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

[mac]

Signal Corps got into pushbuttons big time with the SCR 500 and 600  
series radios.

Dennis D. W7QHO
Glendale, CA

********************

On Dec 23, 2010, at 3:03 PM, Mike Hanz wrote:

> 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
>