[Elecraft] AM power for KPA500

[Tony Estep]

On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Guy Olinger K2AV <olinger at bellsouth.net>wrote:

> ...In the old days...a reason those guys always sounded so loud, and for
> how heavy that rig
> was.
>

Ah yes. The guy who got me into ham radio, Mel W0AJU, had a fantastic
home-brew rig that made a kid's eyes pop out. A pair of huge WW2 surplus
triodes in push-pull, modulated by a pair of 4-250a tetrodes. The whole
thing was in a 7-foot rack, because every part was surplus from the military
or broadcast or (in the case of the power transformer) the local power
company. Altogether, that rack must have weighed 400 pounds. The final
plates glowed a nice yellow-red, and when he talked, the plates in the
modulator amp glowed a bright cherry red in time with the audio. His
home-made 20M yagi (coupled to the final by a swinging link) was turned by a
prop-pitch motor from a B-29 and the direction indicator was a string that
wrapped around the mast and ran into the basement shack via a bunch of
pulleys; it had a stick knotted to it that went up and down as the antenna
turned, and there was a piece of paper stuck to a support column that had
NEWSN written on it in pencil. He was on the DX honor roll as were my other
teen idols, the DX gurus of the local club.  In those days it took about 225
or so, I think.

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