They wouldn't work for Chernobyl anyway. They're OK for direct radiation, almost no use for alpha-emitting dust, which is what the practical hazard was after Chernobyl (for anyone outside the "You're screwed anyway, Comrade Hero" range).
The ones i have taken apart and studied consist of a transistor oscillator driving a transformer to generate the high voltage which is then rectified and fed into a filter capacitor. As i recall they required a single D cell to work. The problem with the battery operated units is that most of them came with batteries that eventually leaked. When the units were tested upon reciept the people in charge for the most part left the batteries installed eventually corroding the guts of the charger making them useless in the event they were ever needed.
Best Regards Tom.
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Ouch! They wanted to be "ready". :-)
It is certainly different from mine, as there was no separate battery so the power had to come from physical energy put into the unit. Luckly, it did not take much energy. :-)
Enjoy, DoN.
Nope - they quit that in the 70's.
We don't have to worry about a swarm of Russkie Bombers coming over the Polar Route "DEW Line" using commercial AM Radio stations for Radio Direction Finding to home in on our big cities and deliver us a "Nookular Present" - they have GPS now, and even dead reckoning can be done much better.
Synopsis: The whole idea behind "CONtrol of ELectronic RADiation" was that ALL broadcast TV and radio stations, aircraft beacons, Ham, Public Service and Business two-way radio would shut down. Total Radio Silence, all bands. No fixed point signals to home in on.
And many of the larger AM radio stations would have hot TX crystal ovens and pre-tested tower tuning points (the red-painted spots on the loading coils and tuning knobs) for quickly switching over to either
640 or 1240 KHz non-directional.The only radio you would hear would be the regional Civil Defense emergency instructions as the various stations all swapped off transmitting them round-robin every few minutes, not announcing call signs or locations.
RDF doesn't work worth beans if they can turn off every signal you could use, and the few that remain shift location by 25 miles or more in a random pattern every 3 minutes.
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PS: Hold the flames. Yes, I realize that even back then when they treated the Cold War seriously there is no WAY they could get 100% of the transmitters turned off for hours - they'd have to send someone out to the hilltop repeaters and rural translators and physically cut the cords, and search out the saboteurs sending homing signals... But CONELRAD was still a sound idea - /for it's time/.
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