[ARC5] Re: [Milsurplus] History of Ham Mods: Opinions?

[Michael Tauson]

On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Mike Hanz <AAF-Radio-1 at aafradio.org> wrote:

> For example, Michael Tauson's wonderful little booklet "A Users Guide to Aircraft Radio
> Corporation Receivers" has been an active reference for me for years, and one could
> easily ascribe a "Collector's Guide" definition to it.

Awww, isn't he a nice man?  :-)

Seriously, the original "Guide" started off as a set of lists & tables
I created to make my life easier.  They originated in the 60s and grew
on an assortment of pieces of paper until I decided to collect them
all in one place.  George at Fair got interested in the project so I
tacked on the stuff around the tables et al and Fair's been selling it
for the past some 30 years.

The original has shown up on the web as public domain but this isn't a
major concern of mine.  The tabular information came from PD sources
(military manuals) and the rest is out dated now.  Besides, as I'm
sure Mike and others have discovered, there are a few inaccuracies and
the coverage isn't all that broad.  Also, the last section on mating
connectors is completely missing (which is how the original person who
put it on the web got around copyright infringement) and that was a
rather important part of the publication.  I just wish someone had
thought to clean up the spelling and grammar!  :-)

Side thought: Since I wrote the darned thing, maybe I'll put it up on
my own website with spelling & grammar corrections but also with the
original errors and lacking the connector section.  Or maybe I'll fix
them too.  Something to consider anyway.

The new one will have essentially the same tables & lists but vastly
expanded & corrected, and not all from public domain sources.  Part of
my requests to Cessna and Sperry have included permission to include
lists of the later equipment and attendant pinouts.  Granted there
won't be a whole lot of interest in them from the denizens of these
two groups and our ilk, there are other worlds out there including a
few populated by folks interested in newer avionics including the few
bits still flying.

I hope Gordon White will let me use his title for the book.  It seems
appropriate to not only the prewar civilian radios and the military
equipment but to the postwar Type 12 et al systems which had both
military and civilian applications.  Including the Cessna & later eras
appears to go counter to the title but it is a description of the
company's demise.  Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end,
and that's the end of A.R.C.'s story.

Doesn't all this sound like fun?

Best regards,

Michael, WH7HG