[Boatanchors] Re: An/GRC 109 Owners

[Greg Mijal]

An/GRC 109 problems
Just tubes wearing out. Not very often though. As you can see it is  well
thought out and built to outlive you.
Problems:
 Operators that couldn't load  the tx up right.
Crappy GRA 71's coder burst machines. This machine is vastly overated in my
opinion. The receiving side of the coder burst is a r390A with a 4 track
(before 8 tracks) recorder with a variable speed motor (no feedback loop,
really warbles, wows and flutters) Takes a top notch cw operator to slow it
down and recover  the encrypted cw message without loosing the encryption
key (more on that later). Try it sometime.
Very robust radio but not alot of range.  Takes time in the field to set it
up too. Hank crank generator  volunteers are hard to find. Probably the best
antenna I used was a good hunk of commo wire say 100' and the same along the
ground as a counterpoise. The little bugger loves that one.  Receiver, the
only super feature is the crystal controlled receive function. Works great.
Assuming your were issued the right crystal.  I did more "Broadcast to A
teams" in the field type messages than anything else. Receiver is pretty
broad but just as robust as the Tx. Only tube replacements on that one. Once
I copied a broadcast with just my metal dog tag chain for an antenna. Damn
lazy GI's! Didn't want to get out of the hole in the rain and pitch the
wire.  I'm looking to see if I can find some web references to the
encryption system I used.  Very simple but if you loose characters you can
loose the rest of the message. Again, you had to be a good cw operator to
pull the whole thing off.
I am forwarding your message to the gathering at boatanchors and glowbugs.
73's
Greg
WA7LYO

----- Original Message -----
From: "Conard Murray" <ws4s at charter.net>
To: "Greg Mijal" <bluebirdtele at earthlink.net>
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 8:00 PM
Subject: An/GRC 109 Owners


> Add me to the list. I have the transmitter. I used to have all three, but
> the price of 1L6s and the rapidity that they seemed to go south made me
give
> the receiver up.
> Did you guys have that problem back in the day? What sort of other
problems
> were common with the 109?
> I have actually had two receivers and I was amazed at how well both of
them
> worked when the 1L6 wasn't flat. The dials tracked like no other I have
> seen.
> Conard, WS4S
>
>
>
>
>
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