[Milsurplus] WW2 Destroyer Escort on the air TBL + RBC

[Nick England]

News from the USS Slater DE-766 museum ship in Albany NY - congratulations
to them!
It is a great ship to visit - http://www.ussslater.org/

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"The radio gang reached a true milestone this month on the bumpy road to
1945 ‘operational readiness’ for Slater’s TBL HF transmitter. After 5 years
of installation and frustration, Mike Wyles, KE2EE, made the actual first
radio contact and exchange of signal reports on the 40-meter ham band. He
used SLATER’S current call sign WW2DEM. The final steps of getting the TBL
to respond to remote control from local operating position three through
the transmitter control patch panel, and tuning the TBL for the 40 meter
‘ham band’ using the portside longwire antenna, were completed after a lot
of trial and error.
All the equipment used was 70 year-old US Navy radio equipment. This
included our TBL Transmitter, RBC Receiver, and LM-12 Frequency Meter. It
also included our Navy earphones, Navy transmitter remote control, and CW
key, transmitting with the original ship’s longwire horizontal antenna and
receiving with the forward vertical wire antenna on the port side. Mike
contacted AB3AP near Lancaster, PA. He reported our CW signal as “perfectly
readable, strongest possible”. He did say that our signal sounded ‘like a
vintage transmitter’ and we personally kind of like that. Also, consider
that on our end we used around 1900 pounds of equipment. AB3AP’s entire
station is about half the size of a carton of cigarettes and weighs about a
pound. How times have changed.
Unfortunately, our first contact was not with our own Stan Levandowski
WB2LQF, as we intended. But the following weekend, RM1 Joe Breyertook over
and spent most of Saturday on the air making several more contacts. We have
been operating on or near 7.062 Mc (CW), using all original authentic Navy
equipment right down to Joe’s original Navy earphones and speed key. The
whole saga goes back to 2006 when we identified and removed the TBL from
the USS CLAMP ARS-33 in the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, under the direction
of Fleet superintendent Joe Pecoraro. We couldn’t have gotten it and the
motor generator off without the assistance of the crew of USS PAMPANITO,
namely Rich Pekelney, Jim Adams, Tom Horsfall, Len Vaden, Aron Washington,
and Will Donzelli. Once safely ashore, Tom Horsfall spent a year restoring
the TBL to operating condition.
It was September 2010 when we shipped the restored transmitter east, and
Tom Horsfall journeyed from California to oversee the initial installation.
When they cranked it up for the first time, it lasted about ten minutes
before a winding opened up in the motor generator. It took four years to
get the generator problem straightened out. In the meantime, Stan Byrn
donated a beautiful RBC receiver to operate in conjunction with our TBL,
and Tom restored that for us, too. It’s been a long road, and we are
indebted to a lot of people who helped keep this history alive."