STANCOR 10P PROGRESS REPORT 9

     Wiring.  A lot of thinking, rethinking and ground points needing to be added.  Also, I really need to stock up on cloth-covered wire, the good stuff.

     Crystal oscillator, wired.  RF power amplifier, mostly wired -- tank circuit being the main thing to complete.  Modulator, partially wired.  Power supply, still to do.

     It's just about to the "install front panel and controls" point.

HISTORICAL RESEARCH: NEWSPAPER ARCHIVES

     Looking for more information about the earliest days of television and FM in Indianapolis, it occurred to me that newspaper archives would be a great source; after all, the city has had some great newspapers: the Indianapolis Times (d., 1965), the Indianapolis News (b., 1869 - d., 1999, after a long illness; survived for a short while by Herman Hoglebogle) and the Indianapolis Star; two of those papers even owned radio stations, so there must be plenty of news about local radio to be found.

     Possibly there is, but not online from those sources; the "morgue" files of the Times and the News appear nowhere and the Star has a gap from 31 December 1922 to 21 May 1991.

     One newspaper has extensive archives, wonderfully searchable, compiled by IUPUI: the Indianapolis Recorder, which has served the city's African-American community since its inception in 1895.  And on 13 July 1946, WABW shows up, in an ad for a song to be broadcast on the 17th of that month at 5:30 p.m..  This was a standalone FM, in a time when few FM radios were available, so it's especially interesting to note the ad doesn't list the frequency.

     After the ownership and call letter change, WXLW and (simulcast) WXLW-FM schedules and coverage show up frequently in The Recorder: WXLW had no network affiliation and a policy of not running drama or "chat" shows.  They block-programmed many kinds of music, including programs aimed at the the paper's readership. (But, as a 1948 article puts it, not "hot jazz or drum solo type of so-called music."  It was another time and the front-page headlines make for sobering reading.)  Published schedules make clear that the FM kept running until late at night, long after the AM shutdown at sunset.

     At least there's one newspaper in Indianapolis with a sense of history.  Thank you, Recorder.

STANCOR 10P TRANSMITTER, UPDATE 8

     Finished the 6V heaters and started on the crystal oscillator:

     One thing this is teaching me is that it has been a long time since I used a large soldering iron.  I'm getting better but still have to remind myself to take care.

     Remember the broken 40 meter JEL (B&W) coil?  Here it is repaired.

     The shiny stuff is home-made "Q-dope," liquid polystyrene, some of which dries white if it picks up contaminants from the old plastic.  The polystyrene coil support is a strip cut from a plastic box that just happened to be the right material.

     The toluene in the Q-dope is so obnoxious that all work with it I have done outdoors and tried to choose times when there was a steady breeze.

THE W9XMT BUILDING

     Scanned* from my copy of the ad, a look at the artist's conception of W9XMT.  We're looking slightly East of due North.  I can vouch for the building and there was certainly a tower there, but I have my doubts about the large building in the background.  (However, the residential housing in that location is all postwar.)

     You can just make out the call letters on the sign over the door.  The sign would have faced busy 30th St.  There's a drugstore there now.
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* And it will need to be rescanned at higher resolution, in hopes of minimizing the moire. This was 720 dpi.

HAM CARD

     A probable "freebie" from a big name in radio, back when the amateur radio market was a significant part of their business and a huge source of goodwill:

     These 3x5 cards were meant as a supplement to one's station log.  Filed by callsign, they let the 1930's ham look up "W9AAA" or whatever callsign he was talking with, and see if perhaps they'd spoken before, and if so, what about.  If I have sized this right, it should just print out to the same size as the original.

     The logbook that goes with this is a real period piece: the back of every page is a catalog page for the company's products!  It's actually kind of handy: a 28-page logbook, 25-page catalog, plus seven pages of useful reference data (including the inside covers).  Don't look for a scan soon: "Entire contents copyrighted 1938, No. 267644, by Bud Radio, Inc.  No portion of the contents may be used without written permission."  I wonder what the present-day successor would say if I asked?

     The logbook was used by R.E. Morwood, a fellow in Springfield, Missouri from 7 July to 23 September, 1939.  All CW, much of it on 20 meters, a little 40m (at ½ one of his 20m freqs., probably on the fundamental of that crystal) and even some on 10m at its 2nd harmonic.  From the logged frequencies, he probably only had two crystals, both on 40m.  The handwriting is that of a young man; the last mention I have found online with that callsign is from a 1941 issue of QST, listing him as the Missouri Section Communications Manager and giving his first name as "Robert."  Someone with a different last name holds the callsign now.  The same name (with a different call, also now held by someone else) shows up as part of the team that pioneered amateur "Moonbounce" communications in the 1960, bouncing signals off the Moon to establish two-way communications between ham stations in Massachusetts and California.

REMARKABLE SCREWDRIVERS

     At least, they look remarkable.  I haven't had a chance to try them and I am arguing with myself over buying a set: Lee Valley's Woodworker's Parallel-Tip Screwdrivers.  Sized, they say, for #4 through #10 woodscrews, they have hollow-ground parallel tips the same width as the shaft and the rugged "perfect handle" design, in which the driver body is one piece of steel with two wooden scales to form the grip.  The cross-section of the grip is oval, allowing a better hold and keeping them from rolling.

     This is just about every desirable feature in a flat-blade screwdriver.  They include a carbide burnisher to improve grip with brass screws, a great idea if it works.

     I rarely endorse current commercial products and this is based on the catalog info -- but the design is just plain right in many ways.

STANCOR 10P TRANSMITTER UPDATE 7

     I had just reached the point of starting to wire up the heater circuit the other night when--

     I broke a terminal on the oscillator tube socket and realized the modulator socket was oriented wrong.

     The modulator socket was easy to fix -- unsolder the one modulation transformer lead still attached, removed retaining ring, turn socket, reinstall.

      The oscillator socket is ceramic and not as easy.  After a false start and much struggling, I did get it moved.

     Now I have to redress the heater leads and solder them.

     One of the coils arrived today.  Thanks to an uninformed packing job, it rattled around in the box all the way and arrived with the fragile old plastic broken.

     There's a fix for this, involving taping to shape and applying multiple layers of "coil dope," polystyrene dissolved in toluene or acetone.   I seem have  misplaced my bottle of the stuff, so I will have to buy or make more.  I'll still have to fabricate a new support bar to hold the coil to its plug.

     Such damage is not unsusual; the old plastic becomes quite brittle over time.  It's just disappointing.

     (The damaged octal socket is next to the coil.)

     I'm looking for 80-meter and 20-meter coils -- if you see any boxes like this one, do look inside, please!

     Some of the frequency-determining crystals (probably) arrived today, but they're "signature required" and no one was home.  I'll try to pick them up tomorrow.  One step at a time.