[Lowfer] Rememberances or "I was a bootlegger too!"

[Ed Phillips]

     About 1939 a guy I knew found two neon sign transformers on the 
roof of a burned out tavern near the small town I lived in.  He hauled 
them home and showed them to me.  Result was an attempt to communicate 
"across town" [maybe 1-1/2 miles} using the simple spark transmitter 
concept of "one end grounded, one end to the 'aerial wire', and the 
spark gap betwist the two" - instructions out of an old "Boy 
Electrician" book in the school library, originally intended for spark 
coils but an NST worked better of course.  We were blythly unaware that 
the center tap of the transformers was hooked to the case and 
fortunately managed to survive.  Keying consisted of plugging the 
transformer into the wall socket and asking over the phone "can you hear 
it?".  We could indeed on the home BC sets but never tried to 
communicate.  I still have one of the transformers and it must have been 
about a 6 kV, 20 ma gadget although the one I have left is partly shorted.

     Next project came about a year later when Radio News or some such 
published a circuit of a one-tube 5 meter transceiver using a type 19 
battery power twin triode in a 'unity coupled circuit' - single loop of 
copper tubing maybe 4" in diameter between the plates, wire inside run 
to cross-coupled grids, stolen telephone mike for modulation.  That 
worked pretty well and satisfied us for a year or so until the war came 
along and we went our separate ways.  Right after Pearl Harbor one of 
the ladies who taught French at the high school set up an after-school 
code class and got a bunch of us enough up to speed that we ventured off 
on a bus to St. Louis to take our license exams.  Most passed but for 
reasons I now forget we never got station licenses and I didn't get my 
present licence until 1950.

     Actually did another spark transmitter here a few years back.  This 
used a half inch spark coil but with decent Q for the tank circuit and a 
good straight gap.  That put out a pretty clean note and was pretty good 
copy on 160 meter band at my brother-in-law's house a couple of miles 
away.  If was narrow enough "to tune in" and had a pleasant tune to it.  
That was the end of such activities but I've often thought it would be 
fun to organize a "spark night" where guys around the country went on 
the air for a few minutes to see how far they could be heard.

Ed