A former beeb engineer on Ross Revenge conducted the same practise as the Mebo Enginners, wind the mod and compression back on the 50 to preserve the tubes. When relieved another engineer would crank it back up a notch.
Dave. Bollier and Meister used to come on board and immediately head for the transmitter hall, where they would tinker away for hours, with one, usually Meister, coming out to wander around the deck and the messroom with a huge portable radio clamped to their ear. As soon as they were gone the duty senior engineer, usually Bruno, would reset everything back to what it was before.
On night engineer Steve Berry chummed me while I was on air, using his penknife to scrape away at an output tube to get some more hours out of it, complaining that there were never enough spares.
Freddie: Yeah, we used to spend half the day in the newsroom area decoding teletype messages from the comrades and going to the bridge to send them teletype reports on how many yachts had sailed out around the Mebo II that day and whether the crew had caught any fish with the baited lines over the stern.
I found that pretty strange too, Dave - perhaps it really was a spy ship after all?
I’m no engineer, just a failed radio presenter, but I always found it strange that RNI brimmed with multiple RF outlets (not wilt standing the jamming, multiple frequency changes, blah, blah, blah) that they there was no significant effort to improve the audio, or antennae matching, considering the 4 years at sea and significant backing not enjoyed by Caroline for instance. Willing to be shot down in flames.
You would be hard put to find an Ampliphase still in service anywhere in the world today but there are loads of Doherty amplifiers, and I am not just talking about the likes of the Marconi B series at the BBC AM networks. There are Doherty amplifiers for mobile phone base stations, satellite and microwave links and digital TV and DAB networks and so on.
Ian, I am sure that Robin told me the RCA 100 kw was a prototype built in Italy.