[InHam] Fw: [Flaming_Sword] Memories from the Bethany Relay Station

Fri Mar 26 02:29:28 EDT 2010

I love these stories.

The 1 about the bored VOA techs building an arc/spark transmitter at work reminds me of a story told to us at former VTI* by instructor/broadcast Engineer Gene Wiggins, W9CWG. 

If I could get him to retell the story here, it would be great. 

I know the story because I heard so many times, but there is nothing like hearing/reading it from the man who himself.

I just can't do the story proper justice so I will step aside & see if Gene wants to retell it 1 more time. 

*Valparaiso Technical Institute-First in Electronics since 1874, sad to say, the school closed down in the early 1990s. 
On the once beautiful campus of VTI was WNWI-1080AM-studios, transmitter, & tower all on site. 
The station went off the air in the early to mid 1990s & it's callsign & freq were reasigned to a new licensee who set up shop in another city. 
The campus, which was always like a small park w/its majestic Oak trees & large lawn was divided up & pieces of it were sold to others for different uses. 
The main building-Hersman Hall that housed the radio station was bulldozed to make room for a condo. 
The tower remains but homes have been built in its footprint so the original ground plane was compromised extensively. 
Dodge Hall remains but is now used by a variety of different tenants who pay rent to a new owner. 
1 of the dorms is an apartment building & the other has a laywer using at least part of it for office space. 

The history of VTI is a very interesting & colorful story that is just about right for a reflector like this 1. 
I will have to work on that. 

73/75 de ka9jwx, Paul Lewis Webster

SKCC #5322

John 3:16

Proud member of the;

ARRL

NRA

Handihams

LiveFreeUSA

60 Plus (even tho I am younger then 60)

Long:-87.334L (-87*20'3"W)

Lat:41.4967N (41*29'48"N)

EN61HL

Merrillville, Indiana, 46410-3503, USA 

;-)

--- On Thu, 3/25/10, Paul <pgray12 at cfl.rr.com> wrote:

From: Paul <pgray12 at cfl.rr.com>
Subject: [Flaming_Sword] Memories from the Bethany Relay Station
To: "Order of the Flaming Sword" <flaming_sword at yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, March 25, 2010, 3:08 AM

About a week or so ago, Paul Webster mentioned something about spark gap 
transmitters.  I mentioned the VOA page on Jim Hawkins' antique transmitter 
website.

I went to that page and copied a couple stories about the Bethany site, and 
I will post them here for your perusal.

Enjoy!  Oh, and don't forget your cork-soled shoes and the "one hand 
in the pocket" rule!

Paul.

(Note:  entries have been edited slightly for readability.)

================================================

The following is from the VOA Bethany page on Jim Hawkins' Radio Room 
website.

Memories from the Bethany Relay Station
by John Vodenik, K9HSP, 
Mason, Ohio

Having been employed at Bethany Relay Station for almost 10 
years, I have a few stories I would like to tell. 

I'll start with the 
spark transmitter that a few of us constructed one slow Saturday.  Since 
our primary function as technicians was to:  1, Get the transmitters on and 
2, Keep them on, when things are going well, we kind of get bored.  Back 
about 1994, a couple of us decided to see what it was really like back in the 
spark days.  We gathered up a few transmitting caps from the Crosley 
transmitter stock, wound a couple coils, and built a spark transmitter.  It 
was "breadboarded" on the workbench in the electronics repair shop.  The 
antenna ran from the top of the guard tower, about 80 feet high, down to the 
front of my truck.  From there, the wire ran into the building through a 
piece of fiberglass tubing and connected to one of the caps.  To get the 
high voltage, one of the guys brought in a furnace ignition transformer, so we 
had about 10,000 volts AC.  We found a CW hand key in my locker and 
connected the 110 VAC from the wall outlet through the key contacts, and on to 
the transformer input. 

Somehow, we didn't kill ourselves.  Every 
time we closed the key, there was a very LOUD crack, as the 110 VAC arced across 
the key, and then the spark gap came to life.  The "operators" had to use 
hearing protectors, to deaden the sound.  It could be heard all over the 
transmitter halls.  We managed to generate quite a bit of ozone that day. 

The "signal" was located at 1340 kHz on the AM broadcast band.  One 
of the guys jumped in his car for a "field strength measurement."  We were 
getting out to 5 miles, and the signal was very narrow band, NOT what we had 
expected to see.  Tuning to 1330 or 1350, the signal was gone. 

Things were progressing well, until the output capacitor managed to set 
the workbench top on fire!  So ended the great spark experiment. 

Fire in the Hole

These stories are true.  Only my name has been mentioned. 

OK, have you ever really seen the color "electric blue?"  I have, 
and it is something not to be forgotten.  Late one afternoon, it came time 
to kick the tires and light the fires on one of the Collins 821-A1 250 kW 
transmitters. 

As soon as I pressed the "Plate On" button, the 
transmitter immediately shut down.  There were a couple of overload 
indicators lit up, but nothing to worry about.  They were SWR indicators, 
and they were a usual occurrence at Bethany, running open 300-ohm transmission 
line.  Local flying wildlife would make a stop on the lines and become a 
part of the transmission line for a few milliseconds, when the rig first came 
up.  Then they would kinda fall in bits, to the ground.  More like an 
explosion, really. 

This afternoon, when the transmitter restarted, I 
heard a loud hissing inside the transmitter hall.  Being on the short side, 
I could not see over the top of the transmitter, so I stepped up on the raised 
floor.  There before my eyes was a blue flame, shooting out of the side 
panel of the RF output tuning network. 

When the transmitter had 
originally overloaded, it caused a small amount of smoke inside the output 
stack, and when it came to life, it ignited the aluminum side panel.  In a 
matter of maybe 10 seconds, I had managed to burn a 18-inch-long, 2-inch-wide 
strip out of the side.  After getting things shut down, we had to send the 
panel out to an automotive body shop the get the hole filled and ground flat. 

Hurry up and Wait

As you may have seen from the pictures Jim has of 
Bethany*, our antenna switching was all manual.  A technician had to go 
outside and throw at least 2 of the antenna switches, sometimes more. 

During the Crosley days, it was not uncommon that the operating crew 
tried to out do each other on frequency changes.  It would take 3 people at 
least 7 minutes to remove the loading caps and coils, along with antenna change 
switching. 

My crew had been getting good at these changes; we could do 
it in under 6 minutes, IF we really hustled.  We got the bright idea to 
automate the antenna switching.  On the way in this one day, I stopped at 
the hardware store and bought about 200 feet of 1/8" nylon cord.  This was 
going to be our automation system. 

Before the A.F.R.T.S. frequency 
change to 6.030 MHz, I and another guy ran this line out to the antenna switch, 
and pre-set all the other switches, so we had only one to worry about.  The 
line ran up the pole, to the switch handle, and was secured at the bottom, so 
that it came off at about 90 degrees, and run back into the building. 

At 
the prescribed time, the transmitter left the air.  The crew went to work, 
changing the coils in the RF driver stage and removing the 15 MHz shorting bar 
from the output tank circuit.  After about 6 minutes, we were ready for the 
antenna change.  One of the guys grabbed the line and pulled.  And 
pulled some more.  No one had remembered that nylon stretches, and it 
surely did that day. 

After on off air time of about 8 minutes, the 
switch finally dropped, but didn't have enough energy to close.  So, 
someone had to run outside after all, and close the switch.  I think we set 
a record that day… about 10 minutes for a frequency change. 

===============================================================

* Pictures attached to this message.

VOA Bethany Relay Station -- antenna farm schematic.

VOA Bethany Relay Station -- antenna switch matrix.

VOA Bethany Relay Station -- Curtain and Rhombic antennas.

==================================================================================================

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