[Elecraft] Crystal Clear book

[Fred Jensen]

Well, this has strayed way off the original post, and I do intend to 
find the book and read it, but ... speaking from a little battle experience:

Fred (FL) wrote:
> In a battle war situation - the last thing a
> operator military person needs to have to do,
> is dial in an exact frequency. 

Tactical radios -- the ones that are in the heat of combat -- were 
crystal controlled even in WW2.  Other than those, in the US Vietnam 
Adventure, we had a lot of KWM-2A's for HF [big knob to change freq and 
our maint depot guys left the ham rocks in the bottom board and put our 
military crystals in the top board.  A lifesaver for me at HS1FJ], 
AN/GRC-27's for Air to Ground stuff, and AN/TRC-24's for multi-channel 
radio relay stuff, none rock-bound.  The 27's were channelized, but you 
could select the frequency for each channel [never really figured out 
how Art Collins and his guys did that, but it involved a lot of motors, 
gears, racks, and slugs :-) ], and everything else was selectable. 
Synthesized controls showed up in the AN/TRC-96, but rocks were still 
the staple for the AN/MRC-98 heavy mobile tropo.  Now, it's all 
satellite stuff.

Stability in WW2 was probably an issue, but passbands were wider then 
too, and voice was AM ... non-exact tuning was tolerable.  In the 60's 
voice was SSB, tuning mattered, but then Art and his guys took care of 
that for us.  For the record, I think I have destroyed 22 operational 
KWM2A's with thermite.  We had two on every mission, we burned them up 
at the end.  Tough job for a ham.

73,

Fred K6DGW
- Northern California Contest Club
- CU in the 2007 CQP Oct 6-7
- www.cqp.org