[ARC5] Other Aircraft Radios

[mstangelo at comcast.net]

A seller at one of the local hamfests is in the avionics business and was selling some aircraft AM  VHF radios. They were a mix of vacumn tube and transistor models and used lots of crystals and mechanical switches of the frequency generation.

He was telling me that they were replaced with modern radios that had LCD displays. He complained that the failure rate of the displays on the modern radio was quite high and it cost hundreds of dollars to replace the displays. I guess that's progress for you.

Mike N2MS

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Macklin <macklinbob at msn.com>
To: ARC-5 QTH <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:44:43 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: [ARC5] Other Aircraft Radios

I remember the radios used by the USAF up to 1960. They were all channelized. The pilot had a switch to select the channel. In most cases he had no idea what the frequency was.

The civil aircraft radios prior to 1960 had analog tuning. I'd like to find photos of some.

The modern radios use LED/LCD type displays. But these were not available in the 60's. Were radios ever built that used DIGISWITCHES for frequency control?

I learned to fly in Cups and Champs with no radio. They did not have lights either!

Bob Macklin
K5MYJ
Seattle, Wa.
"Real Radios Glow In The Dark"