[BC] CCA and QEI

[Glen Kippel]

Yes, the QEI/AEL 675 exciter was programmed to its operating frequency by
soldering jumpers at the appropriate points on the circuit board.  Those
points were delineated by a table in the back of the operating manual.

And, the big AEL exciter with the modules would lose AFC lock if hit too
hard by low-frequency audio.  I would go to the site and play around with it
awhile, and then it would work for a week or so and mysteriously quit.   One
night I was doing a frequency-response run on it and accidentally switched
the audio oscillator's frequency multiplier switch to x1 and the exciter
lost AFC.  So, I cut the lead to the composite input BNC connector and added
a capacitor in series.  That cost us a couple dB at 50 Hz, but the exciter
never lost lock after that.


On 12/31/06, Brew <brew at themode.com> wrote:
>
> Dan Kelley <<mailto:djkelley at frontier.net>djkelley at frontier.net> wrote:
>
> I recall CCA also using that same QEI exciter with the CCA logo on it.
>
>
> Yes, when I worked testing transmitters at CCA in the early seventies
> our FMs went from the CCA Direct Exciter (a crystal with an oven) to
> QEI's frequency synthesized 2 rack unit high exciter.  I remember
> being amazed that you could change the frequency just by changing a
> jumper, or dip switch, or something.  And there was no oven, yet it
> was frequency stable!
>
> QEI also made some frequency monitors for us, too.  I think we might
> have been one of their first customers, but it's a time long ago and far
> away.
>
> QEI was only about ten or twenty miles away from CCA in Gloucester
> City and Charlie Holbrook often showed up to go to lunch with Joe
> Ponist, Bernie Gelman and Bill Hoffman.
>
> Bernie Gelman and Bill Hoffman are both gone, but Joe Ponist works at
> Rutgers University these days.
>
> I once saw a transmitter from an unknown (to me, anyway) company once
> when I was on a field trip to CHOO in Ajax, Ontario.  The station tag
> line was 14-CHOO, which made me wonder how they could be 10 kW on
> 1400, one of our Class IV frequencies, even with their four tower
> inline directional shooting northward, away from the
> states.  Investigation revealed they were actually on 1390.  Charlie
> Tryon was the CE and Brian Sawyer did their antenna work, I remember.
>
> For a backup transmitter to the CCA AM-10,000D they had a one rack
> width 1 kW transmitter from a company I'd never heard off - Contel
> (Continental Electronics Wholesale Corporation) in Hialeah, Florida.
>
> I suspected right away that they were trying to capitalize on
> Continental Electronics' name.  The transmitter was hi-level plate
> modulated, but the AF section was rather underpowered and when I
> modulated it with a 1 kHz. tone it couldn't even make 100%.  I forget
> what tubes it had for modulators, but I'm pretty sure they couldn't
> put out the 2 kW needed to modulate 1 kW of RF, even when
> new.  Charlie Tryon said that he was glad to have it, rather than no
> backup at all, and that he believed Contel mostly did business in
> South America.
>
> I'm pretty sure it wasn't type accepted for use in the United States,
> but Canada wasn't as strict back then, I guess.
>
> I see Contel is listed on:
>
> <http://www.transmitter.be/abbr.html>http://www.transmitter.be/abbr.html
>
> as a Shortwave Transmitter company.
>
> Dave, how did Continental feel about the Continental Electronics
> Wholesale Corporation name?
>
> brew - Bruce Schiller at CBS-TV NY Master Control Maintenance and WA2ZST
>
>
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