[ARC5] Netting Switch

[Robert Eleazer]

It sounds like the best thing that could have been done with the WWII Command Sets would have been to have a switching system where receiver B+ was applied to the transmitter oscillators when they were not transmitting, enabling them to run all the time and provide a weak but readable signal so to allow zero beating the receivers with the transmitters.

I suppose it also would have been possible in the same way to use the crystal oscillators in the transmitters to provide a frequency reference for the receivers, but other than making sure that the receivers and transmitters were on the same frequency the actual calibration was not too important when you were up flying.

It must have been a bit challenging to tune the LF receivers to whatever was the tower frequency, but I have Narco and Lear postwar VHF radios that used exactly the same approach, the transmitter being crystal controlled an the receiver being tunable.

Some years ago a friend of mine was flying his 1936 Fairchild 24R to a fly-in.  He called in on the published frequency for the uncontrolled airfield and found that had set up a temporary control tower, which replied "Report five miles out on 132.55." or some such.  He replied "This is a 1936 Fairchild.  I don't have that frequency."  The tower came back, "Call me five miles out on any frequency you have."         

Wayne