There's been some discussion of WLW on the Topband list over the last
few days. Try this on for size: (make that supersize, hi)
One Sunday at the close of the Dayton Hamvention about 40 years ago, some
Cincinnati friends arranged for a tour of Gray's Radio Museum, The Voice of
America installation and WLW, all in or near Mason, Ohio. A bunch of us
got back to Illinois late that evening with unforgettable memories... and
about 100 pictures.
I have told the stories of that wonderful day many times. The wildest
stories were from the WLW-RCA 500 KW station. Our guide was an expert on the
subject. The original control console was moved over to a side wall, but it
was still powered up... likely for the entertainment of visitors. The two
experimental calls issued to Crosley were emblazoned on some controls. They
were W8XO & W8XAL as I remember. BTW, my long time friend Dave, one of those
guys from Cincinnati now holds one of those calls. Ask him about "when
Skip was in."
As we walked along the elevated walkway in front of the stages of the
transmitter, we were awed by the 6 foot diameter pi wound
coupling coils with
Faraday shields and we noticed that there were as many water guages and
valves as there were meters and controls. Each of the three final stages was
water cooled and a fountain in the center of a small lake outside cooled the
water.
Each final stage was about 8 feet wide and had a metal door you could walk
through. Our guide stopped at that point in the tour as we gazed at a huge
ammeter with a 150 amp full scale. "What's this," someone asked.
He told us it was put in for Crosley who got a bug in his butt to see what
the rig would really do. The meter showed the total current on the three
finals. One night he cranked it up as far as it would go. Keep in mind, the
voltage on the finals was 17,500 volts, as I remember. He got that meter up
to 100 amps. Do the math. He burnt up some local fences that night.
Of course, 13 transmitters (with plug-in coils) each running 220,000 watts
simultaneously on several bands down the road at VOA was astonishing, but
that 1,700,000 watts at WLW was stuck in our minds all the way home that
night. We were TopBand guys, afterall!
73, Best DX, Barry, W9UCW
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Topband Reflector
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