I met Fred at the NAAAM Christmas Party in 1968. He was a legend even then. Then I worked for Jesse K3GKB back in the early 70s, and Jesse was president of the repeater group that put the 34-94 machine on Fred's tower. I helped Jesse lay the repeater shack foundation and even shorted and smoked the VHF PA (Bill K3JPB found the short and got it going again). Heh heh
I saw the W3PHL operating position, but I never went into the transmitter room. The picture is around on the web, the transmitter room was the size of a walk-in freezer, with what looks like a 5KW transmitter on wooden shelves. Evidently JPB has that equipment now, or most of it. I think it will take a fork lift to remove the power and mod transformers. I talked to Fred once or twice on 75 back around 1969. Oh man, that huge reduced-carrier signal with 30 dB of audio clipping.. but it was totally understandable. He was talking to Bill W3DUQ about space communications using a modulated subcarrier on AM so you could have a wide receiver bandpass, and then demodulate the subcarrier and avoid most of the Doppler, which can cause about +/-9 KHz of drift at 450 MHz with low-earth orbit satellites. Also he was working on a full-wave bridge and a synchronous driver polarity flipper, so he could use an ordinary class-C final for high-level DSB. He was having timing issues with the driver polarity flipper in 1968, but I think he finally got it to work. I was a wiseass because I had presence rise and the ST-PRO-B headset, and he had low-frequency rolloff and the ST-M. Ah, youth. JPB is still trying to find info on the five-pole Canadian Marconi splatter filter Fred was using after being harassed by the FCC. Bacon, WA3WDR ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 11:18 PM Subject: Re: [AMRadio] W3PHL > Hi Glenn, > > I grew up in suburban Philly to and went to the University of Pennsylvania > (W3ABT). Penn took a long-term lease on the old Valley Forge Nike Base which > happened to be down the road from W3PHL's location - Horseshoe Trail Road > just west of Valley Forge National Park. > > It was a fantastic site to operate with a clear shot to the horizon in all > directions. W3ABT used this site for Field Day starting in the 1969 and for > many years after that for Field Day. I guess that 3PHL moved from Springfield > sometime prior to then. I never visited his QTH but I could see his tower > and antennas. Wow! I heard from others that he has a TX so large that you > could walk inside. Memories from my youth. > > 73 > > Russ WA3FRP > > Glenn Laser wrote: > > Hi group I am Glenn W3WTE > > At the age of 12 I lived about 3 blocks from W3PHL in Springfield. Wow > > what a antenna and I never met the man. Just imagine what happened > > when he came on the air and my Ocean Hopper was turned on. Every once > > in a while I could hear the station he was in QSO with. He was not > > popular with the neighborhood and people always said you don't want in > > that hobby; just see what you will do. I did QSO with him about 4 or 5 > > years later when I lived in Pittsburgh using my Globe Scout. Always > > wanted to know what happened to him and I did received the 2 meter > > repeater once in a while when we lived near Annapolis. > > Thanks for the memories and in no way mean this, to be a negative > > comment. > > 73 Glenn > > __________________________________________________ ____________ > AMRadio mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html > Post: mailto:[email protected] > AMfone Website: http://www.amfone.net > AM List Admin: Brian Sherrod/w5ami, Paul Courson/wa3vjb >
