[ARC5] Airplane radios in tanks

[Mike Morrow]

>I know that the L-4's in Europe were at first fitted with light
>aircraft HF gear and then were equipped with gear such as BC-1335,
>BC-659, or BC-620. 

A common military A.R.C. Type 12 configuration in light observation
aircraft used an R-11, R-19, T-11, T-13, plus a BC-1335, all controlled by
one A.R.C. Type C-37 control box.  The 12 vdc for the BC-1335 was produced
from the aircraft 24 vdc supply by using a simple dropping resistor.  I've
got to wonder how much fun it was hearing noise from the BC-1335 all the
time, since it had no squelch.

>Were any 274-N used that way?

Some post-WWII navy training aircraft used a two-receiver, one-transmitter
AN/ARC-5 (R-23, R-26, T-19, MD-7, two C-125) to allow covering the standard
tower and aircraft frequencies of the day (Tower 278 kHz, Aircraft 3105 kHz).
The nice thing about any single-transmitter command set of this type is that
the transmitter control box (like a C-29 or 30A) is valueless.  The only
transmitter control needed for the pilot is the microphone PTT switch.

>Also, I have always been fascinated by the fact that the No. 19 set had a
>separate UHF transceiver built in.  This sounds like a great idea...
>...Typical postwar amateur conversion info on the No.19 seemed to say to 
>take that UHF set out and throw it away.

Good idea, but evidently it worked extremely poorly.  Eventually even the
military users of the long-lived No. 19 removed the B-set circuitry.

Mike / KK5F