VK4BBL Easterling re VIH 1994 (2)

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W, A. EASTEBLING
                                                             8 Penguin farad®,
                             8 Penguin Parade,               Burleigh Waters , O'.1d 4.220
                             Burleigh Waters, Old. 4220
                                                             18th October 1994

Ric VK7RO,

Dear' OM,

     Thanks yrs 30th September. Very informative. Yes, I can imagine the consternation and
fury of the broadcast listeners when the old 19'2 Balsillie spel'k transmitter came up. Its
replacement .+.Iith a valve CW ,job at the various stations didn't help much when the working
fr.equencies were right on top of the I.F. allocations.   At Thul.sd9.v Island it was 4.6tr kHz
which played havoc with the 4.65 kHz IFs; one ship working frequenc.v was 4.54 and we were

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brands but made in the Far East and used !J+5 or lwlo as the I.F.     My good friend Deane
VI|AEN ex OTC/Marine was with the ING Administration for many .years at KEivieng and Rabaul;
told me that ctne of their engineer.a bought scime Rlrdd.vstone sta.te-cif-the-art I.eceivers for
the receiving stations; .vou've gotta believe it; the I.F. was 500 kHz ......

       I read a f.unny tale a long time ago in QST abt the plight of an operator at one of the

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awa:    also, no hope of getting a replacement until springtime.    So he made one. He used a
galvanised iron tub filled with brine: in this he put beer bottles also filled with brine.
Into each he put a wire and then joined them all in parB.Ilcl to form one pole of the
capacitor, the tub being the other.   He added or subtra,cted bottles to bring the circuit
on frequency and was back in business. The note was awful but reads,ble.     HVGr.v now and then
thewavelength would change as a bottle burst but there were plent`v c)f spares...HI.         1'hat
guy would have made a great ham.

     The Condenser...it blocked the high voltage from shorting via the inductor. Guess that
back in them thar da.vs the insulating lmterials were noiihe`r® as good as toda.v's: I know
that the old timers always feared a breakdown of it.        Interesting to read the old radio
books. The word "jigger" ha,d me fox©d for a while: an old spark man put ne wise; an A.T.U.
Seem to recall reeling that even in moder'n times some scientific gear u8eg a spark gap to
generate a, signal; carmot remember what for, though. Hither' scientific or industrial.
      I cannot recall Bill Davoy; the name .just doesn't ring a bell. Wag he with the I)ept.
of Jlative Af.fairs t{adio station ? It ran a network of island and mission stations from a
base station at I.I.    In my time Joe MCKenna (now VKLDJM) was the engineer/operator.
I went there in 1951 for three ,years with VII.

     I met Harry Ba.nks when 1 visited VIH in earl.v 1967: he was, of course, well lmown in
the CRS.    Barry Mot,tram who was at VII) was OIC there f.or a few years. Sand,v Sandilands
(now VK2BS) was also an OIC, now retired as Manager VIS and living at Nelligen near. BaLteman'.q
Bay.     H® has her a long nin of illness since retiring and is still being tl`eated.

       It is a plea.sure to know that `vour club acquired the station but a great pity that the
antennas were removed. At VIA ever,vthing was left and the new owner, a ham, runs the place
as a ham station and welcomes visitors.
       Again. thanke for yr letter. I hear. the tail end of .yr Sunday broadcasts, unfortunately

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been in contact with a friend George VK2I)JR who is caravanriing around Australia, presently at
80 Mile Beach north of Fctrt Hedland. We held him on 7060 at 0730G for quite a while. ospeci-

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1414.0; evidently they have lower.ed the take-off angle: sonething that long distance traLveller!
might keep in mind; I!iake a base plate for the whip aiding some terminals for quick connecting
i wave radials. The improvement is remarkable.  As lctng as he do®sn't a rive off without
disconnecting them. . .HI

P.S. the "other" ske}d is 40M CW and runs close
            to 0015G
                                                              73,
                                                                      bezz-