oil filled antenna

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Unit 148 Mobile
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Re: oil filled antenna

Post by Unit 148 Mobile »

Correct, it wasn't until into the 80's when a few stations in London started to run a little heat more than anything Zetagi or Bremi could through at you.
Flavor of the day with the base station lads was I remember the Yaesu Fl2100Z HF amp. If any of you drove down the A1 through Bedfordfordshire then the road splits around the Roxton Marina / kelpie Boat Yard. A fella called Bill owned it, had a 60ft telescopic mast with 3-ele, or was it a 5-ele yagi and the 101+ 2100 amp lineup.

Weak he was not, one of the true power-houses out of southern England. I only had my mobile so we rarely talked as he was mainly skip shooting on the flatside while I was circa 40-50 miles to the south vertically polarised in the mobile. I did surprise him one day when I called him from New York :-)

Id had no real competition in London in the real early days, while most everyone were still using CB's purchased off of the Dutch & Belgian truckers who smuggled them in together with Italian or Jap crap amp's I ran a FT301D or FT707S (both 10W models) into the Varmin 8 transistor amp. At that power my choice of antennas mobile were limited. I literally set a DV27 on fire. The top loading coil heated up like an electric fire element and just burned up. I ran similar power on top band and could easily generate corona with the air talking especially on wet or humid days - all good fund.

My girl at the time had already taken her class A license, received hers before I upgraded from my G8. She was in Crystal Palace with just over 1kW out of a 3-ele yagi plus a Shakey Bigstick for local working.,

I never quite go into multiple alternators but for a short while ran an Eelectrodyne 350A 14V unit (www.electrodyne.com). I brought it home as extra luggage from the US. It weighed a ton. I used to send morse with the headlights when keying up before I upgraded to this baby :-)

In 1976 I heard an Italian come through on my then walkie talkie. Of course he could not hear me. I threw a 807 together and put the crystal out of the walkie talkie across the grid. I think I got around 25W out of that rig, into a dipole and called CQ on CH14 from the rig and got someone in Croydon, around 20 miles away. He said I was the fourth London station he had ever heard. At night London was dead, and I mean completely dead and that was in 1976. London had a bunch of medium wave pirate activity and I got into that for a few years but that's another story.

Unit 148
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