Kim: The acid rain thing back East was a Master's Thesis that no one read until one day some semi-scientist found it. He read it and gave the information to the, then fledgling, environmental groups and look what we have today.
Some day someone will read one of your papers and find a new way to power cars, take pictures or communicate. Too bad you can't patent your stuff for ever. The people who developed spread spectrum waited until after the patent expired to develop it and the poor actress who conceptualized and patented it got nothing. 73 Jim de W5JO ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kim Elmore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Discussion of AM Radio" <amradio@mailman.qth.net> Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 3:34 PM Subject: RE: [AMRadio] WW II Army Field Sets > Wow! What a response! > > I don't want to buy any of the equipment. I'm curious mainly because I've > decided to write a "sappy Christmas story" for QST, seeing as how I haven't > seen one of those for a while. I'm not a professional writer, by any > means. I author scientific papers that no one reads, of course, but with > the 60th anniversary of D-Day and all, I go to thinking and decided I'd > write a story about a WW-II ham in the signal corps. But, I need a > portable set that can be carried in the back of jeep and lifted by a couple > of guys, though not necessarily while storming a hill. Given that the > BC-610 weighs in at between 400 and 600 lbs, I figured it was not a > believable candidate by those who know about such stuff. > > I might add that getting an education about how *Army infantry* comms, > especially CW, worked in WW II has been tough. There's lots of stuff about > the Navy, in minute detail, but almost nothing about day-to-day Army > communications. I Looking at what I've found, not much of the gear used > frequencies above 12-13 MHz. There's quite a bit of VHF/UHF gear, however. > The 12-30 MHz region seems to be rather sparse. I'm looking for accuracy to > honor those who actually did this kind of duty and know how the equipment > and protocols really worked. learned a small amount from a Brit who knew > some guys that were in the British equivalent of the Signal Corps, but much > else is strangely missing. I've been able to piece together some plausible > protocols given what little I've been able to find on the > subject. Unfortunately, I don't have easy access to the books Don Merz > mentions. I should probably have them. > > The SCR-188 set might be a better bet for a short story, as it is > completely self-contained and looks to be manageable by something less than > a platoon. Depending on the variant, it used a BC-191 transmitter with a > plethora of tuning units. But it doesn't appear to cover 20 m and, while > I'm not certain, I'm guessing that bands were released to the hams starting > at the shortest and working longer. The old 2 1/2 meter band was released > about a week after VJ day, and soon after 10 m. By early 1946 almost > everything, except 160 m, was available. As the story goes now, I need to > use the thing by Christmas 1946 and I'm guessing that 20 m has a chance of > being available by then, but not 40 m. > > Kim Elmore, N5OP > Kim Elmore, Ph.D. > University of Oklahoma > Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies > "All of weather is divided into three parts: Yes, No, and Maybe. The > greatest of these is Maybe" The original Latin appears to be garbled. > > _______________________________________________ > AMRadio mailing list > AMRadio@mailman.qth.net > http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio > >
