Aahh, the 250! So many meters, and the swift fold down desk/front cover. We picked up one of these from WCHV in Charlottesville, VA, around 1978, for the Virginia Tech carrier current station WUVT AM 64. However, it was a too big to stick into a dorm closet for our network, and was relegated to sit in the engineering shop. We stuck to using LPB 25 and 50 watt rigs and a couple of homeade 807 style 15 watt rigs. The RA-250 sat there for a few years I think, and eventually it got scrapped. [See below for final disposition of that radio]
It was a nice piece, and had i known then what I know now about old AM transmitters, I'd have saved the beast myself. I did end up getting the LPB 50 watt rig, which has a pair of 6550s for modulation, with a pair for the RF, still on 640 KHz. Here is a history page from those days at WUVT. http://tomtwine.com/wuvt/jtml.htm This was on a WUVT alumni webpage last month: 7/21/05 -- There is a reference to a Raytheon RA 250 transmitter on your history page. My brother and I came to WUVT around 1980 and bought one. Perhaps that was the one mentioned. I remember putting it on an elevator and riding down with it. Unfortunately, I no longer have it. There was a very nice young fellow who worked there at WUVT, but I don't remember his name. Just today, I moved the sister of the unit from WUVT back to my home. We used the RA 250 at WSVQ in Harrogate, Tennesse from 1980 to 1982. I believe we purchased that one from a station in Soddy Daisy, Tennessee and actually bought another one from Show-Low, Arizona! We scrapped the one from Show-Low and my uncle used the case as a driveway culvert for many years. The RA 250 sounded nice on the air. The only problem we had was the nasty black tar that ran out of the transformers and chokes. Chuck Owens Cumberland Gap Broadcasting, Inc. Middlesboro, KY 40965 www.cumberlandgapbroadcasting.com > The RA-250 has the same shortcoming. You can hear this > one on 75m regularly in the mid-Atlantic region, from > the house of N3WWL. > > http://www.qrz.com/hampix/l/w/n3wwl.1096255396.jpg > > Regards to all, > > Paul/VJB
