Friday Projects Page III 2026
Friday Project page November
2024- January 2025 - link
Friday Project page February 2025 – December 2025 - link
Current Status: April 2026
We
are maintaining a dedicated Friday group with Ambro, Anton, Hans and Eric being
engaged in various projects, giving future directions together with Karin
Hovius and the foundation board members.
A regular Friday with
various projects ongoing…
In January we
organized a “Hell Meeting” for a long-standing network of German Hellschreiber enthusiasts. Since the mid-1970s, this group
has been communicating every Sunday afternoon using Hellschreiber
technology.
The Hellschreiber, named after its inventor Rudolf Hell, is a
distinctive telegraphy device designed to transmit and receive text-based
messages via telephone lines or radio. Its ingenious yet simple concept has
allowed it to remain in use for decades.
One of the
presentations was delivered by Frank Dörenberg, well known for his website
hellschreiber.com. Additional background information on Hellschreiber
technology can be found at:
https://www.cryptomuseum.com/telex/hell/index.htm
https://www.cdvandt.org/hell-pa0aob.htm
Since April we are
working each Friday on the 1.5kW Sender. While working it was not very stable
with fluctuations in the kathode voltages, and closer
inspection of the Verstarker-teil / amplification
unit showed damaged capacitors that were removed and checked. The broken ones
will be opened and heated to remove the tar and place a new capacitor inside
the old housing. The tubes were tested with the RPG1. We will place various articles
on the restoration and working of the Sender on the website in time.
Testing tubes with the
RPG1 and RPG4 tube tester
Our main building has
two main exhibition rooms, a library and a depot. Yet we also have 5 garage
boxes with many documents but also Dutch radio equipment, mainly from the first
half of the 20th century. It includes equipment from Kootwijk but also former PTT collections. We are currently
examining whether the depot in the main building can be turned into a third
exhibition room with Kootwijk equipment 9including
the Telefunken tubes blown by the retreating Germans in 1945) as well as the Koomans receiver placed close to the seaside for
connections with Indonesia, but used by the Germans during WWII to receive
signals send between Washington and London (Forschungsstelle
Langeveld, see also https://www.cdvandt.org/langeveld-forschungsstelle.htm
Left: the Koomans receiver
Right: the Allied
Huff-Duff used during the U boot war
By Eric Reits
