[ARC5] Anyone collected sets or information on 1950s, 1960s avionics?

[Bob Groh]

They did not have any special silicon in the synthesizer - it was just all
discrete and very astute radio engineering!!  It certainly blew my mind!
Basically they were injection locking the LO to a reference related 'picket
fence' of RF.

Much later, at the ending of my engineering career (circa 2004), I worked
at Honeywell Aerospace in Olathe, KS and did do some work on some
commercial avionics radio systems which did use some custom engineered (by
King Radio - which was bought by Bendix and then by Allied Industries and
then by Honeywell) synsthesizer ICs developed in the mid to late 1970s!
That chip family was used throughout the King/Bendix/Honeywell
commercial avionics line up and into the 2004's at least. The designs were
tweaked several times over the years to accommodate newer chip technologies
with the latest tweak being in 2004/5 (one of the last projects I worked
on). Amazing for the same basic design to being used for that long a time.

Bob

Bob Groh

On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 9:55 PM Scott Johnson <scottjohnson1 at cox.net> wrote:

> I find it amazing that they could do what they did in 1964. I guess that’s
> about the time Sylvania was doing a lot of silicon RF development.  That’s
> the year I was born!  I grew up playing with tubes!
>
> I had a great 24 year career at Motorola, in both the Government
> Electronics Group, and the Corporate labs, but
>
> I always had a weakness for Aviation and avionics, which is probably why I
> had a repair station that  barely kept itself afloat 10 years working on
> obsolescent avionics.
>
>
>
> Scott V. Johnson W7SVJ
>
> 5111 E. Sharon Dr.
>
> Scottsdale, AZ 85254-3636
>
> H (602) 953-5779
>
> C (480) 550-2358
>
> scottjohnson1 at cox.net
>
> scott.johnson at ieee.org
>
>
>
> *From:* Bob Groh <bob.groh at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 12, 2020 7:44 PM
> *To:* Scott Johnson <scottjohnson1 at cox.net>
> *Cc:* ARC-5 Maillist <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
> *Subject:* Re: [ARC5] Anyone collected sets or information on 1950s,
> 1960s avionics?
>
>
>
> Scott, definitely not the ARC-44 et al but certainly the ARC-145 et al. I
> was working at Sylvania Electronics Systems in Willamsville, NY (just
> outside of Buffalo, NY) from 1964 (first job after graduating from Syracuse
> University with my BSEE) to 1967 (when I was laid off in the 3rd wave of
> massive layoff's at the company) and stumbled across the ARC-114 family
> which was being developed in one of the upstairs labs.  And I am pretty
> certain that (at least in Sylvania) the program was called LOHAP.  I was
> not working on it (I was doing microwave satellite work at the time) but I
> was always curious and would wander around at lunch time asking questions
> and looking at stuff and I saw this incredibly small (at the time) UHF
> synthesizer (about the size of a cigarette package) - that was a 'WOW' for
> me and I got a chance to see some of what they were working on.  Very neat
> stuff.
>
>
>
> Anyways as I mentioned I just decided to see what others in the forum
> could throw my way.  Guess I am still a curious guy.
>
>
>
> Bob Groh, WA2CKY
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 11:37 AM Scott Johnson <scottjohnson1 at cox.net>
> wrote:
>
> It also occurred to me you may have been talking about the earlier ARC-44
> FM, ARC-45 UHF and associated interphone.
>
>
>
> Scott V. Johnson W7SVJ
>
> 5111 E. Sharon Dr.
>
> Scottsdale, AZ 85254-3636
>
> H (602) 953-5779
>
> C (480) 550-2358
>
> scottjohnson1 at cox.net
>
> scott.johnson at ieee.org
>
>
>
> *From:* arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net <arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net> *On
> Behalf Of *Scott Johnson
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 12, 2020 9:32 AM
> *To:* 'Bob Groh' <bob.groh at gmail.com>; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
> *Subject:* Re: [ARC5] Anyone collected sets or information on 1950s,
> 1960s avionics?
>
>
>
> LHA? (Light Helicopter Avionics?  ARC-114 VHF-FM, ARC-115 VHF-AM, ARC-116
> UHF-AM and (I think) APX-68 IFF.
>
>
>
> I think it was designed in part at Ft. Monmouth in the late sixties, and
> deployed on many platforms.
>
>
>
> It seems to have perhaps pushed the technology envelope a bit too hard.
>
>
>
> The ARC-114 and 115 seem to be rather robust , but the 115 was unreliable,
> and late in life was fitted with a revised PA module.
>
>
>
> The ARC-164, ARC-186, and APX-100 obsoleted it in the late seventies/
> early eighties.
>
>
>
> That exhaust my data banks
>
>
>
> I have repaired the equipment in the past, when I owned an FAA Avionics
> repair station.  Customers were principally government contractors flying
> ex-government aircraft.
>
>
>
> Scott V. Johnson W7SVJ
>
> 5111 E. Sharon Dr.
>
> Scottsdale, AZ 85254-3636
>
> H (602) 953-5779
>
> C (480) 550-2358
>
> scottjohnson1 at cox.net
>
> scott.johnson at ieee.org
>
>
>
> *From:* arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net <arc5-bounces at mailman.qth.net> *On
> Behalf Of *Bob Groh
> *Sent:* Saturday, September 12, 2020 8:14 AM
> *To:* ARC-5 Maillist <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
> *Subject:* [ARC5] Anyone collected sets or information on 1950s, 1960s
> avionics?
>
>
>
> I was having one of those random thought threads the other night -
> thinking about my engineering design work during the 1960s working on
> radios that were part of the LOHAP avionics (LOHAP was short hand for (I
> think) 'Light Observation Helicopter Avionics Program'). The radios (sorry,
> but I don't remember any of the radios nomenclature) were all solid state,
> mostly analog being somewhat prior to widespread digital circuitry and
> quite small for the era - I sort of remember one of the radios being a UHF
> AM radio, frequency synthesized, etc. Neat stuff.
>
>
>
> Anyways I just wondered if anyone is collecting gear like this or has
> looked at the systems, etc.
>
>
>
> Bob Groh, WA2CKY
>
>
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