[ARC5] AN/ARC-5 support for CW

[Mike Morrow]

Neil wrote:

> The source?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ARC-5

In 2007 the existing ARC-5 article was only a couple of paragraphs long, and featured only a couple of photos of ham-hacked receivers.  I then replaced all but a few lines of the original article with what today remains more than 90 percent of the text and 100 percent of the photos.  I wrote all of the passage that you quote below. :-)  I have largely abandoned the article for the past few years.

> Now admittedly, I rewrote some of the lead (intro) of that
> article to make clear that the AN/ARC-5 could not do CW.

Unfortunately, the last of that statement is wholly incorrect, as I went to some length to explain in my first post in this thread.

> I did that on the basis of longstanding content elsewhere
> in the article that said:
>
> "The most common AN/ARC-5 receiver remote control box is the
>  C-38/ARC-5, which allows control only of audio volume of the
>  VHF and MF/HF receivers. No power, mode, or frequency controls
>  are present. The C-38 also has controls for the R-4A homing
>  receiver. A common AN/ARC-5 transmitter control box C-30A/ARC-5
>  has controls for selecting the MF/HF transmitter or the VHF
>  transmitter, and a switch to select the channel for both the
>  VHF transmitter and receiver. Mode controls are normally set
>  for voice and covered."
>
> It's obvious from that content that there was no intention to provide
> CW capability, unless for some kind of dire emergency where the plane
> was probably not in the air, because the pilot would need to access
> the MD-7 modulator to plug in a key, if he even carried one.

FWIW, he could key the mic even with the inaccessible control box emission switch still in VOICE position.  A situation requiring that is rather incredible.

The only thing that is obvious is that the **control boxes** were designed to minimize what was presented to the pilot.  Beyond that, the R-25 through R-27 communications receivers were frequency-stabilized so that they could be pre-set and locked before flight, needing no remote in-flight tuning capability.  That allowed elinination of tuning dials, cranks, and cables from installations using the C-38 control mentioned above, or the C-27 individual receiver simplified  control box which consists of audio output controls only.

> The above implies that the C-38 control box does not even allow
> switching-on of the receiver's BFO.

True, it does not, nor does it allow remote tuning, all to the end of reducing controls on the command set radio.  Yet one would be very incorrect to assert that the AN/ARC-5 does not use tunable receivers, nor receivers that may copy CW.  Likewise, the transmitting system fully supports CW transmission...it just reduces access to it at the control box in the cause of control simplification.

That's a long long long way from "AN/ARC-5 can not do CW" being true.

The article quoted above does not say anywhere that the AN/ARC-5 does not do CW.  In addition, there are many possible configurations of military AN/ARC-5 installations.   Nine are shown in AN 16-30ARC5-2 (see wiki article for download link) alone...and there are more.

The last two sentences in the first paragraph of the wiki article should be removed.

Mike / KK5F