The AM Forum

He sure had some grand old boat anchors.

The is a rare photo QSL card from Zach Reynolds, W4TXL, Winston-Salem, NC.  The card measures 7 x 10 inches, and is printed on heavy gloss paper.  It is original, NOT a copy.  Interesting array of equipment is shown, including a Collins KW-1 transmitter.  (He had two.) Zach was a very active ham with a Super-Station, and two "Big Bertha" antenna arrays.  He was one of four sons of R. J. Reynolds, the tobacco magnate in Winston-Salem.  He died in a plane crash in 1979 at age 41


The above in bold was from eBay. I never heard of the Big Bertha antenna tower so here is a link to their site. LIKE WOW MAN.


Here's a link installing the tower.

http://www.qth.com/gallery/v/nt1y/ (http://www.qth.com/gallery/v/nt1y/)



http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/bigbertha.htm (http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/bigbertha.htm)

Nice station for the era.   I see some Drake gear and a Henry 2K too.  TWO Big Berthas - wow.

I remember the Big Bertha at Barry Goldwater's place in AZ - it was erected next to his built-in swimming pool. The ad caption said, "Where in the world would you like to talk?"


The only thing missing in the Reynolds shack is an ashtray... ;)

T

Irb mentioned knowing some of the RJR clan along with the Duponts.

Talk about contrast.

Actually, back in the 50's, 60's, and 70's, it was called the Telrex "Big Bertha". Here's some info from WA7TZY, Fred, on his web site:

(http://web.mac.com/sdt49/WA7TZY/Antenna_Farm_files/BBertha.jpg)  The tower on the left is one of less than 15 original Telrex "Big Bertha" rotating pole towers still in operation.  It was fabricated by a company named Lingo, Inc., from steel fabricated at the Camden Shipyards in New Jersey.

The attachment below shows my next town neighbor, K2KGJ, back in 1958, working on his Telrex "Big Bertha".

The Big Bertha certainly LOOKS impressive.  However, later on when antenna modeling became commonplace, we found the interaction within those multi-stacked Yagis, with multi-stacks within multi-stacks was horrendous.   I would take a simple four-stack of 10-20M log periodics any day.

The rotating pole itself is FB, however.

T

Looking at the cover shot, K2KGJ ran daily phone patches between his location and Antarctica back in those "good old days". Won the Edison Award in 58 or 59. He was still in high school at the time doing all this. Also, somewhere embedded near the top of the array are at least two of Telrex's very long boom yagi's. His brother, K2KGH, ran daily 6 meter SSB transmissions running 1 KW beamed on Antarctica. I don't believe they ever completed a two-way contact on 6.

Yep, impressive results. Just imagine what they could have done with those stacked monobanders on separate towers -in the clear .... ;D ;D ;D   

Yep, except in their case, they lived in a residential area where property footage was generally only about a 1/4 acre. 

Gawd - can you imagine the reaction of their hi-hi FB neighborhood?  That stack will freak out a ham, never mind the Betty Crocker XYLs...     It's amazing they pulled it off, even back then.  I'll bet the TVI/RFI issues haunted them.   But anything for a big signal.

T

It was very daunting when you drove by the place and even more daunting for me, as a young teenager and newly licensed ham, to stand in the front yard there and look up. There might be some photos floating around the web and in past issues of QST and CQ Mag. There were also several articles in the local newspapers at that time. I remember one photo of the station that was wall to wall/ceiling to floor Collins rigs.

Here's a great write-up in the Antarctic Sun about the brothers and their activities back then:
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contentHandler.cfm?id=1688
Great stuff. How many ham teenagers have a mountain ridge in Antarctica named after them.