[pure-silver] Re: update on new venture into Large format
- From: Tim Daneliuk <tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2019 17:52:20 -0500
On 4/11/19 5:35 PM, Tim Daneliuk wrote:
As an interesting and only slightly-related aside...
Oh, what the heck, while I'm in story mode ... I know there are
some amateur radio folk here that may find this interesting ...
The fishing boats in question almost universally had one or more
High Frequency Single Sideband radios (HF SSB) installed for communications
on the high seas. More than once one of the radios we repaired were used
to call for rescue of a boat sinking in the Pacific, but I digress.
Anyway, these radios had tuning circuits in them to custom match each
radio to the boat's antennas. (For you Ham's, these were large
open air coil inductors with taps on them to match the impedance of the
antenna to the radio at each different channel frequency.) Well,
these tuning circuits would get green from the salt air and the radio
would work with less and less effectiveness.
The fix was to spray WD-40 all over the tuning coils and then key the
transmitter - which always had a slight spark - which ignited the
WD-40 and burned the crud of the coils and restored correct operation.
This was accompanied by a brief wall of fire exiting the radio cabinet.
I shall never forget being a tough old "Radioman" at the ripe age of 17
or so, setting a transmitter cabinet ablaze in the aforementioned manner to
the complete and utter horror of the skipper of a half million dollar
boat. "What are you doing?" he barked at me. "Don't worry about it
Skipper", I said, "that fire is perfectly normal." He calmed down
when I showed him a now perfectly working radio, but the look on his face
was priceless. Looking back at it, I'm shocked we never set a boat on
fire ...
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Tim Daneliuk tundra@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PGP Key:
http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/
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