[Milsurplus] Harvey Wells AR-5A Military Aircraft (History/Info)

[Sheldon Daitch]

In the hearsay mode, from years back, a buddy of mine
was the Dictaphone maintenance guru in eastern North Carolina,
and I seem to recall that he told me that one of his clients
was the tower facility at Seymour-Johnson AFB, where they had
replaced the reel to reel audio recorders with digital logging
recorders.

I also just went downstairs and checked in our master control
area, and we used 24 channel digital Dictaphone logging recorders.
5 of 'em, 120 channels total.

73
Sheldon
WA4MZZ

D C Macdonald wrote:
> 
> I believe multi-channel Magnacord (or
> Magnasync) recorders may still be in use.
> 
> The ones I worked on in the Air Force
> up until my 1981 retirment could also
> be used for playback.  The Tinker AFB, OK
> tower had two machines, one in use at
> a time (IIRC) and the standby machine
> could be used to review a previously
> recorded tape.  I don't remember now
> if they were 10 or 20 channel recorders;
> Magnecorder made both versions.
> 
> I think we also had a separate deck that
> was separate from the tower to allow for
> replay.
> 
> Mac, K2GKK/5
> 
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: C Whitaker <whitaker at pa.net>
> Reply-To: whitaker at ieee.org
> To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
> Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Harvey Wells AR-5A Military Aircraft
> (History/Info)
> Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 21:29:35 -0400
> 
> de WB2CPN                    2004.10.23
> 
> My experience with Control Towers and other
> air traffic control facilities 1950 - 1966
> encountered different methods of recording
> voice transmissions.  During 1951 I saw a
> few recorders that used a 35 MM plastic endless
> tape that used a metal stylus.  Later on the
> Dictaphone (tm) was found in many control
> towers.  It used a wide plastic band.  Then
> Magnacord (tm) introduced a multichannel
> recorder to the USAF.  It was standard for
> towers and RAPCON's in the late 50's and
> early 60's.  The last I saw was the RD-115
> and the RD-92, both of which placed lateral
> magnetic tracks on 3-inch wide tape.  We
> didn't think anything about their future
> value to the world.  In fact, there's no
> point in retaining a recorded media unless
> the play back equipment is also retained.
> 
> 73  Clete
> 
> ______________________________________________________________
> Milsurplus mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/milsurplus
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net