[Milsurplus] Radar Fans- Check this out

[William Donzelli]

> Wm is that a litteral 'can you see' or do you expect the lot to wind up
> there?

The top center face of the Rectifier has a little RRE (Radio Research)
sticker. So the boxes were reconditioned in Waterbury, CT. 
 
> The story on the '584s in Chinese hands & the Ga Tech chartered study
> are true.  Outa mouth of former head of Tech's Radar Branch, Fred D.

Oh, I can believe that the Chinese purchased SCR-584s. I really have to 
doubt if they were any good at dealing with US planes. The SCR-584s are 
quite easy to jam, as they only have old-tech S-band receivers and 
old-tech conical scanning. The ECM of the day would have 
made short work of them. 
 
> Reason for contact 2 yrs back was lot of '584 things turned up @ Ga State 
> Surplus & I vectored HeMus to successful bidder.   The bidder who was 
> about to crush 'em.  They WERE & ARE SCR784 parts the gov't still had 
> salted away in '64.

I remember that. So HEMus bought them as spares?

One of these days I need to get in their back room (just to look, 
but...). I may have to bring tribute, but that is OK.

> BUT the 784 was X-band & Tech had to find a S-band dish-feed-TX for their
> work.  Maybe Radio Research entered there?

The Signal Corps actually had X-band upgrade kits for the SCR-584. 
Basically, it involved pulling a lot of modules out and replacing them 
with new modules. These new modules were mostly a GE design, I think, and 
had rather high BC- numbers (BC-1399 is the video amp. Hmmmm, about a 
year ago I purchased two BC-1399s from a guy in Florida. What's with that 
state? The next radar holy land?).

S or X (or any other band), RRE can pretty much get you what you need in 
the high power RF department. You pay for it, however. The place has been 
around forever, and initially was part of the big surplus boom, and has 
managed to do quite well. Apparently they sell quite a lot of parts to 
other governments that use our old junk. The old junk, however, is now 
the sixties and seventies radars. The World War 2 stuff is all gone, so 
RRE dumped that a long time ago (except for the SCR-584s).

Try and get an RRE catalog - way out of date, but your jaw will drop to 
the floor.

> Now I shudn't have sed "our fighters didn't have a prayer" yesterday.  It was
> 1964-5 & it shudda read "our advisory aircraft didn't..."
> 
> Here's a sorta notable!  Didja see the 5881s in the LV p-s series regulator
> section?  Shows 1955-ish service.  Whaddya bet this Ebay lot was p/o 
> gifts to Columbia or some such other central american shang-ri-la?  

It is hard to say. 

William Donzelli
aw288@osfn.org