Geeky

Besides the car repair “hobby”, I have some geeky hobbies as well.

It’s called a dynamotor.

Cars/trucks/planes had 6 volts, 12 volts or 24 volts available, but not the 50 volts to a couple of thousand volts needed to operate the vacuum tubes of the early mobile radio equipment.

The first generation of equipment to convert low voltage DC power to high voltage DC power was a motor that was attached to a generator.  It was called, amazingly enough, a motor-generator. It was perhaps 30% efficient.

The dynamotor was the 2nd generation of equipment do this.  It is still a motor that turns a generator, but it has combined both the motor and generator into one unit.  It is about 50% efficient.

This one takes 6 volts and steps it up to 500 volts and was built during World War II.

If this has no irreparable damage, I’m going to refurbish it.

Why am I doing this?  I guess just to see if I can do it.  And, if I can do it, I’ll see if it will operate some old radio equipment