[ARC5] [Army-Radios] A particular version of the URC-4 beacon from the early 1950s

[Tim]

There appears to be components of an RS-6 set in the B&W photo on the WftW
page.  Maybe not too surprising.
Dark times....
Tim
N6CC

On Thu, Oct 8, 2026 at 1:37 AM SP5XZG via groups.io <zakariya.abu=
yandex.com at groups.io> wrote:

> Hi Hue,
>
> Thank you for the reply. I think that you put it quite politely for
> sending agents behind the Iron Curtain especially in the 1950s was equal
> to insanity as most of them were unnecessarily martyred without
> providing anything valuable to the West except intentional disinformation.
>
> The case of these two Poles in US service, who were parachuted into
> northern Poland on 4/5 Nov. 1952, actually involved a vast offensive
> counterintelligence operation cover-named Cezary. Yet in 1948, the Poles
> established a fictitious underground structure known as the "V
> Directorate of the WiN" clandestine organization, which acted to lure
> foreign agents into a trap just like the Soviets were doing in the 1920s
> with their infamous Trust operation. Obviously, the structure was almost
> entirely staffed by the security people, incl. its mastermind Col.
> Henryk Wendrowski, who was later promoted to Polish ambassador to
> Denmark and Iceland. [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henryk_Wendrowski]
>
> To make it even more complicated, a key Polish agent, who convinced one
> of these two poor Poles in 1951 to defect to the West to join foreign
> intelligence, was Yaroslav Hamivka (Ярослав Гамівка), a Ukrainian
> militant, who defected to Polish security in 1947, and who was
> successfully being used as an asset and agent-provocateur cover-named
> Hurricane yet in the late 1970s.
> [https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaros%C5%82aw_Hamiwka]
>
> Meanwhile I found a good article by Detlev Vreisleben, DC7KG, and Pete
> McCollum, N0TDM, about the clandestine use of the URC-4, which is
> available from here:
>
> https://www.wftw.nl/66%20URC-4%20v1%2000.pdf
>
> The text said that indeed the frequency of the modified set was VHF
> only, and the beacon was used in conjunction with the ARA-8 VHF DF
> fitted in an aircraft.
>
> I wonder if 121.5 MHz was used for the Polish op (ie. Project Rollback
> and the Redsox air operation), or a different frequency, as you
> suggested, could have been selected. I cannot verify this for I do not
> have access to the original documents on the case, which may include a
> technical report on the captured radio gear.
>
> I also wonder if the original manufacturer of the URC-4 (ie. Hoffman
> Radio Corp.) did modify these sets for clandestine use, or a contractor.
> I assume that if the special version of the URC-4 was to be used on a
> tripod and with the telescopic counterpoises, it was not feasible to use
> it for voice communication with an aircraft.
>
> The a/c that delivered the said Poles in 1952 could have been either a
> C-47D, or a C-54A given that the aircraft that parachuted these two poor
> men in 1952 took off from Wiesbaden, then flew over Hamburg, Bornholm,
> and got into Poland from the north. Perhaps the range of the C-47D
> without auxiliary fuel tanks would have been a bit limited for such an
> endeavor.
>
> The area of the 4/5 Nov. 1952 airdrop was approximately here:
>
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/54.2029/16.8249
>
> If memory serves, unmarked C-47D and C-54A were used for clandestine
> airdrops in Europe in the 1950s, and were extra fitted with the ARA-8
> for the purpose.
>
> 73,
>
> Jan SP5XZG
>
>
> W dniu 08.10.2026 o 02:18, Hubert Miller via ARC5 pisze:
> > Thank you for this post with very interesting linked videos ! From my
> > reading of a previous parachutist case i conclude that trying to
> > infiltrate agents into a highly organized, tightly controlled country is
> > absolutely futile and ignorant.
> > I think the URC-4 uses only one quartz, for the transmitter, so it would
> > certainly not be difficult to move it elsewhere in the VHF band. I am
> > sure none of my URC-4 manuals discuss any such antenna as in this case.
> >
> > I am with the western Imperialists in this case, who in the long run,
> > turn out to be the less imperialistic.
> > -Hue Miller
> >
>
>
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