My shocking story dates back to November, 1960, the night of the Kennedy-Nixon election.
I had stayed up to the wee hours listening to election returns on the radio. In the meantime I decided to work on my transmitter, a homebrew pair of 807's, which I was attempting to modulate with a hi-fi amplifier working into a backwards connected single plate to 8 ohms output transformer, which served as the modulation transformer. I had about 1000 volts on the plates of the 807's. I was holding the microphone in one hand and reached to make an adjustment on the transmitter with the other, when I got zapped from arm to arm from the 1000-volt supply between the microphone and transmitter cabinet. I had not taken the precaution to ground the amplifier, and the backwards-connected output transformer shorted from primary to secondary, but the insulation in the power transformer in the amplifier held up intact, leaving the entire chassis of the amplifier 1000 volts above ground. I could not turn loose of the microphone or release my grip from the transmitter case. The only way I managed to disengage myself from the high voltage was when I stood up, I fell over backwards and ripped the microphone cord out of the connector. I remember falling to the floor and hitting the back of my head on a glass 6L6 that was lying in the floor and breaking it. My arms contracted towards my chest spastically and uncontrollably. I had severe burns on both hands, and my chest and arms were extremely sore the next day. If I hadn't managed to break loose more or less by accident, someone would have found me hanging on the transmitter the next morning, since everyone else in the house had gone to bed hours earlier and I was in the upstairs ham shack well out of earshot. Don k4kyv _______________________________________________________________ This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/ http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
