[ARC5] US Military Aircraft Radios - Opinions

[Jack Antonio]

To amplify some of Mike's comments, and add my
2 cents worth to Ken's request.

Calling the AN/ARC-4 a piece of junk is a little harsh,
the set's only real sin is that it was a little ahead
of its time. The designation is a little out of place,
in that the set was really a civilian pre-war set, called the
WE-233A. The Navy started purchasing and using the set
under that designation(I have one with a Navy acceptance
anchor on the front), it received the AN/ARC-4 designation later.

And true, it has a deaf receiver, with no RF stage and
using a mixer tube that wasn't a good VHF performer.

It has been reported that the set was originally developed
for airline use prior to the war, and I've often wondered
what set Western Electric came up with as the ground based
side of the system. It would be interesting to know if
WE used a higher power ground based transmitter to
overcome the aircraft receiver's lack of sensitivity.

On the AN/ARC-3, it  shared the same crystal frequency
multiplication scheme and IF frequency as the SCR-522.

The AN/ARC-3 had no guard channel, but some receivers had
an extra SO-239 on the front panel which tapped into
the IF. I assume it was for a guard channel front end,
but I've never seen any indication it was ever made.

It would be interesting to find out if this input
was ever used operationally for any purpose.


Jack Antonio WA7DIA
scr287 at sbcglobal.net