap, or even the Transmit-receive relay smelled of O3 on metal.
I can’t wait to get free enough to get back on the air again !!!
This working for a living nonsense has GOT to stop !!!
God Bless,
73’s
M
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