R1154 Transmitter

I cannot believe that I actually had one of these in my shack, and in good condition, before I tore it apart! It's the famous R1154 Transmitter that was used during the war in Lancaster Bombers.
Here is the story...

At the time I was working at Telefusion Ltd as an apprentice in my first year repairing UHF TV Tuner Units (Valve ones...PC86 and PC88) In the same room as myself was an Australian guy who used the sophisticated alignment equipment for Transistor Tuner Units. He was a licenced Radio Amateur in Australia and I thought he was really clever because he could use a 'UHF Sweep Generator' and Oscilloscope to accurately align these little beasties with their AF138 and AF139 transistors.

When he decided to move on and return to Australia, he asked me if I wanted this R1154 Transmitter, so I went to his house in Worsley with my Dad to collect this and a few other items. My intentions were to get the R1154 working, but it became obvious that it linked to other devices and would be impossible to get this going alone. I remember removing the front plate of this transmitter and seeing a row of huge high power valves in a line as though they were about to take off into space! The two meters on the front and also another seperate RF Meter that I used later to measure the RF Output of my Topband Transmitter.

So guess what I did with it?

I decided to gut it and remove everything that would be useful, particularly the coils, tuning capacitors and meters. The coils were connected to huge switches and the tuning capacitors to the brightly coloured knobs. Most of the case and knobs were thrown away, but the coils, capacitors and meters were all put to good use.

At the time it was a heap of junk....but now....I wish I could have put it in cold storage and then onto Ebay!!