[Lowfer] Lowfer TAG

[J D]

Well, JA, a pair of 892R tubes should certainly produce reception 
reports ...if the loop antenna could handle the current long enough to 
complete a transmission, anyway.  I have both very fond memories of our 
892R-equipped Westinghouse 10 kW backup transmitter at KOAM in the late 
Sixties and early Seventies, and the occasional night terror.

Fond memories for its visual beauty, quietness (blowers were in the 
basement) and reliability (as few mercury vapor rectifiers as absolutely 
necessary; all medium DC voltages were from those new-fangled copper 
oxide solid state rectifiers), that made it such a joy to do the 
required weekly auxiliary transmitter test.

Terror, because of discovering an undocumented and not properly 
interlocked modification in the RF amplifier cabinet one fateful day in 
1971. While dusting he components with a soft cloth and admiring the 
tubes, with all grounding sticks in place, I was distracted by a sudden 
flash of yellow light and the smell of something unpleasant burning. It 
turned out to be me.

The tip of my right middle finger was puffed up like a kernel of 
popcorn, and I no longer had about a third of my fingernail! It turns 
out that during installation of the new RCA rig during the preceding 
decade, someone took a shortcut when running the new RF feed to the 
changeover contactor, such that several inches of heavy copper wire 
carrying 100% amplitude modulated 10 kW RF on 860 kHz was exposed inside 
the cabinet, unmarked, and with no barrier or shield to prevent 
accidental contact.

With prompt care and close observation for some weeks after, all turned 
out well. Even the fingerprint returned to normal in a few months. But I 
guarantee, a very intense eidetic memory of those tubes at that exact 
moment is etched in my head.

JD