Historic Transmitter Photos

[WA2SQQ]

For those of you who are into looking at photos of some real boat anchor installations, you might want to check out Shorpy - https://www.shorpy.com/
I did a search for the word “transmitter” and was amazed at how many photos were available – mostly derived from very high resolution glass negatives.

[W7TFO]

I can see it now:  The Ladies of RF!

73DG

[W3RSW]

Workin’ lace ups on that woman.

Check out that spindly clip lead on the larger gauge coil wire.
I know someone who’s always happy to see clip leads in any circuit. 

Neat variometer coil too.  Main coil Freq. about 20 meters or so?

[kb2vxa]

This thread is supposed to be about historic transmitters, THIS is a historic transmitter. It is an RCA BTA50H Ampliphase 50KW unit in the transmitter hold of the MV Ross Revenge, the main transmitter of Radio Caroline all bolted down for operation rocking and rolling (sic) on the high seas. The Ross Revenge, an ex side trawler outfitted as a pirate radio ship today is anchored in the River Blackwater estuary as a museum ship now that Caroline moved to London as a legal station. It is the subject of the movie The Boat That Rocked, the scene depicting the sinking of the first ship, the MV Mi Amigo is sure to make every AM Gangsta who sees it laugh. (No spoilers here.) You'll love the music, and the soundtrack album will fill out your 60s rock and roll archive. You can listen live here https://www.radiocaroline.co.uk/#home.html with barely a few low key commercials. If you only want the main stream plug this http://sc3.radiocaroline.net:8030/listen.pls into your player.

[W3GMS]

For those of you who are into looking at photos of some real boat anchor installations, you might want to check out Shorpy - https://www.shorpy.com/
I did a search for the word “transmitter” and was amazed at how many photos were available – mostly derived from very high resolution glass negatives.

Is that picture from a radio school that was in the Washington DC area?   I have read about her, but just can't recall her name.  Very excellent picture.

73,
Joe-W3GMS

[PA0NVD]

In my vision this is a spark transmitter, you can see the battery of Leidsche flessen, the capacitors. The frequency should be long wave Interesting to know that the peak power of those spark transmitters is often > 1 MWatt
Radion Caroline had a nice 50 kW transmitter. I was on board  Quite an experience. When there were heavy seas, the sparks and arcs went from the base of the antenna over the deck. Than they switched back power, a VERY risky thing to do. You had to go inbetween the hull of the ship and the big transmitter. At the side was a completely open knife switch. The passage was only a 60 cM or so. They did put a bug screw driver in the knife switch (it was open because it once exploded when sea water entered the switch) and switched to low power with nice sparks. Next to the antenna connection (a 1/4 inch copper tube) was a coupling loop and a big vacuum diode. That did power the on board monitor loud speaker in the studio