[Milsurplus] Collins 32RA Transmitter

[Cletus W Whitaker]

de WB2CPN  South Central Pennsylvania    2002.10.23

The 32RA was one of the first transmitters I encountered when I went
into the USAF in 1945.  It was used by the Templehof Control Tower in
Berlin.  The transmitter site was approximately 2 miles from the tower,
the telephone line was connected to a small control box which plugged
into the MIC jack on the 32RA.  The frequency was 6440 KHz, and the
antenna was a 40' vertical hanging on wood cross arms which were 
attached to a wood pole.  I thought there were only three channels, but
maybe four.  It was a learning machine.  Tuning Pi networks was hard
to learn, but the theory stuck with me all these years.  That transmitter
had a thermocouple in the back to measure the Antenna Current which
was used for tuning the antenna with the Pi network.  It was black
crackle like the 1939 QST.  It had the Signal Corps stamps on it, but no
name plate.  The manual was a Collins book.  I never saw one that
wasn't black, and the AN system, (FRT-?) hadn't happened any place I
was then.  It was common to name things with numbers and letters, 96C was
a 3 KW Wilcox transmitter.  The T-4 was a 400 watt transmitter.  We had 
lots of BC-??? whatever, but a lot of the hardware in those days had
been procured off the shelf.  We used two Collins auto-tune transmitters.
One was 500 watts, the other was approximately 2500 watts.  That was
before the ART-13's.  Beginning with the invasion of Africa in
early WWII the Air Corps used a Signal Corps enity to engineer and
install fixed plant radio equipment.  "PEA, Plant Engineering Agency"
They were the elite.  They recruited ham radio gear and sent it to war.
Many of our "Super Pro" radios didn't have a BC-779 name plate.  Anyway,
as the man said, the intermediate stages were tuned with plug-in cans
which had two APC's which were accessable through holes in the top. 
As the years passed I found that the 32RA and the BC-779 was a common low
power HF facility in Air Corps and later USAF use.  I did like that
transmitter.  Anybody want to talk about the T-4 or the BC-640?   Bye... 
                              73  Clete