[ARC5] "What's Old is New..."

[Francesco Ledda]

Before the beginning of Desert Storm, the Syrian Army was lent few Collins MRC-108s by the US Army to communicate with the "Allied" forced. It looks like the Soviet type equipment could not interop with NATO equipment. My MRC-108 was surplussed in 1995 or so by the Ft. Hood DRMO. Inside one one of the storage box there was a pamphlet with instructions in Arabic, French and English. The system was poorly repainted painted sand color  (Maako paint quality).   

For those not familiar with the 108, it has a 618T-3, an ARC-51BX and a 618M-1C. These is old stuff with vacuum tubes. I was told that the MRC-108 was selected because was obsolete with no real military value.

This is s good story, and I am sticking with it!!!

73, K5URG

Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 8, 2017, at 16:58, Tim <timsamm at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Interesting stuff....I had not heard about any "requests" for FRC-93's during Desert Storm.  (not that I would have...)
> 
> We had Harris URC-119 HF sets (in-country) that replaced our ARC-120's while we were deployed.  We had no problems with the URC-119's even though we were routinely sand blasted by frequent Shamals...  And yes, HF CW was used in Desert Storm (I was one of the operators)....We used it for a backup and it worked just fine...
> Tim
> N6CC
> 
>> On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 10:08 AM, jeepp <jeepp at comcast.net> wrote:
>> That provides a subject of conversation as the FRC-nomenclatured KWM-2A was out of inventory 10 years before the contemporary activities on the Mid-East started?
>> Jeep K3HVG
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE smartphone
>> 
>> 
>> -------- Original message --------
>> From: Glen Zook via ARC5 <arc5 at mailman.qth.net> 
>> Date: 8/8/17 11:06 (GMT-05:00) 
>> To: Jay Coward <jcoward5452 at aol.com>, arc5 at ix.netcom.com, milsurplus at mailman.qth.net, arc5 at mailman.qth.net 
>> Subject: Re: [ARC5] "What's Old is New..." 
>> 
>> The Harris SSB transceivers were having the receiver "front ends" damaged by the effect of sand blowing across the HF antennas.  Until a solution was found, quite a number of Collins KWM-2A transceivers were employed to replace the Harris equipment.
>> 
>> 
>> Fortunately, there were around 100 KWM-2A transceivers stored in a warehouse and, again fortunately, someone remembered that these units were available.  A couple of retired Collins Radio Company employees were "drafted" to "check out" the equipment before it was airlifted to the Gulf States.  I have been led to believe that one of the former Collins employees went along with the equipment to insure that it worked after deployment and to teach the military personnel how to operate the KWM-2A units.
>> 
>>  
>> Glen, K9STH 
>> 
>> Website: http://k9sth.net
>> 
>> 
>> From: Jay Coward via ARC5 <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
>> To: arc5 at ix.netcom.com; milsurplus at mailman.qth.net; arc5 at mailman.qth.net 
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 9:33 AM
>> Subject: Re: [ARC5] "What's Old is New.."
>> 
>> Wasn't there a call for R-390A's during the Gulf War because comms were getting fried by high levels of atmospheric static discharge? Or is that urban or sub-urban legend?
>> Jay KE6PPF
>> 
>> 
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