Tuesday, 30 December, 2003
Update on the Hallicrafters transmitter
Mixed results on the Hallicrafters transmitter (see December 19 and 23). I took it to a friend's house last night and put it on the bench. A little poking and prodding, and we managed to get a good CW (Morse Code) signal out of it on the 80 meter band. We only got about 50 watts out of the transmitter (it's supposed to be capable of 100 watts), but that was before tuning. Voice was a bit more of a problem. It took us a while to get any signal at all, and then what we got had a lot of hum in the carrier. That's not unusual with old gear that hasn't been used in a while, but there are several possible causes. I'll have to do some more testing before I determine what the real problem is. All in all, though, it was kind of exciting to hear that CW tone on the receiver's speaker.
One other note. I said in my previous entry that the transmitter hadn't been used in 30 or more years. Talking to Mom the other night, I learned that my grandfather was using it in the late 1970's and possibly as late as 1983. So it's only been 20 to 25 years since the radios were operated.