Croix d'Hins
radiotelegraphic
station

History notes (part 2)

The buildings.
The station site includes in addition to the main building
a general warehouse, techninal building, restaurant building,
coal storage and locomotive garage, personnel buildings (4),
school, Station chief house ("the white house"), energy station,
water reservoir, garage, gas, pumps room, wood warehouse.

The main building is 76m long, 16m wide and 11m high. It is
divided into five machines-rooms. The railway enters in it.
More rooms were added after 1938.

When building the parts of main building close to radio
equipment, no metal piece was used (including for doors on
whatever.  nuts, door handles ... etc) or would be grounded
 to avoid heating.

After 1938 a new room was built for new high power lamp
transmitter (callsign FYP).
And in 1939 another one was built for lamp-tx shortwave transmitters.
During 1939 was built a new cooling water reservoir and new pumps
rooms. The water temperature would be at 25 C in all seasons
(dissipating about 100 kW) and staff could swim in it ,although
not officially autorised.

The antenna is made of 16 horizontal wires carried by
the eight 250m towers  (four towers on each side).
The area of this horizontal part is 400 meters x 1200 meters.
Then ten wires go down vertically into the main building
to the antenna coil. This vertical part is actually the
active part of the antenna

The antenna coil is 5 to 6 meters high and same diameter.
With the horizontal capacitive part and the ground, the coil
constitute the tuned circuit.
Wavelenghts are between 19150 meters to 23450 meters.

The gound system was first a copper plate with an area
of 200 square meters burried at 50 centimeters and connected
to 100 vertical 14-meters-long copper tubes into the ground.
Then was added a network of 60 kilometers of copper wire
burried under the antenna. (you still find some today in the
ground)

The spark transmitter : 1920 to 1923
It is built by FEDERAL TELEGRAPH Co.. There are two transmitters
in Croix d'Hins, one is a backup.
Normal spark power is 1000 kW and the yield to change DC
to AC is about 50% leading to 500 kW HF.
The spark is fed under 1250 volts and 800 Amperes.
Its weight is 80 tons, 70 tons being for the magnetic circuit.
That huge cover is 2.8 meters high. Its primary coils is
in series with the spark and has the 800 Amperes. It is
immerged into oil cooled by the water circuit, pumps and
external reservoir. The magnetic field reaches 17000 Gauss.
Visitor's watches would often be damaged. Heavy metal pieces
lifted more than one meter from the cover would not fall
down but would stick to it.
Spark anode is a copper tube one centimeter diameter cooled
by water. Cathode is made of carbon, 4 centimeters diameter
and 50 centimeters initial length. It is replaced every 24 hours.
It is rotating for a regular erosion.
The spark chamber has an atmosphere of alcohol and petroleum
(falling drop by drop) to improve efficiency. (20 liters / 24H)

The 1250 volts / 800 amps are obtained from a 1000 kW converter
group working under 2200 volts AC coming from the energy building
final transformer.

Stabilized spark results in one frequency being transmitted.
Morse modulation is obtained by frequency shift.
The frequency shift is obtained by short-circuiting one
loop in the antenna coil (actually not one of the real
loops but 78 smaller loops simultaneously short-circuited.
The 78 breakers have silver terminals. They are fed by a
20 kW generator.

The spark transmitter callsign is : LY

Up to 27 harmonics have been found to be generated and
these transmitters are causing troubles to others and to
the newly introduced radio broadcasting.
 

From 1923, spark transmitter is kept as backup but replaced
by new HF generator, type Bethenod-Latour.
(patent by Marius Latour, 1917)
The output power is 500 kW with a 84 percent yield.
Its single HF output wavelength is 19150 meters.
Its callsign is : FYL

Return to first part
Go to Part 3

Other references :(thanks Al Heiden, Don Kimberlin)

- See a description of the station from an online version of "History of communications-Electronics in the United States Navy".
at : http://www.angelfire.com/nc2/whitetho/1963hw20.htm#20sec6   (local copy)
 

The History of NSS, Annapolis, Maryland :   http://members.aol.com/k6dc/history.htm

The Telegraph Office :
http://www.metronet.com/~nmcewen/Federal_Telegraph_Relay.html

George T. Royden oral history  :
http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/royden10.html

The Passing of A Pioneer :
http://antiqueradios.com/pioneer.shtml

Page by Pierre Dessapt :
http://perso.club-internet.fr/dspt

Jurassic Telecommunication :
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/jurassic/

Don Kimberlin's page :
http://members.fortunecity.com/donkimberlin
 

Informations or documents about Lafayette Station are  welcome at : eric.tiffon@freesbee.fr