Do you really believe that might even be vaguely possible?
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RTS turn off
- Thread starter DiyNutJob
- Start date
Do you really believe that might even be vaguely possible?
It could, but I very much doubt it.
I have no idea of the valve number, but I doubt that it was ever an off-the-shelf one. Valves that could produce a output of 500 kW must (both 'then' and now) be about as rare as hen's teeth, so probably was 'bespoke'. The market for any sort of thermionic valves must be minute these days.
In the distant past, I've certainly (personally) got fluorescent tubes to 'light up' by holding them in the air in the vicinity of Droitwich etc.!
Surely not.
IIRC they were used in countries that had LW radio, and every transmitter would have had a spare one in a cupboard.
I am told that the BBC ran a sort of Ebay scheme to find and buy up spare valves as and when LW services were closed down round the world. They found more than had been forecast when the problem first came to light.
There were also some very strange transmitters for contacting submerged submarines.
As I have suggested before, the panic could have been entirely avoided, and decades ago, instead of needing input for R4, they could have made use of MSF, on 60Khz, correcting a crystal controlled RTC, using the equipment serial number, to randomise the start stop time a little.
Indeed - but the important word there is "were". I may be wrong, but I doubt that there are many LW broadcast stations left anywhere in the world.
I can believe that, but nor would I expect any significant stocks to be left anywhere today
There were (and quite possibly still are), but I think they generally used/use frequencies much lower thn 200 kHz.
Anything is possible if you have the model number. China will make it in a jiffy if there is a market.
The electromagnetic pulse ( EMP ) produced by a nuclear explosion is known to damage electronic equipment and to induce severe overvoltages on the electrical national grid and long telephone lines
There was genuine fear that one nuclear bomb exploding in the upper atmosphere would create an EMP that could disable the UK defence systems,
Equipment using transistors was more suceptable to damage from an EMP than equipment using valves.
The Long Wave 200kHz covered the entire UK and ( I believe ) was intended to be the way the govenment could broadcast to the Nation if other stations were put out of action.
There was genuine fear that one nuclear bomb exploding in the upper atmosphere would create an EMP that could disable the UK defence systems,
Equipment using transistors was more suceptable to damage from an EMP than equipment using valves.
The Long Wave 200kHz covered the entire UK and ( I believe ) was intended to be the way the govenment could broadcast to the Nation if other stations were put out of action.
As I said, it was very probably 'bespoke', in which case it probably would not have a 'model number' (only an 'order number').
That would seem perfectly feasible. However, as I keep saying, if the BBC really wanted to continue broadcasting on 200 kHz (which I very much doubt that they do), I would say that there are far better options (particularly as regards 'the future') than replacing the valve(s).
Thats the rub, those in charge at the bbc likely see long wave radio, (and AM radio more generally) as something they would like to get rid of but there are various pressure groups who disagree. The BBC bosses would very much preffer to say "can't" rather than "won't" to those pressure groups as it avoids taking the blame for the decision.
I'm just wondering what type of engineer you would ask to design such a thing, and whether they exist off the shelf.
I might actually be tempted to talk to the guys who design inverters and such. I'd imagine they have a fair bit of experiance throwing around high powers in that frequency range. I wonder if you could do some sort of PWM and then bandpass filter it to turn it into AM.
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Slow data, 4 to 30KHz, from memory, because it is better at penetrating seawater.
There will be no 'model number', they are a rather unique design, with the only design data on paper, which likely was long since lost.
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