[Milsurplus] T217A/GR

[Ed Zeranski]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <WA5CAB@cs.com>
To: <dufferjames@hotmail.com>; <milsurplus@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 8:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] T217A/GR


> And by the Navy.  We had two on USS Valley Forge in 67/68, in addition to
all
> of the TED/RED's and a few AN/URC-20's if I remember the nomenclature
> correctly.
    I worked on the "TED/RED" radios, ARC-27s, and GRC-27s ( Actually
AN/GRC-27 called "Greek" or "Jerk" 27s, an Army Radio) in the early-mid
'60s. All were replaced by the AN/URC-9 based radios in the mid-late '60s.
The basic radio was the URC-9 with switch selectable preset channels.
Coverage was the usual MIL UHF aviation freqs of 225- 399.5 MC, AM. Adding a
remote dialing unit made the set an SRC-21. That plus an output PA made the
set an SRC-20 which replaced the AN/GRC-27 with 100-150 watts up the pipe.
The 9 and the 21 could be tweeked to get about 15-20 watts, so lets say 17,
across the band. Blower motors were a weak point and the radios shucked them
like cartridge cases in a fire fight and there were few (like in none) for
spares. Antennas for the low pwr URC-9/SRC-21 usually ended up as the AT-150
vert polarized dipole or the AS-390 groundplane(beer can with a skirt). The
higher pwr set was fed to a collinear that looked like a four or five ft
high 6" diameter pipe.( can't remember the designation on that one)
    TEDS were single channel (but had a switch to select one of four
dumb-bell crystals) and weighed about 140 lbs, a ball buster for 20 watts.
PA tubes were understressed 4X150, mods were 807s, and HV rects were 3B28,
an ugly but tough radio. The one pisser was the PA screen bypass was a sheet
of teflon in the PA socket. You really had to keep an eye on the sets or the
moisture and dust would short the damn screen bypass...mucho worko to
replace with scissors and exacto knife. But....BUTTTTTTTTTTTT! that was much
better than a burnt blower motor eating a URC-9. The burnt URC-9 usually
took many hours of tab tweaking to get it back upand tracked. Almost as bad
as working on a URD-4...but not much is that bad ~8^)