[Milsurplus] Re: HF radios in WV 121 Connies and C 97 tomb raiding

BOEING377 at aol.com BOEING377 at aol.com
Mon Aug 15 13:04:27 EDT 2005


I jumped at the annual World Free Fall Convention held at the old Chanute AFB 
in Rantoul Illinois Aug 5-14. When the weather curbed skydiving last Saturday 
morning, I was fortunate to get to see the inside of the Chanute Air Museum's 
WV 121 Super Constellation. It had a fairly complete interior including 
something I never knew existed, a vacuum tube INS system for navigation. VERY 
complex. It also had an ARR 41 rcvr and two 618T HF SSB xcvrs. What struck me as 
unusual is that the 618 T was paired with the coupler that I usually associate 
with the ARC 38, I think it was a CU 351 or something like that, but not the 
usual 490T that I see paired with the 618T. Was this standard or is it an 
artifact of a cosmetic interior restoration? Looked like it was actually wired up 
for operation, not just a display thrown in a rack. I have some photos I can 
email if anyone is interested. 

I also got to go aboard their C 97G that has been sealed up for MANY years. A 
museum worker cut the old padlock with bolt cutters and we entered the old 
cargo plane. It was like opening a crypt in a pyramid. I had visions of pristine 
ARC 65 or ARC 21 barrels, etc, but it was not to be. There were skeletons, 
dead birds that had somehow found their way in to the well screened and sealed 
fuselage and never found their way out. Just the bones and a few feathers 
remained. No massive amts of bird droppings as are often found in old display acft. 
There were lots of intact mounts and wiring harnesses (eg ARN 6), but no 
radios at all. The cockpit was musty and dirty, but the engineers panel was fairly 
complete. The pilots panel had been robbed of most but not all instruments. I 
have photos of this as well. 

One cool thing about the Connie is that it had a tech bench at the rear that 
was used by the military to do onboard in-flight troubleshooting and repair. 
It had a TV 7 tube tester, Simpson multimeter etc. It wasn't unusual to fix 
radios and even the APS 20 search radar in flight I was told by a guy who had 
flown on these planes as a radio op. In his days the ART 13 was the main xmtr and 
all HF comms were CW.

We jumped the Carvair, a double decked C 54 DC 4 conversion done by Freddy 
Laker in the 50s or early 60s. Unfortunately no boatanchors were found in its 
radio racks.


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