[Milsurplus] Re: Ricebox hams on WW2 warships...

[Unserviceable but Repairable]

Yo Ben et al

It's not just rice boxen, but also use of ship's non-resonant vertical wire
antennas.  Employment of same is disunderstood by the lion's share of
the good-hearted volunteer community who run coax to a vertical-wire
connection point & then attempt a match @ the ham tuner by the Icom.

Big no-go...

60s tuners like the Wanzer can be set as L networks & placed at the
antenna's entry point into the radio room & the Yaesu will love
the install.

Auto tuners for HF marine shipboard radios are dispose idn just this
manner.

So could someone on list fab up fiberglass Royal Typewriter disguise 
enclosures to cover the Kenwoods on radio room tours?

Another bug was working AM regional roundtables w. a 15w TCS.  There 
comes the disguise enclosure again, but this time for a SB200 or 30L1.  
But you ask, how to get 50 ohms to the linear outa the TCS?

That's been covered a lot.  TCS et al were built to run with an
antenna that started at the rig... not a coax-fed remote antenna.
TCS like so many ww2 Navy rig were designs born of the 20s when "Sparks" 
sat in a shack between the stacks & the antenna began there.  Hence the 
built-in antenna tuners.

Wartime necessitated moving these rigs 'way below decks.  & so's TCS/TDE/TBL
kinds of rigs wud work there rather than in Spark's shack, enormous 
antenna-lead 3' square antenna trunks were employed w copper pipe 
'inner conductors.'  These to manage the huge reactive voltages & 
currents found on the feeds to non-resonant verticals.   Ever notice
the giant ceramic insulators on a 100w TDE antenna connection?

D. Stinson once broke this 'trunk code' by publishing a dwg. showing the 
'trunks' on a Destroyer.  The NRL folks knew the score.

These matters were born of experience on a museum ship... w/o
benefit of the visual deceivers.   Same 'not navy, we'll get
newer/better coax' mindset emerged which any psychologist would say 
translated to 'not understood.'

Can you immagine someday going aboard Yorktown @ CHS & finding radio
room filled w. typewriters?

  Marty

....and there's the belief that the stem-to-stern ship 'long wire' 
    radiated on MF & elsewire.  Uh-uh.  It's the capacity hat for the 
    'vertical feed' that does the radiating job @ 500kcs & below.  Antenna
    system called a Marconi in other lives & places.