ancient analog transmitter junked
[B]I can tell you what happened to one analog tv transmitter here in
Spokane. The station owner gave it to me if I would remove it from
its mountain top building. It was a UHF GE transmitter of the mid 1960s.
Even though I am a ham radio gear builder, there was nothing of use
that came out of this transmitter. There was some 6000lbs of stuff
not including the power transformer. It used a quad of Amperex
klystrons which were made of berylium, which in itself is a first class
hazard. Other not-so-nice stuff was gallons of glycol which had become
very corrosive, and lots of rat stuff. This thing had to be a model
of inefficiency. The station engineer allowed as to how the plate
power in was about 1/4MW and the PEP out was in the order of 40KW.
It took a 50HP blower to cool the glycol heat exchanger. The analog
transmitter's dig replacement was smaller that a refrigerator, and
had way less power output.
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CORK
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