Shown here is the 1935 station of Howard Critchell, W2HBK, which was located at 170 E. 79th St., New York City.  The picture is from the May 1935 issue of QST and describes the “nice-looking layout” with a transmitter containing a 47 crystal oscillator and 46 amplifier. The antenna was a 66-foot flat-top, center fed with a twisted-pair feeder. The receiver was a National SW-3.

What makes this fairly typical looking station unusual was that Critchell lived in a part of Manhattan served by DC power rather than AC, which required him to be creative when it came to power supplies. For the 500-volt plate voltage, he used a motor-generator set. For the tubes filaments, he used the 110-volt DC line through a dropping resistor. The receiver he simply ran off batteries.

You can find the original QST article at this link.  (You need to be logged in to your ARRL account to view the file).

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