[Milsurplus] Re: BC-611

[Hue Miller]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Camp" <ham at cq.nu>
To: "Hue Miller" <kargo_cult at msn.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2005 5:25 PM
Subject: BC-611

> Another thing about the 611. The one thing that pre-war Motorola knew 
> how to do was to make light weight AM broadcast receivers. They had a 
> whole empire of sub-contractors who knew how to make the stuff (like 
> coils) that went into AM broadcast radios. If you needed a couple 
> hundred thousand radios I think that might have been an issue at the 
> time.
> 
> Some of the same sub contractors were still around when I was at 
> Motorola in the 1970's. A few (very few) of the line workers. Thirty 
> years later they still remembered the 611's...

Altho the BC-611 is a great concept, looks great, was radically modern for
the time, and its distinct uses ( paradrops and parachutists, both ), i fault
it for:

antenna not user-replaceable
frequency not easily reset

If you broke the antenna in front echelon, the radio was done for. Unlike
the BC-1000. Also it took the special tuneup jig to tune the thing up.
( Tuneup would have been less critical at the higher frequencies, say
around 10 meters. )
So, i suggest a plug in antenna (somehow done) would have been 
better, and maybe access holes for tuneup plugged by hole covers
when in use. ( That would have been less moisture proof, however. )
To eliminate having to use the tuneup jig with its already holed 
surrogate case with holes in it for tuneup adjustment.

Another thing is, if you have to carry a radio into combat, it's just
not that necessary to have it a handheld. You can put the radio on
your back, and just occupy your hand with the handset instead of
a whole handie talkie. After the PRC-6, the concept seems to have 
died. In 'Nam, the backpack set PRC-25 did the combat role fine.
The German and Japanese walkie - talkies were carried on the body,
not handheld, and also used headphone and throat mic, so that 
even freed the hands up, altho these radios had there own problems.
The Japan set was really cumbersome. 

As for pre-war Forest Service radios, some portables particularly
those for "smoke jumpers" were quite small. I have a US Coast
Guard version of a FS set that is maybe only 10% larger than a 
BC-611, altho it never seemed to have occurred to anyone ( for
military use, that is) to produce a radio in a true handheld package.
I have another FS set that's the size of 1/2 cigar box, altho again,
it is not in a handheld format, and the mic & headset are separate.

Your point about Motorola being well suited to producing 
miniaturized equipment is an interesting one. I don't have 
the experience in pre-war portable radios to comment on that
one way or other. 
It would, i think, have been real interesting to interview some
employees who worked on the BC-611 production, not to 
mention, maybe even the engineers. Oh well.  
-Hue Miller