[ARC5] [Milsurplus] UK-Style Pushbutton Control Boxes - Some Opinions

[Mike Hanz]

On 12/23/2010 2:49 PM, Mike Morrow wrote:
>
> Don't you wonder how these nasty push button controls ever made it to service
> use?  I do.  There should have been somone in the design/manufacturing pipeline
> that said "Stop...why are we proposing something so complex, when a simple rotary
> switch would do?"

Gee, I dunno, Mike.  I have had many an American car in my younger days 
that had push buttons for tuning their radios to a set frequency, and 
they were both reliable and easy to set.  Are you absolutely sure 
they're originally an evil British design? <huge grin...>

The C-30 demise is a good example of abandoning something that wasn't 
useful in combat, but the SCR-522 channel control seems to have avoided 
the problems of sticking keys and push buttons that popped off the box 
encountered by the Signal Corps-designed progenitor to the VHF ARC-5.  
 From my limited experience, I think it boils down to the specific 
engineering team involved more than overarching design choice.

73 and Merry Christmas,
Mike  KC4TOS