[ARC5] Silly questions ? Again.

[Michael Hanz]

These are actually quite interesting questions - though a certain amount 
of debate usually ensues.  I can only give you my experience with these 
things, but should enlarge the question to include the entire set, since 
the picture is a bit more complex than for the control boxes alone:

ARA/ATA:  All black wrinkle [except control box mounting plates].  Shock 
mount rails are aluminum, painted with black wrinkle as well.

ARC-5:  All black wrinkle [except control box mounting plates] up until 
the end of the war.  Some of the shock mount rails produced after the 
war are bare aluminum, but all the ones I've seen have contract dates in 
the early 1950s.

I attribute the above to the Navy influence, since they had a real 
problem with salt spray and leaky aircraft, and needed additional 
protection for their gear.

SCR-274N:  Everything black wrinkle [except control box mounting plates] 
up until about 1943 - Dave Stinson may have finer granularity on the 
timeline for this.  The relatively benign environment in the European 
theater apparently prompted Western Electric to propose changing the 
finish of the receivers, transmitters, antenna relay, and racks to bare 
aluminum, probably as a value engineering measure.  Paradoxically, the 
shock mounts and control boxes continued to be painted.  There may have 
been a nighttime low light vision contrast issue with the controls, but 
the rails are inexplicable, other than by then they were being stamped 
out of steel and needed protection against rust.

In terms of sheer numbers, I suspect the bare aluminum 274N sets are 
probably in the majority, but only because they produced them by the 
hundred thousands.  What the mix would be is only conjecture without 
going back to the original production figures for each contract run.

At least, that's my take...

73,
Mike

J. Forster wrote:

> Well, I said they were silly. Here's what I really meant to ask:
>>Were essentially all the Tx and Rx control boxes black, both for the Army and
>>Navy production runs?
>>
>>Also, roughly, more of which type of Rxs and Txs were produced, the plain aluminum
>>or the black crackle finish? ie: which are the more common.