On The Spot

ack on the American side of the Pacific a furious storm that struck the Oregon and Washington coasts in late October of 1934, attaining maximum force off the mouth of the Columbia River, gave Henry Jenkins an opportunity to demonstrate all the amazing ingenuity and resourcefulness of the radio amateur.

The violent storm swept across the north Pacific like a Titan's hand, smiting ships and shores with thunderous waves. If ever there was a night when the coastwise vessels plying off Oregon's shores needed the friendly guidance of the Tillamook light and fog signal this was it.

But the Tillamook Rock was silent and dark-dark, that is, until amateur radio lent a helping hand. . . .

The evening began quietly enough. At 10 P.M. a fresh southeast wind was blowing, with light rain. During the night the wind increased to gale force and changed to southwest. By 3 A.M. seas were rolling in high on Tillamook Rock. The swells hit and burst, flinging high showers of stinging spray over the Rock.

At nine-thirty that morning Henry Jenkins, first assistant keeper of the U.S. light station on the Rock and amateur W7DIZ, was awakened from his sleep by a deluge of water that completely covered him; all his clothes and bedding were soaking wet. The heavy seas by this time were breaking against the tower itself; they had pounded against the window shutters of his room until the catch let go, opening the windows and flooding the room.

Driving the water was a wind blowing with hurricane force-one hundred miles an hour or more in the gusts. The seas submerged the entire lighthouse, flooding all quarters. With the water came large rocks, timbers-destructive debris that smashed the plate-glass windows for the lantern high in the tower, one hundred thirty-three feet above normal high water.

Sixteen panes were broken, but the light still burned. Keepers struggled to replace the glass panes with temporary wooden shutters. Unbroken seas flooded the lantern, filling the watch room where the keepers worked. They were submerged at times to their necks before the rush of water could escape through the door into the tower and quarters below. p> Battered and bruised, the keepers finally completed the job as best they could. Hug Hansen's right hand was deeply cut, and Henry Jenkins helped him dress the wound. As he did so he glanced at the barometric reading.

"Whew!" Henry whistled sharply. "Barometer reads 28.92!"

Hugo shook his head stolidly. "Never saw anything like it before, I tell you."

Both flinched as another wave of water crashed against the tower and came down with a terrific impact on the roof-tons of water that covered the building. Jenkins had his eye on the barometer.

"It dropped to 28.72 when the water hit and then right back up again!" he said excitedly.

At ten-fifteen a tremendous wave came that enveloped the entire tower and building. It seemed as though the ocean itself had swallowed the Rock. When the water subsided the large eighty-foot derrick and the telephone cable had been washed away. The tremendous power of the wave caused terrific havoc, hurling rocks weighing as much as fifty pounds through tower and roof, smashing shutters made of half-inch wood as though they were paper. The wave actually broke off about six feet of the west end of the Rock, they later found.

The light station was badly wrecked. The shutters at the base of the building had been carried away, flooding the interior and breaking the piping for the heating system. Cutting off the heat represented a genuine calamity, for the crew were all cold and tired and wet.

Still there was no immediate cessation in the fury of the storm. The crashing blows from tons of water and rock came at intervals as little as three seconds apart until nearly noon. Then the force of the waves diminished, and by early afternoon the sea was comparatively calm.

The lantern and the fog signal had both gone out following the disastrous wave that wrecked the building. Shipping would need both badly, for a heavy fog lay thick over the sea, still murmurous and heaving. Yet if a light different from the signal normally flashed from Tillamook were used mariners would be mystified, and if they came up close enough to identify the light the consequences might be disastrous.

Nevertheless, a fixed white lamp was set up. The next problem was to notify the mainland that the light was damaged. But the telephone line had been washed away, and no small boat could live in those seas....

It was then Henry Jenkins yearned bitterly for his little amateur station. If only he could have brought it along with him to the light station.... He closed his eyes with the intensity of thought.

"What I wouldn't give for a little 210 Hartley and a motor generator," he mourned to Hugo Hansen. "Or even a 30 and a 'B' battery, that's all...."

"Well," said Hugo, "you don't have them, so I guess that's that. We haven't even got a regular radio set even-now. Only that old Atwater Kent-and the batteries in it are dead." Henry Jenkins' eyes had been shut tight but now they opened slowly until they were staring orbs. Then he brought his clinched fist down sharply on his knee. "That's it!" he cried. "That's what I'll do."

Disregarding the wonder in Hugo's face, Henry went to the room where the battery-operated broadcast receiver was set up. The room was drying off a bit; it was possible to work now. He looked at the radio set. It hadn't played for the past couple of weeks....Batteries dead, of course....

He dug around in the rear of the cabinet until he found the battery tester. Water had run off the top of the cabinet without getting inside, thank God. Now to check the batteries.

The filament dry cells were dead-completely dead. The three "B" batteries had a little life left in them. The three in series gave about eighty volts instead of the normal one hundred thirty-five. Not very much-but enough. But he still needed filament batteries....

His eyes roamed speculatively around the room. It reached the ancient crank-operated telephone on the wall and stopped. Pulling himself stiffly erect-the wet and the cold were already taking their toll-Henry unscrewed the front panel from the telephone box. Inside were two telephone-type dry cells. Thank Heaven, they were new!

So much for the power problem. Henry began to move faster, hope spurring him on. He found two half-dry boards, each roughly a foot square. These would be the baseboards for transmitter and receiver. Removing the Atwater Kent chassis from its cabinet, he began disassembling the principal components. The chassis stripped, he found a length of transformer bell wire and went to work.

Having no sockets, Henry drilled holes in each board to pass the bases of the type 30 tubes from the broadcast receiver. For connections he soldered directly to the base prongs of the tubes. On the transmitter board he placed an inductance coil made out of fourteen turns of transformer bell wire wound over the cardboard container from one of the telephone dry cells. The middle section of the three-gang variable condenser unit taken from the broadcast set became the transmitter tuning condenser. Series fixed condensers for the antenna were made out of alternate layers of tin foil and waxed paper taken from a loaf of bread. Henry used no grid condenser or leak. The plate blocking condenser came out of the Atwater Kent collection. A choke coil with half its turns removed served as a short-wave radio-frequency choke.

When it was assembled this collection of miscellaneous scraps and junk parts became a radio transmitter using the famous "TNT" circuit. And the way it worked proved its name was no lie!

The receiver was equally crude-and equally effective. Wire unwound from one of the radio-frequency transformers in the Atwater Kent was rewound on the shell of the telephone receiver to make the grid and plate coils of the oscillating detector. Fixed coupling Henry used-enough to make sure the thing would oscillate under any conditions. There was no need for regeneration control anyway! Two insulated wires a couple of feet long provided an antenna series condenser, the insulation serving as a dielectric between the two wires. Another tin-foil-and-wax-paper condenser completed the grid circuit; there was enough leakage so a grid leak was unnecessary.... The tuning condenser was a tougher problem. Finally Henry took two brass plates off the doorknob, fastened one plate to the receiver base, placed the other above it with a sheet of waxed paper in between and connected a flexible lead to the upper plate. Tuning was accomplished by sliding the top plate over the bottom plate with a pencil eraser!

He had no conceivable way of measuring the values of the parts he used, but his practiced eye calculated the dimensions as best he could from his long practical experience as an amateur. He was not far wrong.

At last every connection was made.

The receiver connected up, a soft hiss could be heard in the headphones. There was an encouraging "plop" when he touched one of the brass plates with his finger; this established the fact that the detector was oscillating. Gingerly Henry slid the top plate across the other with his pencil. Wait a minute... There was a signal.... No, back a little....There-got it!

The first station he heard was in Seattle. The operator was busily talking to someone else and couldn't be reached. But the signal did show where to tune in the amateur band. A bit further... and there was Henry Goetze, W7CXK, calling in Seaside, Oregon, not ten miles up the coast.

While listening to W7CXK's call Henry turned on his transmitter and tuned the dial carefully until he heard a sharp, swooping beat note as his transmitter came into resonance with the carrier from the other station. Certain now that his transmitter was working, he called W7CXK, tapping the end of a connecting wire against the terminal of a "B" battery with his fingers in lieu of a telegraph key. It was 6:50 P.M. W7CXK didn't hear him at first, but another operator, farther inland, did. The signals were weak and chirpy, and the inland operator couldn't understand all that was being sent but he passed the word along to Goetze at W7CXK.

W7CXK immediately listened for Jenkins, and soon Tillamook Rock was again in contact with the mainland.

The first message transmitted was to the superintendent at Portland, notifying him of the damage and requesting that all vessels navigating those treacherous waters be warned that the lighthouse was darkened.

That was only the beginning of the service accomplished by the valiant little makeshift station however. It performed reliably for Jenkins throughout the next several days, the batteries growing weaker and weaker, until finally their dying energy had given out. Not only to Portland did its messages go, but also to Astoria where the Lighthouse Service supply depot was located and to the lighthouse tender, Rose. A Coast Guard lifesaving crew and boat were sent to rescue those who were injured and ill at the light station. Weather reports, landing conditions, medical advice-these and other data facilitating preparations for permanent repairs were handled. Only when the telephone line was restored did operation cease.

By then Henry Jenkins had written a shining page in radio's history with his ingenuity and resourcefulness.