Develonment of Airplane Radiotelephone Set woneet Ee imps, tac made ina variety of diferent fons, including srplane Bnd seaplane ste, ground sels, and cas for submcrine shasers and destroyers. ‘This article will describe one Of these radiotelephone equipments, whichis ended by the Sign Corps ts the SCAGS set, It wae designe for airplane ase, an its development invelved many peculiar dificulis involving noise, vibetin, shocks om Ssoding, ee A view af the varinss parts of the enuipment is shown ia Fig. 1. A wind-diven generator, losted on one of the siruts of the landing: gear, Sarnishes the ower sunply, which ig le thragh a Slter box can taining an inductance snd eoadensess for soothing out the commutator sites, ‘The power is then led to the Te success of che sirione mintelephone was announced oes ipa aus tae me aert Siontent and quamity anton of the rade See eer eae Seago gaat of he lla ae as satimed to Ber ockorWhetier Ca “the paper on ato Telepbey” Rees ae eee Ise ah adisethony Ite saad Rral te uty radio eet proper in which the transmitting ad seciving Cire equipment is assembled, The two plugs shown tthe leer right hard side of the set lead to aa i terphone bos, by mieane of which the radio operator may also tale with the pilot, using an ordinary tele- phone crc, Unully the antenna consis of two final braided copper wires wailed from the wing tip. When fying alone 40 that there is no danger of en tanglemen, there is some advantage in using a single trie abont 320 fet Tong with two pound fend weight “ped ke fish atfached to the end. Recent deve. ‘opments have made it posible to employ mach shorter fntenns, which however require the wse of shorter ‘wave lengths. Fig. 2 shows a pilot and observer seated nan siplane which sited with tis equipment. The Ides which contain the receivers ie desiened t» £t the operator's head snugly in order to excinde wind aoises. It was found necessary 10 have the helmet feover vompletely the lany yrs of the head #0 as 10 {prevent trarsmiasion of rise tothe exr dooms ‘The outside and inside appessance of the radio set proper, which contains the transiting and receiving fubes with their auxiliary civeit equipment, i shown fn Figs 3 and q. A schematic diagram of the trans nitting crit, fe shown in Fig. 5 which consists of tteo threeslerient vacusi tubes connected 10 an in put tnasformer operated by 2 ecropione telephone fransmiter. “The oscillator tube feeds an osclain ccruuit in which the inductance ie suppiied by the ‘otenua col and part of the capacity bythe antenna, ‘When the transite is aclsted there is a ceria normal vale of voltage impressed upon the grid of the modulator tube, this value being juste anti) the plate current of the modulator is abour the sume as that of the orilstor, ‘The charucteitic carve of thetransmitting tube, Fig, 7. 6 as the yrid be tomes more negative, the plate current decteases st fondant plate voltage, and with positive gril walloge Xi inereases. "This tay be described hy saying that te esistince of the plate cit may be varied by Datving the kr vole. "An inspection of the curve wes that this Yaslation maybe from a very bigh le For postive gr voltages, The leansasiter voltage acts upon the grid of the module tr and causes the resistance of the ple cirewt to vy theough a acide range in ie. Sine this cireit sunt ance with the the plate ce it iibtor tue (at aio lint not at radi frequencies) the nscilatur willbe robbed of curren’ of hive addional plate cursent rdance with the speech voltage Spee Bs eomatly ‘reed throu ie ka ac Wis seen tbat this 4 supplied through a low frequency coke evil the current to the two tubes ap aatter how the plate cat vary individually A complete schematic citeut of the set is given in Fig. 6. Aumeltibaded switch, the handle of which is own in Fig. je uted 40 make the necessicy eect changes As all adjuctnents may be made on the grou, this swite the oaly The hansle is de between transmitting and. rectivng ing i manipulation required by the opera ie ed land.” The ssseving -citeuit consists of a detecting tue ani two sages of amplieation, being sims in rrineile to the reveivig eesits in common use ia lelegrph sets The characteristics of the receiving tube are shown in Pig. 8 The Dalley which furnishes p or the ceciving sues is mounted ia the faio set and is made-up 5 wo its woe "These unite are con weighing a Title over a pound stall dy I reeciving st 5 spproniately posed fells The complete transiting and weighs 21 pound The wind-driven generator furnishes pate voltage 5 fcom 275 lo goa valte aad Blament vellage at fre 15 10 30 volts The development of the xenerstor » HE ELECTRIC roved 10 be comsidtrale prem in ital, ae it was necessary 10 secure constant voltage over a singe of peed from 000 to 12 000 pi, Which correspon 10 an airplane speed range up tn aGo miles per hour, In “dition to all af the erdnary requirements for power ‘uipment there was the additional requirement of fa rushing current fee from commutator sipples and Urwsh nose regulation was accomplished. by mens of a yactum tnbe regulator while the noise wis suppressed by means of special generator design and the use of after.” Fig. 9 shows ite appearance with the “stream line" til remevel i but of ite out «an aluminun bub, and has weight of about 4 ceils an sir screw similar to the fine peopeler, except that Ht rune with » call sp synchronous speed* while the engine proper The generator propel as somewhat above synchren Fig 10 ‘hows the chasoeerstic curves of a propeller, having = piteh of ox. These were taken in 4 wird lamnel at the Washington Navy Vard, The m0 lood speed is ‘exactly proportional © the first power of the wind vee iy a seen By comparing the curves fer 50 and 60 rales per bout raion power i oughly proportional to the cube of the wind selocity ‘This might be expected from the fondamental eonsid ction that the kinetic every of a eubie foot of ait is prnponional wo the scuare of the velocity while the ‘number of cubic feet striking the propeller per second is proportional to the fest power of the velocity Ate wind tunnel was not equipped t0 ive higher wind Yelciies, 20 information was ebtaiaed 88 to the age over whick the above sated laws would Te was ot converien to fale atch, mens rents on an airplane, bat our experience gies st reason 10 belive that dhe lnws fold over the entire range up to the maximum velocity of which the ait plane was cape, us speed ‘The point Th elon the mpd at‘THE ELECTRIC JOURNAL The centrifugal streses in the propeller blages were considerable. A testing machine Was constructed Which showed that propellers made’ wilh properly elected wood coald be safely operated at 22000 pa. It was later found possible to emply propellers of somewhat greater pitch thus relucing the normal speed ‘The complete radio equipment is designed for short range cemmanication over distances of 2 few miles conly, although it has Been used ap to distances of 18 niles under very favorable conditions. Adjustments ae provided whieh permit the use of wave lensihs from 200 to 00 meters, ‘The power ouput to the snfenna at a wave length of gno meters with 9 single Wie antenna 300 feet long is about 0.75 watt Tr is interesting to note sit emt of this 075 watt radiated, the power recsived by another set theee miles away would be of the order of 10-* wats, Ordinarily there is uo trouble from atmospheric static owing fo the we of sack abort wave lengths However, the ignition system of the airplane engine sets up electrostatic distarhances which produce & very shacp crackling in dhe receiver gles the ignition wee ing is proyery shieMed by 2 grounded metal sleving ‘There i also a certain amount of nose due to the gem crater coamstation riples. When trating, the ratio of the amplitude of these disturbances 10 the smplitade of the tranemitted signal ie alien kn, bot as the received tignal is extremely minste, a very small commutator ripple will be comparable to the ssmengt cf the voice current. For this resson a coke a3 col is employed im the receiver lament circuit wiv suppresses hese alistuchances, In addin, the two condensers in Fig. Gate connected across the geteraior Armature leads and assist by partially absorbiag the fommatator ripples. “These condensers together vith the choke col are mounted separately inthe filler be ‘The writer las a very distinet recollection of the first fight in whic he talked by endiotlepooe. Tt was on April 12, 1018, st Langley Aviation Field, Virginia. Previous fights had been made with spe ally built models of the radio set but this wis one of the frst tials of a teobaade set representative of quantity production. The purpoce of the Hight was 10 bserve the operation of the set and note any defect, We climbed into the plane, put om the receiver Debnets, adjused the breast transmitters aud strapped ourselves in. While the engine was being given @ pre= Timinary spin om the ground to wars it up, we talked ‘over the interphone fo make sare that it was ia working trier, We then weat down tothe end ofthe avistion field and made a half cirle back, climbing graduely. The high pitched note dve to the revolutions of the wind-driven geaersior covld be heard above the low pitch of die engine proper, and by looking throeeaug the tranestent windoses at the faments of the tubes in the set, it was evident that the power supply wae working satisfastoily, ‘The pilot then interphoued to Tet ont the antenna, After making the reqsited mum ber of turns to let out 300 feet, the rritch of the radio ser was place in the transmit postion ‘One of the diffcul things is to know what t9 say om occasions uf this sort, The only requicement i t0 talk, so that all sorte of subjects weave discussed. de- scribed the river, which was sticihiel oat about 3000 feet below and the white oyster shell roads which are the bane of automobilists along the Virginian coast. Nr. A.A. Orval, also ofthe engineering department, fof the Wester Electric Co, Bad im the ieantine gene fin another plane, and ws Fstening. After ealking for a fow minutes T sid, “Goodby, Oswald, come in now sd threw over to the receiver postion, T coal hear the “spit”, “spit” of the magneto, for we had not as yet found ost how to shield the witing, and T could false hear the commutator aoise of the generator. A ‘moment later I heard, "Hello Stoller” coming into the secever, sod T aust say tat in spite of the fact chat T Jnad used these sts on the ground and was expecting i, the sudden sound of a htman voice which T dearly recognized gave me quite a star. Te happened that we ‘were not over two miles apart at the moment and with the antenne in 8 favorable postion, so that the words were heard quite loudly. Mr. Oswald ssid that be had Iheard me distinctiy, and then told me to have my plot “The range ie about gupent gest between planes THE ELECTRIC JOURNAL tuen the plane down towaed Old Point Comfort and he ‘would go up the James River. We would then report to each ther where we were from tine to time and thus determine the range of the set between airplanes We thus talked back and forth for about three. quarters of am howe, The maxima range attained at that time was eighteen miles for a one-way conversa- tion, for t-was found on switching back again that the speech had become tno faint to be distinguished. We then turned sronnd to go back to the evasion Geld ‘We were now fying at a height of about 4000 feet, at 2 pend of about 80 miles an her, Sadenly the pilot shut off the engine tipping the plane dom at an angle fof abt 43 degrees, and T could then hear very dis "is WoCHAEAGYEENE CORTES oF 3g EH PROPER “ted wis goo ma genes pilot then turned on the engine, keeping the nase of ‘he plane tilted downward, when the pitch of the wind driven generator cowld be heasd rising, indicating that wwe were moving at a very high speed for this type ai™ plane, probably well over a hundred miles an hour. ‘The laments io the eet could be seen at their notmal brillaney, which showed that the generator was rep lating properly at this high speed. We were aow ap- proaching the aviatn field and the antenna was reeled In, We proceeded until we were directly over the Tangara and then the pilot made n epial for the last 2000 fect, and ded down very smoothly in front of ‘he hangers. Yee found owt tht er conversation iad ‘een picked up during the fist half hoar of our trip by the ground se located in one ofthe hangars.