[Milsurplus] Re: Beginning of use of UHF aero radios

[jhhaynes at earthlink.net]

I don't have a specific date to give you, but when I was in high school
in the early 1950s the FAA flight service station got equipped with
military GRC-27 equipment so they could talk to military aircraft.
Then later in the 50s I was in college and had a roommate who had
worked on ARC-27 sets when he was in the AF previously.  In that same
time frame the ROTC detachment at the university had an L-17 aircraft
(Ryan Navion) and it was equipped with A.R.C. type 12 VHF equipment.  

In the early 1960s I was in the AF at Edwards AFB.  We had a requirement
to work civilian VHF frequencies because of the many contractor-owned
aircraft using the base.  At that time there was an ironclad rule that
the AF could not procure any new VHF equipment.  This was to force the
transition to UHF and phaseout of any remaining VHF.  As a result we had
a lot of ARC-3 sets with commercially made AC power supplies being used
as ground stations for VHF; and there may have been a BC-640 transmitter
still in use.  Also some unit on the base had an occasional mission that
required them to fly around Europe.  We kept a large suitcase of ARC-3
crystals in the frequency manager's office and would check it out to them
when they needed it.  Which meant that some poor guy had to fly along
with them to swap crystals and retune the radios as they moved around.
(I don't know if this had to be done in flight.)

I was glad to see in the late 1990s that the AF has equipment that is
VHF and UHF capable.  

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jhhaynes at earthlink dot net