The AM Forum

While Bob (W1XYZ) was helping me repair my 32V2 transmitter, he noticed that the 4D32 tube made by Ratheon had the words "Bomber stock"  written on it.  We guess it must have come from the post-WWII era, early 50s perhaps when hen Gen. Lermay was assembling SAC bombers. Attached is a picture of me (w1zzz) with the 4D32 tube in my ham shack.

That tube is a real treasure! :D

73DG

really cool.

Very cool. Maybe it came out of Jimmy Stewart's B36

On March 22, 1941, Jimmy Stewart was drafted into the U.S. Armed Forces. He was assigned to the Army Air Corps as an enlisted man and stationed at Moffett Field, Calif. During his nine months of training at that base, he also took extension courses with the idea of obtaining a commission. He completed the courses and was awaiting the results when Pearl Harbor took place. A month later he received his commission, and because he had logged over 400 hours as a civilian, he was permitted to take basic flight training at Moffett and received his pilot wings. During the next nine months, he instructed in AT-6, AT-9 and B-17 aircraft and flew bombardiers in the training school at Albuquerque, N.M. In the fall of 1943, Stewart went to England as Commanding Officer of the 703d Bomb Squadron, equipped with B-24s.

He began flying combat missions and on March 31, 1944, was appointed Operations Officer of the 453rd Bomb Group and, subsequently, Chief of Staff of the 2nd Combat wing, 2nd Air Division of the 8th Air Force. Stewart ended the war with 20 combat missions. He remained in the USAF Reserve and was promoted to brigadier general on July 23, 1959. He retired on May 31, 1968.


http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1670

I really liked his cold war USAF movie where they were just bringing out B-47's and he had to convnce his wife that his duty was to stay in the AF.  She kept pushing him to get in big business.

Strategic Air Command [VHS] (1955)

Does anyone have knowledge as to how the 4D32 tube was primarily used? I had heard it was a pulse modulator tube used in radar application. The 4D32 has a massive cathode and therefore high pervience capable of peak plate currents of over an ampere at relatively low plate voltage. I ultra-modulated one once, and was able to get > 800w PEP from a single tube from a 100watt carrier (200% modulation). With a sine wave drive the internals of that tube would light the room with a combination of red and blue. The same tube took this abuse for years without complaint...

Try that with a pair of 6146's...they won't last a minute.

Jim
WD5JKO

I’m glad to see the comments here on the 4D32, as I’ve always felt that the tube was well engineered and under-appreciated for its engineering.  It has a built–in screen bypass of about 100 p.f. as I recall.  That tells you that it was intended for VHF in the original design application.  

I don’t think it was widely used and the ham HF transmitter applications would not have required the internal screen bypass.  Perhaps some military radio guys can state in what military radios they were used.

The 4D32 came out in 1950.  It was made only by Raytheon.

As I see it:
At the time, the 6146 hadn’t come out yet and so there was a hole in the availability of newer tubes in the 100 Watt range.  When the 6146 did come out in 1952, it quickly eclipsed other tubes the commercial market.

(I'm a former 32V-3 owner.)

The 4D32 came out earlier than 1950 and maybe even during WW2 when many tubes were classified and not registered until later.

The first ham use was the 1949 Viking I followed by the first 32V the same year and later the HT-20.

Then during the Korean War it was used as a pulse modulator in a USAF radar. It never received a VT or JAN designation and the ones I have for the Viking I, 32V2 and spares are marked just USAF.

Considering that a pair could easily put out a 250W carrier at low PS and RF component cost its a very underated and under utilized tube.

There is also the 4D22 with a 12/24V filament.

Carl

I thought he drove a B36 in the movie. 6turnin and 4 burnin

The B36 and the 4D32 are both most beautiful examples of engineering. I enjoyed seeing and touching the B36 at the SAC museum near Omaha. The 4D32 served me well for years in a Viking I in the old bootlegging days. It must have suffered some abuse but never really went flat.

There's still a new spare 4D32 here but the Viking was sold some time ago. The buyer was too cheap and wanted $20 off for "no spares". (incl NOS 807's and others..) hah. silly buyer. It's a heck of a tough tube! the only thing I can think of to replace with would be a 4-65. I never liked the twin 6146's Johnson used.

Whether the 4D32 says bomber on it or not, it is a "bomber".

I got up close to one at Loring AFB as a kid.  Also. watched a test stand wind up one of those P&W's R-4360s on a test stand. What an awesome experience for a jn.  Got inside a B36 and missed getting into the cockpit by 2 kids but did get to look down through the bombay doors to the ground way down.  Included is a shot of the transmitter on a 36

Al

Frank, Your right. Here is a clip from the movie showing Jimmy and one of my favorite actors, Harry Morgan (Colonel Potter) as flight engineer during a takeoff routine in a B-36. I'm sure during Stewart's carrier he saw the inside of one of these often.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk)

Mike

4-65 is a high Z tube. It will not work well at 750 volts.
AF needed low voltage tubes because of corona issues when you get up high. I remember the first radar system we pulled to 60 K feet. First thing we changed was the mylar insulators under the modulator transistors. Mica worked much better. Final tube ran at 1KV.
That is why the ART13 ran low voltage.

A quote from rec.audio.tubes:


The 3E29 was used as a RADAR modulator. Discharge a charged lumped constant (LC) transmission line into a magnetron & get a nice steep edged pulse of RF. The faster the edge the better the resolution of the system.


I wonder if the 4D32 did the same thing as the 3E29 (pulse version of the 829B)?

Jim
WD5JKO

Actually the 32V-2 came out in 1949 along with the Viking I. The 32V-1 came out in 1946, clearly pointing to the WWII years as the source of the 4D32.

Was probably used in in some wartime RADAR and/or countermeasures set up. It certainly has that pulse-tube design look to it.

Great shot of the ART-13 in the B-36, Al. It doesn't appear to be hooked down to anything, though. Wouldn't want that thing flying around in the cabin if the plane hit turbulence. The B-36 was out of service when I was a kid, but I recall hearing them referred to as the Flying Cigar. Definitely a lot going on with one of those beats. Pretty amazing to think of it all coming together for controlled flight.

B-17.

They rool !

I posted this last year; still feel lucky to have taken the flight.


 http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/11/usaf.flyover/index.html?iref=allsearch

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On the "bomber" tube, I once saw a 4D32 with a ceramic base. And I have a JAN type with red paint rather than etched. Date code into the 1970s.

Searching the ARRL pubs archive, the first mention on the 4D32 is March 1946 in a brief article about recently introduced tubes.

No doubt it was a WWII development, but may have made it onto the market a few months after the war ended.

Wow, great find.

I purchased a spare 4D32 for my Viking 1 as backup and it too was a Raytheon tube.

The paperwork had the serial number of the tube and said it was tested in March of 1952, but no bomber markings, dang it.   >:(

Phil - AC0OB

in terms of tube capacitance, one 4d32 is like two 6146's in parallel. So, rf-wise, the 4d32 is a drop-in (after some hacking and some rewiring).

peter

or install a pair of 4D32s and run them light so you have plenty of peak emission for monkey swingage

mmmm...so, if one puts two of them into, say, a dx-100 then the only
change IN THE DRIVER portion (one would have to redesign the pi-net for the humongous power) would be changing C45 (see below) to 22pf ?

The 4D32 were just as scarce as hen's teeth until a few years ago when the government sold their stock that was warehoused.  Price went from over 70 per tube down to less than half that, about 5-10 years back.  I recall the early days of eBay when guys would advertise them as a Collins part.  The tube was introduced in 1950 and the military bought most of the production I was told.  For what I don't know, but when they sold them  to surplus dealers the price took a real dive.  Now guys buy them in pairs to have a spare.

6146s might not take what you did but the 6293 might @ 350 volts at 3 amps peak.  They, too, were beam power pulse tubes for radar.  If you use them in place of a 6146, they will last a good long time with a lot of  abuse especially if you cool them.  They have a hefty plate and cathode.

You're both right.  Started out in 36's and ended up in 47's in the movie.  We [ARADCOM] did a lot of work with SAC.  Knew some good guys there.  Now we are both history.  Before I get to where I can't travel easily I hope to get to Wright Patterson AFB to see the B-36 there.  And some of the other types that I talked to on the UHF.

An old Raytheon Special Purpose tube manual [no date] shows Vmax on plates as 750, Imax 300 ma.  50W dissipation.  135 W output.  For the RK4D32.

B47, was that the Northrup flying wing?

The 4-65 will work well at 750V. Its not a perfect substitute in a Viking but don't count it out too quickly.

Nope,

it was a 6 engine bomber built in the late 40's / early 50's to drop nucs on the Soviets.

A precursor to the B-52.

There were about 2000 B47s built.

I have a friend who served on them as a bombadier.

I don't think the flying wing ever made it into production.

Dave

I once saw a pack of B-36's and B-47's fly over the house in Valley Stream NY during a show at Mitchell AFB. I think I had an orgasm  ???  The 47's were a regular flyover.

As far as the 4-65 the efficiency tanks at LV, do the math on that chart. I never could get one to play well at around 800V in a Henry driver stage for a 3CX3000A7 industrial amp built for Perkins Elmer, and there was a big difference between NOS tubes. At 1600V ( went to a doubler) it did well and all tubes acted the same.

Carl

Patrick

At first, I dismissed your 4-65 comment but then - - - I thought - "yeah! that would be a perfect choice for my EICO 720!"  But, I have to figure out where I would cut the peek-a-boo window.  117 ma would be handled quite well by the 720 PS.  I'd probably have to gut out the clamper and install a bias supply.  I like it! But not for my Vikings.

Al

I seem to recall some B-47s at Loring AFB when I was up there in the 50's

Carl,

I grew up in Garden City. I remember my Dad taking me and my younger brother for a car ride around Mitchell Field, seeing the German POW camps, and  also going to the air shows.  If I remember, I think that they landed a B-36 there one time. I also remember being at Roosevelt Field with a friend, who's Dad worked as an A&E mechanic for Texaco.

Boy, long time ago!

Ken
w3kmp

This will put the B-36 in perspective; thats a B-29 next to it!  The wing span is almost a half wave on 160.

Ken, I had several relatives at Grumman, Sperry and elsewhere building planes and parts during the war plus 2 uncles flying B-17's out of the UK and remote cousins in the Luftwaffe. I had to learn to kick ass at a young age because of my heritage :(

Carl

The B-36 is THE most impressive piece of Communist-fighting iron ever constructed.  There's one at the USAF Museum in Dayton, OH.

Here's a clip from the classic movie "Strategic Air Command" starring Jimmy Stewart (as mentioned earlier), with an engine start, taxi, and takeoff with 6 turnin' and 4 burnin'.  Later in the movie Jimmy Stewart transitions from the B-36 to the Boeing B-47.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wvEzhyY9F4

I happened upon an article about the Univac I tube based computer developed in the early 1950s:

"UNIVAC I used 5,200 vacuum tubes,[6] weighed 29,000 pounds (13 metric tons), consumed 125 kW, and could perform about 1,905 operations per second running on a 2.25 MHz clock. The Central Complex alone (i.e. the processor and memory unit) was 4.3 m by 2.4 m by 2.6 m high. The complete system occupied more than 35.5 m² of floor space."

And it used 4d32s:

"The vacuum tubes used in the UNIVAC I were mostly of type 25L6, but the machine also used tubes of type 6AK5, 7AK7, 6AU6, 6BE6, 6SN7, 6X5, 28D7, 807, 829B, 2050, 5545, 5651, 5687, 6AL5, 6AN5, 6AH6, 5V4, 5R4, 4D32, 3C23, and 8008."

A typical PC is 1 million times faster.

I thinking to myself... why all these different tubes in the UNIVAC?  What on earth would a 4D32 be doing in a digital computer where surely almost the entire lot of tubes are used as logic gates and registers?  Seems pretty inefficient to use an rf power tube in there.  I know I am missing something... my mind is a little foggy though.. I just woke up from a really surreal dream.

I'm thinking maybe a clock driver for that 2.25 MHz clock??

Seems like you would need quite a bit of drive to clock 5000 logic tubes. Probably several 4D32s.

Another question is:

Why use a 25L6 as the primary logic tube? Seems to me a physically smaller dual triode like a 12AU7 would cut the number of logic tubes you would need in half.

I suppose that makes sense, especially since the 4D32 was a new and exciting tube at the time the UNIVAC was being developed.  As for the dual triodes i.e. the 12au7 etc... well maybe they had a great bulk deal on the 25L6!

Maybe it's my eyes? In that picture you posted Carl, I see the 6 prop engines but no jet engine nacelles. Maybe a B-36 variant?

I wonder what sort of piston engines they used? In the youtube video I see the blue smoke and sound of piston engine exhaust but the housings don't look large enough for radials. Possibly an in line V-12 Merlin or Allison?

Are any of those Univac I tubes 12 volt?

Mike

The B36 was first produced with only the 6 prop engines. Then, in a later varient (B36E?), they added two pods of two jets for a total of four jet engines.

Then I think they went back and added jets to some (but not all) of the earlier B36s.

According to an article I read, there were problems with the rear pointing prop engines not cooling properly -- not enough airflow -- and some engine fires.

R-4360 radials.  The nacelles may not look big enough, but that's because the whole plane is ginormous.  The wings are thick enough the flight engineer can crawl thru them to maintain the engines in flight.

I have always found radials to be fascinating. Just a wierd design that kinda defies a lot of what you think you know about engines in general. Also they always had an odd number of cylinders swinging off of a single crankpin. Just stack a few more in front of each other if you needed more horsepower. The "camshaft" (kind of hard to call it that) was an engineering nightmare. But they managed to get it all to work reliably.

With today's engineering and labor costs, it would be interesting to see what it would cost nowadays to develop such a power plant. Production costs killed the original Chrysler Hemi. (and a few other interesting power plants)

And then there was the Gnome, it just defied everything..............

Did some of the early ones use JATO before the conversions? I vaguely remember something about them having to fly out over the Atlantic on takeoff.

The B-36 has to be one of the best looking bombers ever built. The B-52 is completely ungainly but sure is capable.

As nukes got more efficient the airplane got smaller to deliver Dr. Teller's surprise.
Boeing has a giant conventional bomb that weighs 20,000 pounds. Imagine the hole it can bore if dropped from 50K feet. It fills both bays of the B1.
Frank every time I go to P&W I crank the carb on the wasp display.
beautiful design. My Dad used one to generate cross winds during jet engine tests.

The prop engines are the "Wasp Major" engine. 28 cylinders. Fires were an issue due to poor cooling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_R-4360

If you look at the cut-away for that engine, that thing has bazillions of moving parts
Makes you kinda wonder how they achived the reliability factor meeded for aircraft certification (and safety) that was a lot of stuff flying around. I guess that is why they called for 600 hour overhaul intervals. (not to mention the garbage that they use for oil in airplane engines)

Here is one that will leave you scratching your head. This engine just seems wrong by all that you are used to.  ???  ???  ;D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_et_Rh%C3%B4ne

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome_Monosoupape

And watch it run here  :o  :o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaWwgQDrGMw

I knew a B17 driver who blew a bottom jug off when he lost a ring and it filled up with oil. He had the piston sitting on his desk that held his smoking pipes.

10,000 HP on wheels!  What's with the water buckets at the end?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3iyOvLXxF0&NR=1&feature=endscreen

Al

Frank I think the logic was it ran cooler. Imagine trying to take a high speed turn with that spinning mass.
did the french ever build a good car?

Actually it could out maneuver a fighter at altitude because of it's massive wing size and additional jet engines, where a fighter of the time would go into a stall. Just read that two days ago so it has to be true!

Yes, quite a few. For a start there is the Peugeot 205 GTI which was the main competitor to the Volkswagen Golf GTI. It provided an affordable high performance compact car that still had plenty of space for storage and still returned reasonable gas mileage. It shined, though, in it's sheer willingness to be driven enthusiastically. It may not have had much power but with the chassis being so competent it could cover ground on back grounds at an exceptionally quick pace. The French have always been very smart when it comes to designing cars that handle well but also offer good ride comfort. Another example would be the Citroen SM which used Maserati power with Citroen's hydropneumatic to create a long legged GT that is still regarded today as one of the best of its class.

The French were also very good at integrating art into practical design. They made cars that not only looked ahead of their time but also offered technological advancements that, up until that time, were reserved only for luxury cars. The Citroen DS was the first mass production car with front disc brakes. It also featured a semi-automatic transmission as well as an adjustable suspension that always self leveled. The DS was so popular that when it was unveiled at the 1955 Paris Motor Show 743 orders were taken in the first 15 minutes.

I thought the citroen was an ugly HOS.
My wife bought an allience new. I had better steering on the wood thing I built using my baby carriage wheels we rode down hills. After 2 years it started falling apart and she unloaded it. It was the worst POS I ever drove.
The garage she traded it in was a friend of her family. He couldn't sell it so he mounted a blade on the front and used it to push snow.

Which Citroen are you referring to? The Alliance was by Renault, not by Citroen. The Alliance was not made by Renault, though. It was made by American Motors in Kenosha, Wisconsin. American Motors was in quite a bit of trouble financially from poor sales due to questionable build quality and models that were being updated less and less frequently. Renault eventually bought a controlling share in AMC. This kept AMC afloat and gave Renault a dealer network in the US.

I could always tell when I was in France as it had the ugliest and most dilapidated cars of any major country, I thought I was in Portugal or maybe Senegal.

I find this peculiar considering how the vehicle inspections in Europe are far more stringent than those in the United States. Some of the things I've seen on American roads beggars belief.

Having wrenched on a Citroen SM years ago, it's one of the sorriest POS ever made.  I think only the Maserati BiTurbo was worse.

The Citroen DS, while certainly an engineering leap forward, didn't even begin to be in the same class as a contemporary Chevy, Ford, or Plymouth in the reliability department; one reason was the combined hydraulic steering/self-leveling suspension.  In its favor, it at least wasn't a rolling fire hazard like the SM.

And therein lies the achilles heel with radial engines.  The bottom jugs can fill with oil and cause a hydro lock if care isn't taken in the starting process.  Either pull the prop through several revolutions by hand, or count a half dozen or so blades when cranking the starter before you hit the magnetos.  That's the reason radials are so smokey on startup.

The only issue I can remember with the SM was the fact that the valves would shear at their stems. If I remember correctly this was due to Maserati having used sodium filled valves which were failure prone. Time and research has since fixed these issues and now, beyond regular maintenance, they're reliable cars. Most of the bad press comes from people who didn't take care of their cars. You can't expect to defer maintenance and hide from the consequences forever.

The only time the self leveling suspension would give issues would give problems is when it wasn't looked after. That was it. It's not that difficult to work on and provides a ride quality that a contemporary Chevy, Ford or Plymouth could not match. I wouldn't speak too highly of Mopar built quality, at least from the 1960's and 70's. Have you ever seen the variances in panel gaps on one?

.

We are talking about France and not the continent. When was the last time you were there and where?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACjOvyx5hs


" We are talking about France and not the continent"

I like their fries.

klc

Yes and I was explaining that as a whole (France included) Europe's vehicle inspection program is far more stringent than it is here in the United States. I was last in northern France in 2001.

I'm so ticked off at my 2001 silverado with 140K miles. I had to replace my first light today. The little wire inside the bulb was intermittant.

That's impressive to see you have 140k on it. How is the body?

I dont even expect any of my American cars to need more than consumables before 200K. Except for a few 60's Brits that I installed Chevy V-8's in the 60's and 70's the closest thing to foreign in this family has been a pair of Volvos, built in MD and a few older 240's that also got V-8's to have fun with and flip for a nice profit.

My last EU trip was last year on a visit to my USAF Major son who lives in Germany and the side trip into France didnt look much diferent than any other time, plenty of shitboxes everywhere. Ive always considered it a 3rd world country since my USN visits in the early 60's.

Did it stink over there?

It certainly seems like our opinions differ greatly.

So we've gone from tubes to bombers to cars.  
Cool thread.

Got the '64 out today for a cruise ... came back and it's 10 miles short of 207,000


Started right up. Hasn't been run since September.

Even the dashboard is more fun than what's out there now.

You know you're in a third world country when you see things like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel or this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

Soap still seems to be in short supply but the perfume industry is profitable.



Gotta love those old Dynaslows or does that one have a PG?



Several visible frills while the population is in turmoil and parts still are in the medieval ages. Sorry but Im not a lockstep Francophile.

It's a little newer than the DF.  SuperTurbine 400.  That's what came in the Electramobile, Riviera and Wildcat. The LeSabre got the ST300.

Turns out KA1KAQ/Todd's sister had a boyfriend with a '64 Wildcat he was telling me about last night on 3707Kc.  Convertible !  That's a chick magnet, then and now. Mine?  It's a sedan. Bench seats. My grandfather was the original owner,  and now I guess I'm closer to his demographic these days ...

Let's see - let me do the math.  Yeup, he bought it new when he was 67.  That's a little scary for me, whoa.

This taught me magazine authors can be bought.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/dishonorable-mention-the-10-most-embarrassing-award-winners-in-automotive-history

I remember reading about how the Alliance earned Car of the Year. That certainly was a bit peculiar. Sometimes, though, a car, when new, can be impressive but it might not hold up very well over time. There also can be biases at play as well but the Vega, really?  :P

I read an article where Joe Oldham, writer for the magazine Hi-Performance Cars, had tested an AMX around 1971. He was with his test driver in the middle of NYC. They came to a stop at a traffic light and one of them pointed out that they found it odd that there was a tired wheel rolling down the street next to them. After some investigation they had realized that the wheel was their own! The wheel had sheared off at the hub! AMC made some great cars (the drag ready Rebel "The Machine", anyone?) but by 1971 the lack of sales were really starting to cut into their profits.

When it comes to automotive writers, I still miss "Uncle" Tom McCahill, who used to write for Mechanix Illustrated. Great writer and called it like he saw it.

How about Click and Clack in Car Talk

http://www.cartalk.com/ (http://www.cartalk.com/)

Id of guessed 63 and I never could keep track of Buick transmisssions after the DF, Seeemed they aded a turbine every year and then tossed on numbers and sdjectives.

This is one of my summer toys, 68 Impala SS 396

---

That's a good looking ride.    Bet you can't wait to put the top down.

My Mom's got a '69 Mercury Marquis convertible that just sits in the garage.  429, 4V, dual exhaust, limited-slip, rated HP somewhere north of 360 @ 11:1  and super ethyl.

Repeating -- it just sits in the garage. But hey, I've got my fleet and my brother's got his, so what can ya do ?

Remove the engine, tranny and rear end and install into a mustang for very quick, fun car. Drag the rest "over the scales" and do the "green" thing by recycling. Makes for a real good tire smoker................ ;D  ;D

I built a couple many years back, it's way easier now, all of the motor mount brackets and little accessory stuff that I had to make from scratch, you can buy now.

Got ya beat! ! ! !  Got 146k on my 4-cyl Ranger still has all of the original bulbs
(and most of the other parts as well)

Heh. That's nothing. I have 140k on my car and it stil has the original oil.

Rookies!

Just passed on to a neighborhood kid my '93 Ranger w/ 318K miles on the original motor. Unfortunately, I had to replace the rubber peddle covers at 250K.

Geez, and I think my '02 Impala is a high millage unit at 67349 miles on the clock!
                                    ::) :o :P :) ;) :D ;D

Does she need a boyfriend to go cruizin with? I love those big arks.

Carl