[BC] Re: Boring versus exciting transmitters

[RichardBJohnson@comcast.net]

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com>
> ------ At 05:52 AM 4/9/2007, nakayle at gmail.com wrote: -------
> 
> >Well when they did away with mercury rectifiers it took a lot of the
> >fun out of radio.  It's sad to think how many engineers today have
> >never seen the blue glow of MV rectifers flashing with the music.  Or
> >hear the roar of motor-generators making DC for the filaments.  Or see
> >the majestic spray of water ponds cooling big linear amp tubes.
> 
> Those tubes and all their colors is what fascinated me enough to want 
> to be in this business. My first view of a transmitter was a 1Kw 
> Western Electric with a window displaying 8008s, I think. It had 
> smaller windows below that displayed the mercury vapor rectifiers. It 
> actually looked like it was doing something. My biggest thrill at the 
> time was a water-cooled 50Kw monster that occupied two floors. It had 
> no cabinet, just fencing. Very large tubes were bolted to the floor 
> and those that required cooling were surrounded by ceramic pipes fed 
> by large pumps on the floor below..
> 
> My local library had a radio section with many books with pictures of 
> similar transmitters. It got me hooked. A 50 Kw transmitter the size 
> of a double-wide refrigerator doesn't have the same excitement.
> 
> Rich 
> 

For those not “in the know,” Rich was a teenage radio announcer at WDEW in Westfield, Massachusetts. As a high-school student who mowed the station’s lawn for pocket change, he convinced the Program Director, Ray Dowell, that he could do an air shift on the weekends. That started his successful career spanning over forty years. At the age of eighteen, I became the “Chief Engineer” of that station. The Western Electric transmitter was frightening in many ways. First, it worked by fiat. Only declared to work, it could not make power nor modulate without excessive carrier shift. It used the Doherty scheme with “carrier” and “peak” tubes in the output. Actual modulation occurred within a single low-level triode where audio and RF magically mixed inside.

Since tubes were no longer obtainable, the manager authorized me to “convert” the transmitter to use types that were more modern. Once I took a tube inventory, it became obvious that the best solution would be to build a new transmitter from scratch. That new transmitter became the Johnson Associates RBJ-1C. It was type accepted before my nineteenth birthday and Professor Don Howe from Worcester Polytech (WPI) made the measurements for type acceptance. So, while Rich was doing an air-shift downstairs in the old converted house in Westfield, I was building a new transmitter upstairs in what was once the master bedroom. The transmitter used 4-400 modulators and finals. It was copied by others (all broadcast transmitter designs were available in the FCC’s public reference room). At the time, Eimac had recommended 4-250 tubes because Collins had made a successful design. RCA had not yet made their 4-400 transmitters, although there was a rumor that they were going to discontinue!
  their 
833 rig in favor of a more modern “unspecified” architecture.

There must have been something in the water at WDEW because many of the people who worked at the station went on to fascinating careers. Dick Wood was well known in Boston Radio, then he went on to New York, did the “End-of-the-Road” show for the guy who “still keeps the light on for ya..” Ray Dowell, the program director and acting manager went on to Chicago Radio. He did many commercials. He was the voice of Mr. Quinby in the Schweppes commercials. Still alive, he retired to Florida. Bill Rasmussen was the sports announcer. He founded ESPN. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESPN . Strangely, he never mentions WDEW in his resume, but Ray Dowell was the first person to take his play-by-play skills seriously and bought him his first remote setup for high-school play-by-play action. Maybe this is the reason for things like: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20020829/ai_n10818350. “Augustine L. Cavalero,” the hotshot owner of a new radio station WTTT in Amherst, ha!
 d fired
 both both Ray and Bill because they wouldn’t kiss up.

The Chief Engineer before me was Chris Payne of Motorola AM Stereo “fame.” He also was the Chief of the NAB for a while. Chris taught me to use a slide-rule when I was preparing to take the FCC 1st Class License test. He also recommended me to take his job as Chief Engineer of WARE so he could build a new station, WTTT in Amherst. I mention most of these people in my book. The little 1 kW daytimer on 1570 kHz, along the river in Westfield is now a 50 kW station with a different call sign. It must have been the water.

--
Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Read about my book
http://www.AbominableFirebug.com