FW: [QCWA] Fw: Now That's A Transmitter - Featuring the RCA TE-147]

[Bob Peters]

Hay Guys and Gals...This  is a serious transmitter. Go take a look at
the pixs and story...

Bob W1PE

Subject: Now That's A Transmitter - Featuring the RCA TE-147


Be sure and check out the photos on the web site. The second photo shows
the transmitter. Note the three "steering" wheels in the center. The
fifth picture shows the back of the same panel. Interesting chain drive.

Hello Everyone,

The RCN transmitting site at Newport Corner, N.S. has
been on the air continuously since May 1943. Set up
under a veil of secrecy during the height of the North
Atlantic U-boat threat, this backwoods village became
the home of an invaluable weapon during the Battle of
the Atlantic. Despite a price tag of more than $6
million, an exorbitant expense in those days, it was
estimated that the facility paid for itself in three
months in the amount of Allied shipping that was saved
on the North Atlantic. Its signal could be heard and
read from Murmansk to the Falklands and half way
around the world.

Its technology was considered state-of-the-art at the
time capable of emitting up to 80,000 watts of power
from each of its 20 transmitters and associated
antenna. In 1944, more than one million code groups
were transmitted from the site each month. There must
have been nearly a thousand ships copying the signals
from this station at any given time during the war.

The three towers of its main transmitter were 560 feet
high and two other towers were 320 feet high. The
electrical requirements were staggering. There were oil-immersed
switches that stood eighteen feet high. The main aerial had insulators,
nine feet long and eighteen inches in diameter, each tested to withstand
a strain of 90,000 pounds and 350,000 volts.

One of the transmitters installed at Newport Corner
was the low frequency RCA type TE-147. It is featured
in this newly developed web document : http://jproc.ca/rrp/te147.html

--

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