[BC] When did GE die? RCA, Westinghouse, Collins Western Electric.

[Phil Alexander]

On 1 Jun 2006 at 7:32, DHultsman5 at aol.com wrote:

> 
> In a message dated 6/1/2006 5:50:14 AM Central Standard Time,  
> dynotherm at earthlink.net writes:
> 
> 
> IMHO  GE was light years ahead of the pack with the FM boxes they made
> in the  late '40's and early '50's, but priced themselves out of the
> market trying  to get "military" prices for broadcast equipment and
> spare  parts.
> 
> 
> 
> *********************************************************************
> 
> Just after the war all the majors were geared up on technology and  
> manufacturing.  The biggies at the time were as I recall;     Federal Radio & TV 
> transmitters,  Collins Radio Company, RCA  Broadcast,  Gates Radio, General Electric 
> Broadcast,  Westinghouse  Broadcast,  Western Electric  and probably others.
> 
> Moving from a war oriented economy and transitioning back to a non war  
> economy and manufacturing,  I think you will find that the late '40's FM  
> transmitters by Collins, Westinghouse and General Electric were similiar and  built 
> like tanks as were the RCA, Federals and Western Electrics.  Gates  stayed closer 
> to AM until the mid '50's  about the time the FM maket was  slowing.

As I recall, The RCA went from the "iron fireman" exciter to the electronic
version of the same in the FM-xxD which was the same series that brought us
the 4CX5000A - a tube that was never designed for VHF service. The WE's and
Westinghouse boxes were grounded grid triodes and very temperamental, using
direct FM exciters. They were pretty but PITA's to make play. I've seen 
several Federal AM's but never an FM although I have heard of them. The AM's
were awesome with separate transformer rooms for 5 kW. The Collins exciter
of the early days was a Phasitron licensed from GE.

OTOH, the GE introduced circa 1947 had the Phasitron exciter which was solid
and stable as the Rock of Gibraltar. It could be a PITA to change the 2H21
(Phasitron) unless you knew how to tune a circuit with nine interactive
controls, but once optimized for best distortion at 30 and 50 Hz, it would
run like a Swiss watch. From the tripler output of the exciter to the PA,
regardless of size, the GE was push-pull and used low capacity tubes that
were actually tunable. (Unlike the grid of a 4CX5000A.) Like all boxes of
that era, they were built like tanks. Each PA served as driver for the next
larger size - 250W - 3 kW - 10 kW - 50 kW TPO. All outputs and inputs were
coaxial at 51.5 ohms. I don't know if they manufactured the 50 kW design,
but I saw everything from 10W (yes they had a 10 W NCE box which was the
exciter with a PA stage added) through 10 kW. One station where I worked
had a very good antenna feeding a Sherwood tuner for OTA networking. The
GE had a warm clean sound that was so characteristic and sounded so much
better than the others that we could tune across the dial and pick out the
GE transmitters by listening. Most were run with no processing - NONE.

Perhaps I'm biased, but many of the things in that 1946-47 design we not
equalled for another 10 years when RCA introduced the "D" model, and 
some of us saw that as a replacement, not an equal.


---------------------------------------------
Phil Alexander, CSRE, AMD
Broadcast Engineering Services and Technology 
(a Div. of Advanced Parts Corporation) 
Ph. (317) 335-2065   FAX (317) 335-9037





-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.394 / Virus Database: 268.8.0/353 - Release Date: 5/31/06