[Hammarlund] Ultimate receiver??

[Jon Teske]

 Let me chime in on the perspective of a "Government weenie" in the "spook business" on receivers.
I was involved in station planning throughout the mid- late 1970's and I went to numerous
field intercept sites. "We're from HQ's (or even worse, we're from Washington), we're here to help you."  
During that era we had what was really the end of the tube era in intercept receivers. There were really 
only two receivers in use in that last generation of tubes, the R-390 and the SP-600 family. I never saw a 
51J in use though of course I knew its 75A4 cousin.  Manual Morse was still in
widespread use in third-world countries. The R-390 was the workhorse of intercept. Drift wasn't
really a problem, they were never shut off unless they got pulled for the maintenance shop. The SP-600's
were exclusively used by a rather elite corps of veteran intercept ops (typically E-5s and E-6s in rank)
who were engaged in signal search e.g. finding new and /or lost targets. Those ops needed the agility
that the SP-600's provided. (We were not in T-com, so things like diversity did not apply, we were 
chasing "the enemy.")  I was on an IG team (a civilian member) and we took to task not so much
the R-390 as the way folks were trained to use them. We also advocated getting rid of both receivers
as soon as possible. Transistor/integrated circuit receiver were around the corner and the maintenance
cost for both receivers was horrendous. An R-390, we joked, required more of an auto mechanic mentality
to fix and align than an electrical mentality.  SSB was becoming an issue but we had few "converters" in
the inventory and the troops were not trained to copy it in their tech schools. I got royally reamed by my
boss at the time, a Navy Captain, that I dare intimate that his beloved USN was providing faulty training
at tech schools, but the other civilian on the evaluation team (also a ham, by then both of us Extra Class) and I were vindicated when
the Training Command IG upheld our conclusions.  You can probably thank me for the availability of many
these two receivers in the surplus market as I advocated their replacement ASAP. They were obsolete
by then (for the purpose, they are still great receivers as long as you didn't have to pay for maintaining several 
thousands of them.)  There were advocates of using these receivers as Thermite demolition drills, something
we did to a lot of other obsolete equipment with no apparent use in the surplus world for hobbyists. My
team mate and I did indicate that there probably was a market for these receivers in the Defense disposal
business. We looked out for your guy, and of course had childhood memories of Command Sets ourselves.
We had a bunch of receiver "run-offs" to select the replacement HF receiver, all of
them solid state receivers. As far as I know, no one receiver was the choice and none ever got the
ubiquity of the R-390's in our business. Typically, we might have had 30-40 R-390s on rack at any given
time, an equal number as spares or in maintenance, but only 2 SP-600s (and maybe a VLF version.)  I didn't
see an SP on site after 1977.  By the mid-80s, I was transferred to another area with different technologies.
Which was better? Depended on the purpose. The search ops said they could not use the slow R-390 tuning
and they didn't want to get "R-390 Wrist and Elbow", a term even on-site medics used.

I never actually sat at an intercept position in my job. I was a program manager though I got the job because
although an English and French major in college and a linguist in my early career, my ham background permitted
me to talk coherently to the engineering staffs and for many years I was integrated with the tech guys as a "customer"
representative (e.g. ensuring the tech folk invented stuff to do our mission.  I was not on a track
to do intercept work even when we had civilian intercept ops (most with prior military experience.)  I kept my
prowess in Morse pretty much to myself lest any of my bosses get ideas on where to assign me. There was
a glass ceiling in those jobs at a certain government pay scale rate, one which by that time I had exceeded.
When at a site, I would occasionally sit at a rack and copy something like a weather warning broadcast
in Morse. The regular rack sitters said they appreciated that the folks evaluating them actually did know
how to do the work, even if that wasn't our day job.

I was amused at the comment made about the S-38C as the ultimate receiver. The S-38D was my first
ham receiver and teen friends in the mid-50s had the S-38C.  I suppose in a way that may have been
true. With no selectivity control and a band width that encompassed probably half the Novice bands
in those days, we kids (I was 13 when a Novice in Jan 1956) developed our own bandwidth filters.
They were called ears! After a year of that, I appreciated even more the brand new HQ-100 with a Q-multiplier
that I got for the next Christmas.

Jon W3JT

 

On 07/04/13, Glen Zook wrote:

The 51J- series and the R-388- series are MUCH easier on the wrist than the R-390- series! I had a pair of SP-600-JX-17 receivers in very good condition. However, they both were "drift city" and I got rid of them. Also had an R-390 that was excellent for fixed frequency use. However, very hard on the wrist to tune. Now have both a 51J-2 and an R-388 and both of those work very well.
 
Glen, K9STH


Website: http://k9sth.com


________________________________
 From: Fern <crc at cyberlink.bc.ca>
To: WQ9E at btsnetworks.net; brian at lessonsinlutherie.com; hammarlund at mailman.qth.net 
Sent: Thursday, July 4, 2013 6:54 PM
Subject: Re: [Hammarlund] Ultimate receiver??
 

Band cruising is a lot easier with the collins 51J(4) series and with a good resolution on the readout and not as hard on the wrist to tune as the R-390 series. 73 from Fern 
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