[ARC5] Re: SCR-183 and the Air Mail

[William Donzelli]

> Without doing some digging around in boxes of old papers I cannot be 
> sure what the Air Corps had in early 1933.

SCR-133 and SCR-134. Both were bombs, but were built for 10 years, and in
use for more.

> It was the Army that got Western 
> Electric declared an "unqualified bidder" on the SCR-183 in order to 
> give the contract to A.R.C.

Perhaps there was some funny business going on, but BEFORE the SCR-AA-183
came about, and the contract that hatched it, there were at least six
versions made for trials. SCR-183-T1, SCR-183-T2, up to (and maybe
beyond) SCR-183-T6. It is likely that the ARC version was one of the
"tentative" (NOT training - this is pre-JETDS) versions, but I do not know
which one. The SCR-183-T4 was the RCA entry. The battery box I got from Ed
Z is from this set, very nicely marked. The SCR-183-T6 is from the
Westinghouse entry - I have a dynamotor for this set, picked up from Fair
Radio a few years back. It is possible that some of the other "T"s never
yielded hardware. We will probably never know, unless hardware or smoking
gun documentation pops up. 

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org