[Milsurplus] Prototypes

[William Donzelli]

> Perry, et al:  I can attest to the methods used to number equipments.  In 
> 1951 I worked for a company that installed a AN/CPS-5 radar at Syracuse 
> (Hancock Field) for the 108th
> AC&W Squadron of the NYANG.  Two of the PPI's were S/N 1 and S/N 2 from the 
> R&D division
> of General Electric at Liverpool, NY.  No other nomenclature was on the 
> units as they were
> original prototypes. Once in production they were given regular numbers 
> which I no longer remember.

This brings up a few observations.

What you saw were probably the "X" variants. Almost every bit of
AN/whatzit had an early prototype, and depending how far along the design
was, several things could happen:

1) Individual units could just be called "Unit 1 of AN/ABC-123 (XZ-1)",
rather than ger an R- or T- or whatever designation. Basically, the naming
folks just had not gotten around to giving out individual nomenclatures. 

2) Units could get "temporary" nomenclatures that often change and
conflict. An example is the RF-(XA-4)/APS-1 (XA-1) - when the AN/APS-1
was not accepted into service, the RF-4/ designation was reassigned to
RF-4/AP, a completely different animal. Actual hardware can and did
co-exist.

3) Units could have the same "temporary" nomenclature that does not change
- the "X" designation is simply dropped.

I would bet those AN/CPS-5 scopes fell under the first category.

The early Signal Corps system used a "tentative" system, where a T suffix
was added - RC-64-T9 meant that the RC-64 (a remote control aircraft
radio) was the ninth version before the design was finallized to the
normal production RC-64. T suffixes can be added to anything - BC-s, RC-s,
SCR-s, I-s, and so on. 

Just to confuse things, the AN/ folks also used the T suffix, but for
items associated with training equipment. In order to confuse us even
more, some of the later Signal Corps equipment took after the AN/ folks
and *also* used the T suffix for trainers!

I am always interested in knowing about some of the prototypes that have
survived - often you will see minor (or sometimes not so
minor) differences in the mundane versions we all love. Sometimes you will
see failed versions from oddball vendors. Interesting stuff.

Does anyone have any interesting prototypes (AN/, Signal Corps, or
otherwise)? Anything interesting about them?

William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org