Showing posts with label 1920's. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1920's. Show all posts

Inside the G6YL Transmitter

G6YL QSL Card, 1933 Barbara Dunn, G6YL was the first British transmitting radio-lady - her amazing story and some beautiful old photos can be found here: "Tribute to Barbara Dunn".

When I came upon that page at the very first time, I've noticed the unusual transmitter with a spectacular Marconi vacuum tube (I prefer to use term "valve" in this case), described in the text as "Her original transmitter employed an L.S.5 in a Hartley circuit". Digging the Net I discovered (here), that that Hartley has been turned into the TPTG transmitter later. Unfortunately I had not found any more information about this radio - neither drawings, nor interior view. As it turned out then, my friend Lou, VE3AWA has looked for this information too, so we joined our efforts.

In a word, here it is:

TX Front Panel G6YL TX Inside View

I really appreciate Peter, G4XEX, volunteer operator at the RSGB National Radio Centre, who took these detailed photos and allowed me to publish them on the Internet. In email communications of August 2013, Peter told that he would help "in case anyone else wants pictures of anything we have at the NRC".

"Transmitters Q.R.P." article from the "Radio Wsem" magazine, May issue, 1927

Radio Wsem magazine cover
Yet another vintage Soviet magazine with a yellow-red cover and the giant LENIN quote. Not the best possible design ever, let's turn over the cover.

In this article my attention has been drawn to the unusual transmitter with the sounding name "Иккльз-Мени", but the article is very interesting itself as it gives us the ability to imagine the Ham Radio life in several European countries at that time.

I tried to translate it as close to the original, but keep in mind that this article has been translated several times before – Russian translation after the German article and, I suspect that that German publication has been translated from the French source.

Time machine HOWTO: How to win the ancient QRP contest

Some time ago digging the web for information on The Radio Club of Hartford, I came across this article in QST magazine (September issue, 1921). In a nutshell, it is about a QRP contest as it should be - "Do More With Less" and then measure how big this "More" is and how much spare "Less" were used. I read this article briefly: something about some kind of reward, some competitions, the names - not very exciting at first sight, but one remarkable thing caught my attention - The Winner, transmitter that won a first prize. This TX has turned my stereotypes upside down (once again): how should it work? where is a rectifier? grounded plate tank? keying the grid-leak?? I have to investigate, or even better - to make my own, based on this article, design and run such a prehistoric radio on the air!
So, is that contest over? I do not think so, not yet, not for me..




The Radio Club of Hartford (affiliated) recently conducted a very interesting contest in the building of C.W. sets. Several months ago the rules were drawn up and about a dozen members entered. The idea was to devise a simple inexpensive C.W. set of low power, preferably operating from 110 volt lighting current, to supersede the spark coil in the small stations about town. The sharper wave and greater distance with reduced interference made this very desirable, and the Radio Club of Hartford is to be commended for instituting steps that can well be followed by other cities in the reduction of QRM.

One of the members of the club offered a silver loving cup as a grand prize, and in addition there were five 5-watt power tubes offered by the club. The rules called for the award of the prizes to the men having the highest scores on the following basis:

Overall electrical efficiency50%
Workmanship20%
Ingenuity in construction15%
Economy in cost15%
100%

The awards were made at the final meeting of the club before closing for the summer, and eight contestants were on hand with their sets. These were of every imaginable description, but mostly following the general idea of a small base bearing a vertical panel carrying the controls, with the apparatus behind.

Considerable ingenuity was displayed in the source of power. Several of the sets used step-down ("toy") transformers on the 110 volt supply, the low potential current thus obtained being used both to light the filament and to operate a spark coil with regular interrupter, the secondary voltage of which was dropped by a shunt condenser and then fed to the plate of the tube. These sets of course would operate from a storage battery equally well.

It was a condition of the contest that the operating wave length should not exceed 200 meters, and thru faulty design only two sets were able to achieve this - those submitted by J. C. Randall, 1ANQ, Dist. Supt., and F. H. Schnell, 1MO, our Traffic Manager, who is incidentally vice president of the club. Both of these sets, however, were able to get down to 180 meters, altho readings were taken at 200. A phantom antenna was used, consisting of a 12-ohm resistance and a mica condenser of .0005 mfd. capacity, in series with a Jewell thermo-couple ammeter.

Radio Girl

Radio GirlOccasionally found this Radio Girl album browsing the web, I knew that it is slightly offtopic here in this blog, but I have to post it anyway. It is soft acoustic rock music by Nick Wilkinson, naive young guitar dancing around the vintage radio set, maybe too sappy, but it is exactly as I like. And look at cover art - how could I resist, who can resist at all? Listen to the Radio Girl!

<a href="http://nickwilkinson.bandcamp.com/track/radio-girl">Radio Girl by Nick Wilkinson</a>

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USSR HAM-Radio CallBook in 1926

I just found a very interesting paper - a complete list of all transmitting amateur radio stations in 1926 in the USSR, club stations, as well as personal ones. It is remarkable, that the frequencies and power levels of club stations are selected in such a way that ensures reliable traffic between distant regions and Moscow - the farther station from center, the higher its power and shorter its wavelength. And another note - individuals had managed to use different wavelengths, so it was not too easy to contact each other that times.