[ARC5] CW and Mic plugs

[D. Platt]

Robert,

All I can say is... When will your book be coming out?  You, and some 
others, are genuine gold-mines of interesting details.

de K3HVG

On 5/29/2014 10:36 PM, WA5CAB--- via ARC5 wrote:
> At the beginning of WW-II, all US Army tactical headsets, loudspeakers and
> sources (receivers and interphone amps) were high impedance.  The PL-55 and
> PL-54 shells were black.  Circa 1942, the Army (or the Signal Corps) decided
> to change over to low impedance.  This couldn't happen overnight and even
> through the end of the War there were still aircraft and vehicles with high
> impedance systems.  The problem is that in a high Z system, one low Z headset
> will kill all of the others.  So to differentiate mainly aircraft headsets,
> they came out with the red PL-354 which was used on the HS-33 and HS-38.
> I'm not aware of there ever being a red PL-55 equivalent.  And plugs on
> cables like the CD-307-A remained black.
>
> Mic jacks with a red band are Navy.  Pre-war Navy microphones weren't wired
> the same as Signal Corps ones.  Microphone transmitter  went to Tip and PTT
> to Ring.  Around the beginning of the War or a little before, the Navy
> began a crash modification program to change all of them.  Modified (rewired)
> mic cable plugs were supposed to get a red band around the sleeve and modified
> radios were supposed to get a red washer under the mic jack retaining nut.
> Then someone must have decided that everything had been modified as the red
> band practice stopped.
>
>