Peter Hendra wrote in
:
Hey,
The Overcomer Ministry has a short wave radio spot. I have listened to
him and his pretence of being able to read Biblical Greek -
entertaining if it wasn't so scary.
Rev Stair had a dream of owning his own pirate radio station aboard a
retired Canadian offshore fishing vessel. His captain for the project
was an American who lives in St Kitts/Nevis, who is a ham radio operator
I met on the local 2 meter VHF repeater when he brought the boat to a
local boatyard to install the 70KW HF/MF broadcast transmitter into the
old fish hold directly under its main hatch. The boat was old, but quite
large. Two 100KW diesel gensets were welded to the main deck fore and
aft to power it. Extra diesel tanks were installed every place they
would fit to power it between trips to port for fuel. It drank lots of
diesel at full power. The transmitter was purchased as scrap from Voice
Of America. It's picture is he
http://hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc07.jpg
The captain got worried about the motives of the bearded "brothers" from
the cult's commune in Canadys, SC, carrying a handgun at all times. He
wanted out, as did his elderly engineer, who had formerly helped him
install a big FM transmitter into an old sailboat they anchored in
international waters off NY City to broadcast pirate radio to NYC from a
microwave transmitter ashore at the studio when FCC wouldn't give them a
license. (The Navy sank the sailboat after removing them by force.)
So, they lit this beast off at Halsey-Cannon Boatyard in the Wando River,
SC, tied up about 50' off the Boatyard dock. 70,000 watts of HF power
lit every flourescent light at the boatyard, briefly, until the 300,000
volt feedthrough insulator that fed the RF through the hold's hatch cover
to the T cage antenna between two big towers welded to the bow/stern
exploded...right over my head, by the way. Way too much fun was had. On
top of the transmitter in the webpage picture, notice the big insulators
coming out the top of the power amp cabinet, 2nd from the right with the
big final tubes in it? A copper pipe makeshift balanced feed connected
that to the bottom of the feedthrough conductor inside the big insulator.
As a souvenir of this fiasco, I kept the part that didn't fully explode,
just had a little arc until we got the transmitter shut down. You can
see me holding the insulator on my QRZ ham webpage at:
http://www.qrz.com/callsign
Just put w4csc into the callsign search box top left of the page....
That little black burn mark was caused by excessive ionization of us all
inside the hold....We glowed blue for a few minutes! When it broke off,
the bolt holding the shaft down the middle of it kept it from being
smashed. The top looks like what I'm holding in my hand....it simply
exploded into a million pieces to small to save.
Noticing the "Big Signal" at the FCC monitoring stations from subsequent
test transmissions near 7.4 Mhz, FCC swooped down on the boat with a
crane stolen from the contractor Navy shipyard and confiscated all the
gear, even the broadcast studio on the main deck. The local paper showed
the FCC engineer proudly displaying the contraband, holding a 35 watt
Heathkit CW ham transmitter up for the photo op, making him look like a
complete idiot to anyone who knew what it was. The captain fled to St
Kitts and the old engineer vanished, leaving the brothers and RG Stair
holding the bag, so to speak.
It wasn't going to happen, anyways. The intensive RF current flowing out
of the hull into the salt water was just eating holes into the hull they
could not stop. FCC did them a favor and saved lives....(c; The first
indication was when the fresh water tank suddenly got all salty,
overnight as its hull wall flooded it....not good....
You have to hear Rev Stair in person to see how scary religious zealots
really are....if you don't know Ted Armstrong or Jim Jones.
Larry
--
I must admit glowing blue WAS a lot of fun. It's why I guffaw so hard
when someone warns me about cellphone radiation hazards at .15 watts...
(c; Too funny.
PPS - Don't send emails to the account listed...its bogus.