The original plan was to have period radio comms between 909 and Witchcraft in the air during practice bombing runs on a ranch SE of Stockton during Taigh Ramey’s “Bomber Camp” that year.
The Witch’s BC-348 worked, and the ‘375 lit up nicely, but the Big Relay wouldn’t trip and I had no way of testing/repairing it so late in the game. Then the bomb bay electrical system on the Witch crapped out and wouldn’t retract the doors, so it sat on the ground.
However, Taigh had a portable comm trailer with a working BC-191 and ‘342 in it, so we were able to have a brief comm while in the air. However, the 191 wasn’t neutralized on our freq, making it’s transmission hard to copy.
One thing I recall was being able to receive WWV at 2.5 MC on Mark’s ‘348 clear as a bell during the bombing runs. 👍😎 He’d set up the intercom with original boxes working from the radio room and the waist gunner stations, but the participants weren’t interested: just wanted to fire the .50’s instead 😜
Good times after hard work.
Jim K6FWT
Hi Jim - Yep, I toured the Nine-O-Nine B-17 frequently when it was at the Livermore air shows in the 1990's. Beautifully restored but the BC-348 hulk looked like it had been in a swamp for decades. Really sad, easily replaceable, but no....
Sadly 909 is gone now....It had even survived being nuked at the Nevada Test Site in the 1960's before it was flown out and later restored...
Good to see you at SLO! Cheers, Tim
N6CC
A colleague (Mark KK6WTI) and I ran my BC-375 and his -348 on Nine-O-Nine in the air back in ‘16, and we discovered that all the equipment was just shells with no cabling and a few knobs because of the legions of idle hands that trooped thru them during tours.
The only semi-working equipment was on Witchcraft because the flight deck was off limits.
Jim Falls K6FWT
> On Jun 19, 2026, at 10:52, Wayne Eleazer via ARC5 <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> The USAF Museum used to have a B-50 you could walk through. And I was disappointed to see that the radio equipment had been badly savaged by the visitors. Many years later the museum was asking for help in restoring the equipment. I assume that they found out from that experience that if you were going to have a Walk Through aircraft the last thing you should do is equip it with accurate radios.
>
> Wayne
> WB5WSV
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