Remembrances of vacuum tube days
As a young teenager, I developed a love for electronics which became a lifelong love affair. In those days vacuum tubes were the norm and solid state devices such as transistors weren't in usage then....
Forum Discussion
LScamper wrote:
In the mid 90s helped with the design of a 200 megawatt two channel amplifier. It used 12 ML8618 water cooled magnetically beamed triodes.
Some of one bank of tubes.Click For Full-Size Image.
Amplifier testing area.
At one time while working on Scyllac we had an amplifier chain of 100 ML8618 tubes for a total output power of 2.5 Gigawatt. filament power was 32 kilowatt.
WOW, that’s some gnarly equipment! Get near 2.5 gigawatts of RF and you may start cooking your insides, unless the energy was well contained. I know from servicing dielectric sealers, even being too close to the output of even a 10kw machine coul cause your feet to heat up uncomfortably. I could hold a fluorescent lamp in my hand and amazed the machine operators when it lit up brightly when the machine fired. They thought it was some kind of magic. :E
