[HBR] RE: HBR 2006 and a question

[Amargosa Enterprises]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Walter A. Hutchens" <waltah at earthlink.net>


> Walt said -
> W6TC was a gifted radio designer.   Does anyone know what he did in 'real
> life'?
>
Ted Crosby was a broadcast engineer employed by the American Broadcast
Company, working at their main transmitter site atop Mt. Wilson (on the
northern rim of the Los Angeles basin).  At that time all the major TV
broadcasters (plus a couple of locals) used the Mt Wilson location because
of its coverage throughout the basin.  The ABC chief engineer assigned Ted
the responsibility of monitoring new vacuum tube deign specs for
applicability to custom design/built equipment used in broadcast service.
At that time, the TV broadcast people modified much of their equipment and
built some of it from the ground up.  This work assignment gave Ted a
state-of-the-art insight into what tubes would do - he was very selective in
his choice of tubes for his HBR projects.

I then lived in La Canada (just west of Pasadena and immediately below Mt
Wilson ) and worked as a development engineer at Cal Tech's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, and later as a transmissition engineer for Pacific Telephone,
both in Pasadena.

I am providing to K5BCQ about mid-year a compendium of 72 letters written to
me by Ted and Alex Stewart (another HBR original) between 1967 and 1971
relative to my HBR XX (to avoid confusing it with Ted's un-published HBR20).
The letters provide a lot of background (answers to the "why" questions),
plus specific advice on clearing problems in HBRs under construction by
myself and others.  Ted became a silent key (lung cancer) about 1971 and
Alex passed ib a few years later.  Both men had been first licensed in the
1920/1922 time frame.

I communicated with Ted by letter and telephone, including several visits to
his Sun Valley home.  He was an incredibly talented intuitive designer, the
best I have ever met - somehow he seemed to just sense (without making
calculations or creating mathematical models) what combinations of design
elements would work.  All of his published designs were preceded by hundreds
of hours of experimentation and design modifications - it was extremely
important to him that the average ham be able to build a product which
represented the design Ted had developed.

Ted was one of the 10 most unforgettable men I have ever met.

73 Jay W6HHT Redding CA