[BULK] - Re: [TowerTalk] Vacuum tube 100 years old today

[Bob Nielsen]

On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 01:30:41PM -0800, Steve Katz wrote:
> 
> > I was in missile class in the Air Force in 1963 and the lab and course was
> > entirely in tubes even though the missile was entirely in transistors.
> > The
> > adaptation was very short (minutes, maybe and hour) and said that
> > transistors worked like tubes except at lower voltages and power levels.
> > That was all there was to transistors !!!  Not bad really for a class that
> > hadn't been rewritten yet (and that may have been all the instructor knew
> > at
> > that time).
> > 
> > 73, de Jim KG0KP
> 	[Steve Katz]  I'll bet the missle wasn't "all transistors" in 1963.
> The guidance and targeting systems used high voltage microwave tubes
> throughout the 1970s, including SAMs and AAMs.  Of course, a lot of those
> late 1950s designs didn't actually reach production levels until the
> seventies (no kidding).  We were building (Army) Hawks designed in '63 at
> Raytheon/Martin (forebody/aftbody) in 1978; the Patriot didn't go into full
> production until after that, and its acquisition system still used
> tubes...ditto the Sidewinder, Sparrow, etc.  -WB2WIK/6

The Phoenix air-to-air missle, designed in the early 60's used a
klystron transmitter with a pulse modulator tube which resembled a 4X250
without the cooling fins (liquid-cooled).  I recall the design
originally used nuvistors (remember them?) as i.f. amplifiers, but I
don't think they went into the production version.  A later model was
all solid-state, using Impatt diodes for the transmitter.  The AMRAAM
missile, designed in the early 90's uses a travelling wave tube for its 
transmitter, as do most current aircraft radars.

73, Bob N7XY