Originally Posted by
happybiker
Oh yes, that antenna tuner. If it was the one I saw once, it was quite a thing. My first job out of high school was working at the KW Electronics factory in Crayford, Kent, where I aligned and tested brand new ham radio sets off the production line for sale. The engineers that did repairs quite often got some commercial gear in, and one day they had a Collins aviation transceiver with ATU. To test it out, they strung some magnet wire across all the wooden benches in the lab (after we got off them, thankfully) and powered up the Collins. Key down, there was way too much current for the wire to handle, and you could see current nodes getting red and eventually melting the wire. the new antenna length cause a high SWR, and then you heard the 'eyee euew errrr' of the motors in the antenna tuner unit correcting that, only to be followed by more melting of wire until it was too short and they stopped the test! (Another ham here, now living in Canada, as well as examiner for the amateur and pilot radio certificates).
73