[Milsurplus] Comparison of Navy vs Army Air Corps equipment

[Hue Miller]

I have always felt the TCS  receiver  was the weak spot of a T/R set which otherwise

would have been extremely attractive to post-war hams. The transmitter, on the other

hand, is a jem, and with little work and a PS, you had a poor-man's Ranger.  The 

receiver weak point is the bandspread, and for me, the lack of any dial escutcheon,

or lighting. There's only a  metal disk, unlighted, behind a cutout in the front panel,

pretty basic. Of course, as with all other mil tactical sets, the use was pre-determined

channelized, not intended for weekend use looking for novice signals in a crowded band.

I have thought that if one was gung-ho on the dial, one could fabricate a new  tuning 

disk from clear plastic, number it, and have a pilot lamp mounted behind it. But unless

you limit the tunng range, the bandspread is still terrible. The selectivity certainly is not

inferior to any of the 3-6 or 6-9 Command Set receivers. Consider that the 3-6 Command

set, the IF is somewhere like 1/2 of the lowest working  frequency, while the TCS is 

around 455 kHz. When i used a TCS receiver on the bands, i coupled a Heathkit Q-mult

into it, and that worked just fine. Oh- also re the selectivity - there were some TCS 

receivers, not many i think, that were intended for land vehilcle use and were therefore

built for wider selectivity.  The RBD receiver has approximately similar physical

architecture and roughly equivalent usage and with a much nicer dial assembly

but still you're stuck with the 1.5-3, 3-6, 6-12 tuning, plus  the IF i think is 915 kHz.

I think the reasons you didn't see that many TCS setups in hamshacks compared to

Command Sets, was for one thing, as another person posted, there weren't that many 

built, also that the Navy hung onto some as long as possible  (last new ones i saw

given to MARS members was Dec. 1976, when HF AM was no longer permitted for

marine use - otherwise the Navy would still have some in stock, i'm sure. )  Also the

prices pretty much held up - maybe there were still some commercial or military users

overseas who still bought them - compared to real bargain prices on the Command Sets.

-Hue Miller