Large HF transmitter 200kw AN/FRT-62 and health effects

[ez24]

When the high power switch tripped the building would shake.  This was in 1970 and I cannot even remember where the switch was  .   Working on this was my entire Navy career and no pictures.  Mine was at a different location and I think we had 6 of these but lots of smaller ones (40kw).  Ours covered the Indian Ocean from Eritrea.

I lived at the site so I got hit by millions of watts for 3 years.  It is a wonder I am still alive.     Has insanity been proven to be a side effect of high power HF?  If so maybe I can get disability     This forum has reminded me of this.

What kind of health supplements should I take to combat the side effects?

[Delta]

Take some homeopathic batteryiserer pills...

[Halcyon]

Oh stop your complaining! What about these people who live near wind turbines or close to Wi-Fi access points? They are the ones who are truly struggling!

;-)

[German_EE]

"What kind of health supplements should I take to combat the side effects?"

Fresh air, sunshine and lots of chocolate.

[nitro2k01]

I lived at the site so I got hit by millions of watts for 3 years.  It is a wonder I am still alive.     Has insanity been proven to be a side effect of high power HF?  If so maybe I can get disability     This forum has reminded me of this.

Reminded you of what? Insanity, disability, high power RF or all 3?

But, RF is non-ionizing radiation, so unless you put your head in the way of the beam and got your head cooked, you should have no permanent damage from the radiation. And likewise, you probably didn't receive much of the radiation energy at all. In the control room, the energy would be transported through rigid coax cables, the "pipes" coming out from the top of the unit. If it was leaking, you would lose valuable power from reaching the antenna!
 And the signal strength would be diminshed according to an inverse square law. Imagine the signal being spread out over an imaginary sphere, with an area growing with the radius of the sphere, ie your distance from the antenna.

All in sall, not much to worry about. Unless your post was all in jest and you know all of this already.   

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

I know lots of broadcast engineers. Many with no consequences from working safely around high power transmitters. What frequencies did it operate on without having a guess? AN/FRT-62 by TMC.
The only people that develop problems, are the foolish who disable interlocks and insist on crawling in the cabinet with the HV on , and the others who expose themselves to high band VHF and above due to leaky gaskets and or direct antenna radiation.
A properly screened room will mostly eliminate daily exposure from high power RF. Then again I have heard of people looking into a waveguide and wondered why they developed cataracts or worse.

[DenzilPenberthy]

I used to work with a colleague back in my RF days who was utterly convinced that exposure to high power RF caused people to have more male than female children. I'm pretty certain that there's no actual evidence for this and it's all just conformation bias in his head but he could name tonnes of ex-colleagues who only had male kids. He had 8 kids and was satisfied that that was a statistically significant number

[T3sl4co1l]

No, you didn't get hit by millions of watts.  If you did, you would literally vaporize.  Don't know if you ever saw any catastrophic failures, but power levels on the order of that are awesome indeed, and not something you'd want to interact with, physically speaking!

Going to guess, large ceramic tube?  Got any pictures or stories to share?

Tim

[KJDS]

I once did a safety survey on a medium wave transmitter site that had several transmitters each running at hundreds of kilowatts. Everywhere away from the antennas were way below the ICNIRP guidelines.

[ez24]

I once did a safety survey on a medium wave transmitter site that had several transmitters each running at hundreds of kilowatts. Everywhere away from the antennas were way below the ICNIRP guidelines.

What is "away"?

FYI

The transmitters, barracks, mess hall, misc were all in one building completely surrounded 360 by the antennas no more than 100 ft from the barracks.   What bothers me the most is my lack of memory on the transmitters.  Almost like my mind has been wiped clean (effects of over exposure to HF ?).  For 45 years I never even thought of the transmitters.  It wasn't until I joined this forum and came across ham operators and then thinking they use transmitters.

This post was not in jest.  It is scary to lose one's memory.

There is hardly anything on the internet about where I was, just that the Navy had a transmitter site at Guru.    And I have no photos of the transmitters (I cannot remember if we were forbidden to take them).

The first photo is the transmitter site.  The black arrows are the outside limits of site (stone wall) and the red oval was where the transmitter/barracks were.  All traces of the Navy buildings are gone.  But since we had a basement, I think what you see is concrete from the foundations.  It would cost too much money to remove.

During the civil war all the buildings were burned down.  All buildings seen in photo were built after the US left.  Antennas surrounded the area in the red oval within the boundary indicated by the black arrows.   

Google map of area:
https://www.google.com/maps/@15.0043552,39.0437664,720m/data=!3m1!1e3

Just had to show where I had my accident (nothing around the area)

https://www.google.com/maps/@15.087098,39.0196759,356m/data=!3m1!1e3

[AF6LJ]

From everything I have seen on the subject you shouldn't need to worry in regards to HF power levels, VHF and above it becomes an issue though.

[T3sl4co1l]

45 YEARS?  I'm lucky if I remember something from last year!

Memory is only what you use of it.  If you truly haven't thought of it in that time, it's a wonder you remember it at all!

Remember (ha), people regularly overestimate their memory capability; and feel really bad when they remember much less (and what's worse: much less accurately!) than they think they should.  Eyewitness testimony is notoriously bad, easily one of the worst forms of evidence, scientifically speaking, that's legally admissible in court.

Brains are weird...

Tim

[Srbel]

I remember reading about findings of Russian scientists about the effects of high frequency radio waves on human cells. The conclusion was that everything under 800 MHz is safe.

[Zero999]

I remember reading about findings of Russian scientists about the effects of high frequency radio waves on human cells. The conclusion was that everything under 800 MHz is safe.

I'd be interesting to see the research.

I believe it depends on whether you're talking about the near or far field, as well as the wavelength.

It's true that at longer wavelengths the human body won't absorb much radiation because the wavelength is huge, compared to the size of a human. Try putting some tiny insects in a microwave and note they won't get zapped because they're so small compared to the 120mm radiation.

In the near field it depends on the antenna, as much as frequency.

[Towger]

I know 3 people who died from rare forms forms of cancer, who would have been exposed to high levels of RF in their past:
1 Amateur radio/Ham operator.
2 Research Physics professor.  He worked on a lot of military stuff. He would come over to Ireland but would no go to main land Europe, in case he was kidnapped or knocked off. We though he was nuts, but one of his ex Co workers was killed by mossid in France.
3 Ex airforce doctor. He did a lot of flying on the death watch bombers. Doing tests on the flight crews. In his own words, they would not be allowed to those test these days...
He never said any more about them.

[Towger]

BTW They were all in their 70s when they died.

[KJDS]

ICNIRP guidelines

http://www.icnirp.org/cms/upload/publications/ICNIRPemfgdl.pdf

[Srbel]

I remember reading about findings of Russian scientists about the effects of high frequency radio waves on human cells. The conclusion was that everything under 800 MHz is safe.

I'd be interesting to see the research.

I believe it depends on whether you're talking about the near or far field, as well as the wavelength.

It's true that at longer wavelengths the human body won't absorb much radiation because the wavelength is huge, compared to the size of a human. Try putting some tiny insects in a microwave and note they won't get zapped because they're so small compared to the 120mm radiation.

In the near field it depends on the antenna, as much as frequency.

Yes, nearfield. It was mobile phone related. They found that there is not only thermal effects but also other effects on the human cells. The cell wall would rapture under the influence of the radio waves, an the content of cells would leak out or something. They tested it on rats, and concluded that it does not happen if the frequency is under 800MHz or thereabouts.
Can't remember where have I found that research, I read it maybe like 5 years ago.

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

So you mean they lived an average life span for someone of that era in their 70's?

BTW They were all in their 70s when they died.

[Towger]

So you mean they lived an average life span for someone of that era in their 70's?

BTW They were all in their 70s when they died.

More or less, I am not sure of their exact ages.  They were all healthy and active until they got cancer. The amateur radio fellow brought me to a number of radio 'junk sales' during the 80's and he was retired then and died in the late 90's.  He was big into it, I think he ran the Amateur Radio Society in Ireland at one time.
The medical doctor I knew form sailing, he got a rare form of leukemia, he recovered initially, but it came back. He never said it was anything to do with his time in the (Canadian rather than US?) air force, but I remember looking it up at the time and radiation exposure was listed a cause.

[Zero999]

I remember looking it up at the time and radiation exposure was listed a cause.

Yes, exposure ionising radiation is a common cause of cancer but radio is non-ionising radiation and does not cause cancer.

[LaserSteve]

If you worried about having only male children, become an Airline or Air Force pilot. Some statistical studies show pilots tend to have more daughters. No one has a good reason for this yet..

Steve

[Delta]

I remember reading about findings of Russian scientists about the effects of high frequency radio waves on human cells. The conclusion was that everything under 800 MHz is safe.

I'd be interesting to see the research.

I believe it depends on whether you're talking about the near or far field, as well as the wavelength.

It's true that at longer wavelengths the human body won't absorb much radiation because the wavelength is huge, compared to the size of a human. Try putting some tiny insects in a microwave and note they won't get zapped because they're so small compared to the 120mm radiation.

In the near field it depends on the antenna, as much as frequency.

Yes, nearfield. It was mobile phone related. They found that there is not only thermal effects but also other effects on the human cells. The cell wall would rapture under the influence of the radio waves, an the content of cells would leak out or something. They tested it on rats, and concluded that it does not happen if the frequency is under 800MHz or thereabouts.
Can't remember where have I found that research, I read it maybe like 5 years ago.

Well I for one would be glad to have my cell walls raptured up to heaven, albeit if the innards of my cells got sent down to hell...

[T3sl4co1l]

If you worried about having only male children, become an Airline or Air Force pilot. Some statistical studies show pilots tend to have more daughters. No one has a good reason for this yet..

Steve

Testosterone levels I would think.

Tim

[Red Squirrel]

I imagine powerful RF like that could be dangerous though wouldn’t it?  Like if you were to disconnect the rigid coax and put your hand in it, would it be bad?  Or climb the tower while the transmitter is on?  But the further away you are from tower the less exposure you get, at an exponential rate I imagine.  A microwave oven is about 1200w and that cooks food after all.  Though I guess the frequency also plays a big role.   The part that scares me the most about high power RF is not skin burns but blindness.  A microwave magnetron in open air will blind you pretty much instantly.

Always incredible to see these types of installations though.  Dave has a video from a tour of a TV station, pretty cool stuff.  Some of the equipment is in the background when he does mailbag, he had done a tear down of it.   I was reading about this one AM radio station in the states that was so powerful people's light bulbs in the area would actually stay lit dimly from the RF.  At some point it was going right into Canada and they had to build these special towers to "intercept" the RF so it gets weaker.  I think it was like 500kw or something like that.