On Mon, 9 Apr 2012 12:10:27 -0700 (PDT), Steve
wrote:


http://www.rigpix.com/tentec/century21.htm

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The most interesting piece of amateur equipment I can remember is an
old WW2 vintage linear amplifier using 2 4-400 tubes and what I think
were 2- 866 mercury vapor rectifier tubes (the ones with the "purple
haze") connected to a bunch of oil filled high voltage capacitors.

I powered that thing up sometime in the mid 1970's. It was located at
my college amateur radio club. Unfortunately, there was a lot of dust
on top of the capacitors and once they charged up they started arcing.
It sounded like someone firing a .357. I yanked the power plug and
acted like nothing had happened but I had already got the attention of
about half the people in the building.

Next, we tried connectig it to our Drake TX4-C transmitter. That
worked but the TV station across the street was hearing us on their
headphones during the afternoon news broadcast and so ended the
experiment with high power amateur radio.

No pictures available but imagine an open rack with all the tubes and
wiring exposed with voltages exceeding 3000 volts.

Jim (MI)