🚀 go-pugleaf

John Navas <spamfilter1@navasgroup.com> wrote in
news:852356ll1lmbiddjln1gbcr66esl8qa652@4ax.com: 

>>If hams truly want to serve the public that they're always talking
>>about serving, then they should erect disguised antennas or at least
>>those that are somewhat pleasing to look at.  
> 
> Amen!
> 
> 

Man!  What could be more beautiful than a wonderful 900' tall HF Sterba 
Curtain pointed at some rare DX station on an island noone you know has 
ever heard of talking to a ham whos name you cannot pronounce!

http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc14.jpg

You'll need a 500 kilowatt Continental beast to feed it:
http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc08.jpg

It uses water-cooled tubes that look like this:
http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc12.jpg

I just don't understand how anyone can find a beautiful Blau-Knox like 
this one at country station of the nation WSM in Nashville is "ugly".  
How silly!  It's BEAUTIFUL...and very old!

http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb01.jpg
http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb02.jpg
http://hawkins.pair.com/wsm/wsm_bulb03.jpg
AND WHAT A VIEW FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE BULB half way up it!

For you environazis, the photographer of these pix on the tower and the 
guy painting it to make it more beautiful for the airliners, FAA and FCC 
inspectors are both being subjected to 50,000 watts of 650 Khz AM from 
the Harris DX50 solid state blowtorch in the building of bulb03.jpg.  
This guy paints ENERGIZED radio and tv broadcasting towers for a living, 
probably 60 hours a week.  Does he look unhealthy or roasted or dying of 
cancer?  Of course, not.  If you doubt the amount of power and RF 
voltage at the point he's standing on, look at the massive insulators in 
the guy cables on bulb03.jpg that keep the transmitter from arcing down 
the guywires to ground!

They look like this close up:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wcbs_wfan/cbsfan_twr20.jpg
Those insulators are old ones at WFAN, and WCBS AM stations in NYC.  
These towers sit on a little insulator to isolate them from ground where 
the power is fed to them that looks like this:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wcbs_wfan/cbsfan_twr14.jpg
The entire weight of the 528' WFAN tower, all its antennas, insulators, 
guy bridge cables and the wind torque are sitting on that brown ceramic 
insulator under the grey corona ring.  That copper ball near the ring is 
for the lightning to arc to the massive ground system the green copper 
straps across the broken concrete base is wrapped in.

That looped copper tubing coming out of a massive insulator in the 
tuning house has 100,000 watts of AM radio from BOTH 50,000 watt 
transmitters on it.  They share this tower to make you greenies happy in 
New Jersey across the Hudson in the swamp with a very complex tuning 
system that keeps WFAN's transmitter from seeing 50KW from WCBS and 
vice-versa.  The signals going back up the other transmitter's feedline 
is balanced out, while 100KW races up the tower making a huge RF field 
hundreds of miles from the transmitters.

Speaking of tiny, this module:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wabcnow/wabcn14.jpg
is one of many that make up the 50,000 watt transmitter's OUTPUT POWER 
AMPLIFIER, these days.  Those tiny transistor switches on the little 
heat sink on this module put out 2000 watt square waves to a tuned 
circuit.  All the modules energized at any instant in time add their RF 
together to make the output blowtorch power zapping the children.

I kind of miss the old tubes, their massive cooling systems and spray-
water cooling ponds out in the yard.  The Harris DX50 is so efficient 
it's cooled with 4 muffin fans!  To put 50,000 watts on the antenna only 
requires 55,000 watts from the power company, compared to 250,000 watts 
of the old tube transmitter monsters.  The electric bill went way down!

Computer controlled, noone even sits at the transmitters any more.  If 
this module fails, the red LED lights up to let you know which fuse is 
blown and the computer uses a spare module until you change it.  That 
hole allows you to snatch this module out of the cabinet while still 
running 50,000 watts of dangerous RF, never taking the station off the 
air which costs a million dollars a minute in lost revenues.

.....and you think your .2w sellphone is cooking you?....HA!


-- 
iPhone 4 is to cellular technology what the Titanic is to cruise ships.

Larry