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#11
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wrote in message oups.com... I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I have not been able to pin down exactly what it is. Some folks have given the opinion that it may be an old VOR transmitter. I'm wondering if someone can identify it? Give a date range? or any other information? pictures: http://www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/VOR/index.htm I know little about electronics, but this equipment looks older than VOR to me. |
#12
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wrote in message oups.com... I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I have not been able to pin down exactly what it is. Some folks have given the opinion that it may be an old VOR transmitter. I'm wondering if someone can identify it? Give a date range? or any other information? It looks suspiciously like just another standard government-issue HF transmitter which we used for point-to-point voice (and CW Morse code) communication in the Arctic prior to 1965 (and it looked "old" even back then... at the time I was under the impression that it was WW-II surplus). Using frequencies in the 4 to 6 MHz range. The physical look was certainly similar... but I do not recall all the details, such the coil and tube detail that your pictures show... It is possible that this gentleman obtained one as surplus and converted it to work within one of the 40, 80 or 160 meter HF amateur bands???... possibly even 20 or 15 metres??? From the size of the coils, I doubt very much that it would be a VHF rig of any type, including VOR. If not HF (as I believe), it would probably be MF or LF: either an NDB, or a carrier-provider for FSK teletype. Both were often rigged for voice modulation which was often used to provide the equivalent of ATIS (only live, and just once every half hour...you had to catch it). Also, where aircraft had difficulty reading HF transmissions, the ground station might use the beacon to reply to an HF call in the hope that the a/c could read that. ----- We called it by a short alpha-plus-numeric model identification, something like *AS8* or so, but I do not recall exactly. Ours were set up to run at a remote location at the antenna farm. The microphone jack was not used... the operator's desk would be some miles away and the remote push-to-talk and audio lines were wired in directly. (Receivers were also similarly remote several miles in the other direction. On good days, the HF skip was such that we could hear our contact several hundred miles away, better than we could hear our own transmitter.) The main AC power switch is in the lower part of the front panel. When one our these units was particularly cantankerous for the umpteenth time, I recall our technician angrily turning it "off" with his foot, with sufficient force so that it never worked again. There are collectors of such stuff, and in working order it is probably worth something substantial. Maybe even if not in working order. |
#14
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Could it be an old OMEGA system. That was decommissioned only about 5
years ago. As I understand it, this was the original radio navigation system for airplanes know as "Highways in the Skies". It was low frequency. The pilot would listen to the selected frequency and hear a steady tone if he was right on the highway, or di-dah ("A") if on one side or dah-dit ("N") on the other. Just a guess. Spockstuto wrote: Don't laugh but the FAA has stuff this old still out in the system. A lot of NDB sites still use ancient equipment. wrote: I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I have not been able to pin down exactly what it is. Some folks have given the opinion that it may be an old VOR transmitter. I'm wondering if someone can identify it? Give a date range? or any other information? pictures: http://www.yipyap.com/radio_stuff/VOR/index.htm Chris p.s. I know some of the pictures are fuzzy. I'll cull them out. Thanks! |
#15
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In article ,
"William W. Plummer" wrote: Could it be an old OMEGA system. That was decommissioned only about 5 years ago. As I understand it, this was the original radio navigation system for airplanes know as "Highways in the Skies". It was low frequency. The pilot would listen to the selected frequency and hear a steady tone if he was right on the highway, or di-dah ("A") if on one side or dah-dit ("N") on the other. I think you're talking about the old 4-course airways. OMEGA was a hyperbolic radio navigation system (in some ways similar to LORAN). It was used by both aircraft and ships for trans-oceanic navigation, with a fix accuracy of about 4 nm (you can do better with a sextant). There were only 8 transmitters in the world (and the one in the US is still in use for other purposes), so it seems unlikely that much surplus equipment would be available. Transmission was in the 10 kHz band. http://webhome.idirect.com/~jproc/hyperbolic/omega.html |
#16
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OK, Roy. Here's another far out guess.
Back in the late '40s I remember chiropractors using a "diathermy" machine. I believe this would use RF energy to induce heat in the patient's muscles. We got a TV set in 1948 and started getting lots of interference which was subsequently traced to the diathermy machine in town about 1 half mile away. I never saw it, but I understand it was impressive and would have been admired by Frankenstein. http://www.medtronic.com/activa/phys...my_safety.html |
#17
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"Roy Smith" wrote in message ... In article , "William W. Plummer" wrote: ... That was decommissioned only about 5 years ago. As I understand it, this was the original radio navigation system for airplanes know as "Highways in the Skies". It was low frequency. The pilot would listen to the selected frequency and hear a steady tone if he was right on the highway, or di-dah ("A") if on one side or dah-dit ("N") on the other. I think you're talking about the old 4-course airways. ... http://www.airwaysmuseum.com/Lorenz%20SYR%2044.htm .... technically "4-course radio range"...and they were decommissioned as soon as VORs and ADF receivers became prevalent. In Canada that was the early-to-mid 1960's, with the possible exception of some isolated relic. Anything is possible, but I don't think the OP picture is one of those. Interesting to note, that even then (and how accurately could a course have been followed???).... even then pilots were encouraged to fly right-of-course to avoid meeting someone else "on course": http://www.navfltsm.addr.com/ndb-nav-history.htm |
#18
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wrote in message oups.com... I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I have found only one technician who worked on similar equipment in the 1950s-60s His guess is a WW2 vintage, standard VHF transmitter.... probably in the aviation band which a Radio Amateur may have been able to convert to work on the 2 metre HAM band. |
#19
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On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 13:16:02 -0500, "Icebound"
wrote: wrote in message roups.com... I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I have found only one technician who worked on similar equipment in the 1950s-60s His guess is a WW2 vintage, standard VHF transmitter.... probably in the aviation band which a Radio Amateur may have been able to convert to work on the 2 metre HAM band. The earth-bound counterpart to the BC-229? Don |
#20
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wrote:
: I recently received this large single-frequency transmitter : from an elderly gentleman who used to be a ham radio operator. I'm guessing its a hacked 4 course transmitter. Is there something in it that will transmit A or N in morse code? It would be higher than NDB but lower than VOR. Where is it? There are other people around who might be able to shed more light on the device. -tim http://web.abnormal.com |
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