"Eisboch" wrote in
:

Meanwhile, they couldn't use the secure HF TTY, so they rousted the
old seasoned Radioman Chief out of his rack and he had to set up and
send encrypted CW for about 4 hours. It took him at least an hour just
to raise somebody. I was dragged out of my rack because nobody could
figure out how to set the transmitter up for CW. (I figured it out,
but it was the first and last time I ever had to do that).



USS Everglades (AD-24). Radio Two had two TBK, One TBL, 4 TCS, two AM
plate modulators for the TBKs, all running off racks of motor-generator
sets in the back compartment from old Ship's 110VDC power off the DC
steam generator that powered the winches and booms.

If I keyed both TBKs at full power, I could load the M-G sets enough to
actually drop our head pressure...(c;

You boys need CW or AM to shore on MF or HF, just let me know what freq.
After she's tuned up, it's best to keep your bare hands away from the
shrouds on the mast. Don't wanna see anybody get burned....(c; On some
freqs, they'd turn the air blue around the longwires at night in the wet.

Rock and Roll radio in Charleston was WTMA on 1250 Khz. My fav test freq
used to be 1253, which made a nice hi-pitched note on any radios on deck.

Antennas were long wires between the king post crossarms with a vertical
component down to big brown ceramic feedthroughs into Radio Two, aft
superstructure. Inside the transmitter shack, RF ran in a box trunk on
3/4" copper tubing, unbalanced to the antenna tuner atop the TBx
transmitters. On 4 Mhz, I could easily pin the antenna current meters
and had great reports from hams and Charleston Test Control on 2150 Khz,
even from half way to the Med.

Many times the old girls with the bright filaments had good signals
ashore when the new Collins AN/URC-32s sending 500W to their 35' whips
could barely be heard ashore or afloat. We had one FSK unit, I don't
remember the model, that would give one of the 3 big transmitters FSK
capability, fed by the crypto machines in Radio Central, KWR-7 and 37s.

BM deck techs were terrified of them after one BMSN took the grounding
strap off a turnbuckle to clog it with paint and got his hands burned.
They'd always call me, after that, to coordinate when they would be
properly secured with a working aloft chit.

After the transmitters were trashed by our pencil pusher RM teletype
operators, causing these old manually tuned transmitters grief, I made a
deal with the comm officer. I took over Radio 2 and had the ONLY key.
If he needed a freq I wasn't already up on during the night, they got me
out of my rack to retune in minutes.....instead of having to rebuild the
amps and clean out the melted tube parts for hours when his geniuses
changed freq and tuned some stage on the wrong multiplier setting....
(sigh)

Thanks for the memories.
Butler ET1 - (call us Glitter Delta)