[ARC5] Silly questions ? Again.

[Michael Hanz]

Mike wrote:

> Another paradox:  The VHF R-28/ARC-5 and T-23/ARC-5 (Western Electric)
> are bare aluminum, yet I'd guess that only the US Navy used them.  


Really excellent point, Mike!  There are certainly photos of Navy 
aircraft with these sets in them, though I'm wondering if they were 
perhaps a temporary stopgap measure for the Navy.  Remember that they 
were the big proponent for development of the AN/ARC-1, which came 
out some months after the VHF ARC-5, and the ARC-5 was certainly a 
better set than the fairly deaf AN/ARC-4 the Navy had been using for a 
couple of years at that point.  The VHF ARC-5 was a renomenclaturing 
and minor redesign of the Western Electric 274N VHF
suite.  Dave Stinson has a major part of that set and I think it too is 
bare aluminum (except the control boxes...:-))  The AAC and AAF didn't 
seem to be too concerned about corrosion for some reason, witness 
the SCR-183 (AAC equivalent to the RU-GF) which again was produced in 
both black wrinkle at first and then bare aluminum.  Many of the control 
boxes for this set are bare aluminum as well...must have been a 
'thirties' thing...

As if to confound us, the blasted station jack boxes for the Navy's WWII 
RL-24 interphone amplifier are unpainted aluminum...though they *are* 
nicely clear anodized, which gives perhaps even better protection to 
salt spray.  Some decisions we will never understand, I guess.

> As an
> aside, all of these units I've come across that had crystals in them
> were set for the same four frequencies.

Same here.  They seem to be the common tower freqs for CONUS during the 
war, if you look at some of the air navigation maps.

73,
Mike