[ARC5] My R-25/ARC-5 and ARA CBY-46104

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

(a) I agree with Mike that the post-war history of military radios in 
civilian hands is not very interesting.  And have about 100 shelf feet of Command 
receivers and transmitters that demonstrate the on average poor quality of 
the modifications.  However, I also agree that had hams or wannabe 
experimenters not been buying the sets, a good percentage of which never got a round 
tuit for hacking them, there wouldn't be many left for us to be arguing 
about.

(b) back to the original thread, the late pre-war and early WW-II Signal 
Corps ground and vehicular sets mostly came with limited frequency coverage.  
For example, the official listing of tuning units in SCR-193-(*) is only 
TU-5 and TU-6, together covering 1.5-4.5 MC.  Of course, TU's were available 
below and above that but that's what the default issue apparently was.  And 
there was a lot of marine (meaning ocean going vessels, not USMC) activity 
below 3 MC, especially in Central and South America. plus most small craft in 
North America.  So my assumption is that the 1.5-3.0 MC units were for 
contigency usage in cooperation with ground and naval forces still primarily 
operating down there.  The AAF didn't buy the receiver probably because most of 
their assets were in Europe.  And as a historical fact, the senior personal 
running AAF and later USAF had no interest in anything but SAC like 
activities anyway.

Robert D

In a message dated 10/14/2012 13:24:50 PM Central Daylight Time, 
kk5f at earthlink.net writes: 
> Ken wrote:
> 
> >According to Gordon White's documentation, there was one of those
> >receivers for every 5 airplanes in the entire air service.
> 
> I posted two days ago information from the AN/ARC-5 LF/MF/HF Components
> Maintenance Manual AN 16-30ARC5-2
>        ( http://bama.edebris.com/manuals/military/an-arc5/ )
> Figure 8-55, that states:
> 
> "Receiver R-25/ARC-5 is supplied to the Service in quantities of one
> for each five airplanes or one for each airplane depending upon the
> type of aircraft in which this equipment is installed."
> 
> That implies more than one for each five aircraft in general service
> use for aircraft carrying AN/ARC-5 MF/HF command sets.
> 
> There is yet another statement on this nine-page figure that states:
> 
> "A 1.5-3.0 Mc receiver (part No. R-25/ARC-5) is supplied in quantities
> of one for each five airplanes.  This unit is not installed but is held
> for the Service."
> 
> That implies that anticipated usage was infrequent and contingent.
> I doubt any hard and fast one-to-five-airplane correlation to actual 
> acquisition ratios of the R-25.
> 
> Most R-25 units that I've seen in the past forty years have been new or
> even new-in-box, like the units that John Meshna was selling in the
> mid-1970s.  Just like the R-24/ARC-5 BCB receiver, it appears that all
> these common R-25/ARC-5 receivers and their associated T-18/ARC-5
> transmitters found very little actual service use.
> 
> Mike / KK5F
> 

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