Welcome back, Michael, and hope your holiday set you up for further work with the transmitters. Sure it has. I only wish I was there to give a hand and have some fun doing so, but it's a bit of a long haul. The one thing I remember about any of the Marconi gear was how well built it always was, and how (at least as far as I was concerned) rewarding it was to work on it. I know some people have other memories, but I must have become a 'good Marconi Man', or something, because I always staunchly defended the company and its equipment, and still do. Having recently had to go inside my Atalanta to replace a screen feeder resistor to the two RF valves, I welcomed the floodgates of memory lane opening. For a few minutes, as I tried my best to emulate the beautiful work done by the original builders of the set, I was back there, at sea again, even having the same adrenaline rushes as I did then, knowing that if I cocked up, I would be without a receiver, at worst, or having to 'make do' until we finally berthed somewhere where some 'real engineers', as I sometimes thought of them, Radio Holland in the Caribbean, or good old AWA in Australia, could come down and repair my repairs, so to speak. (It never happened, fortunately, but there was always that frisson of concentration at the forefront of the mind, possibly a throwback echo of the ridicule and scorn seemingly heaped on one at college for cockups).
Having names assigned to pieces of equipment was an interesting move by the company. Who could forget the Lifeguard, or the Salvor, Reliant, Globespan, et al. Wasn't sure about the Commandant, though. I suppose it harked from the Commander, but Commandant? Hmm.... But it was a really neat transmitter, if you weren't after the higher power of its big brother, the Conqueror. It was one of the best equipment courses I ever did, the Commandant, and then Spector, telex equipment. Riding the Glasgow subway every morning over to Govan and surrendering oneself to a hard day's work with a very enthusiastic tutor... Way to go! My only regret now is that I chucked my carefully annotated Marconi Equipment Manuals for both that gear and also the Apollo and Radiolocator radar. Beautifully (if I dare say so) drawn waveform diagrams and tiny printing all over those lovely pull-out cct diagrams and blocks, lost forever to the weather's vagaries at the local tip. A work of art and something I was proud to have been a part of. Why I did that, I'll never know. There was plenty of room, after all, up in that dimly lit attic.
All that information, yet we never even had access to an oscilloscope at sea, at least I never did. The old 'diode probe' was a good substitute, however, especially if you'd taken the trouble to go through the test points on the cct boards, carefully recording the readings. Almost as good. I sometimes wonder at the frugality, if that's the right word, of some of the shipowners, not supplying such things, as well as the short-sightedness (as I saw it) of only having an Alert, or only slightly more useful, Monitor, as 'reserve receivers', both of which would have been totally useless for any serious work. Another Atalanta would have been a real luxury.
I know there was the requirement to have 24V emergency capability, but even so, an Alert, for Goodness' sake? Crossing the Pacific, all those thousands of empty miles, filled with nothing but static and lightning crashes at night, and an Alert, listening hopefully and doggedly out on 500kHz. Yes, I do wonder.
All those tales, from cocky Greek-employed R/O's and the like: radio rooms filled with wondrous racks of state-of-the-art, gleaming and very sophisticated and powerful transmitters and receivers, and a handsome, film-star salary for the privilege of having to make do with all that. But I wouldn't have changed a thing, thinking back. Not even the Alert, or the inadequate Monitor. Who could fail to be comforted, sitting there listening to the rythmic clicking and whirring of the cams on the Autokey, for example, as it went through its cadence of deliberate distress keying sequences, watching the pretty-coloured front panel lamps blinking in time to the mechanisms inside? Knowing it would faithfully key away into the old Salvor until the batteries failed and you went out to board the last boat away:
(Old joke): R/O, standing on the disappearing boat deck, watching the lifeboats pulling away, seeing the Captain in one.
"I thought you were supposed to be the last one to leave a sinking ship!!"
"I am..."
Best of luck with your transistors and soldering iron. (Or do they just fit into a base socket, I wonder?)
Paul