[Milsurplus] PE-237...Collector whims!

[Mike Morrow]

Robert wrote:

>... I tried that with a complete AN/GRC-9A but couldn't quite
> get my arms around all of it.  :-)

Try that on its pre-WWII portable classic ancestor, the SCR-178.

>But the real answer to your question is that Korean War vintage radios have 
>only relatively recently been seen as old enough by a significant fraction of 
>either MV or MIL Radio collectors to be worth fooling with.  Ten years ago, you 
>almost literally couldn't give it away to most collectors.

I've always been fascinated by the AN/GRC-3, 5, 7 series of Korean War/Cold War sets since I first saw the manual and the insides of an RT-68/GRC back in 1968 (a fellow Navy MARS member had one).  I wish there was more information freely available about the development and history of this gear.  The JAN component numbers assigned (RT-68, R-110, AM-65, etc.) would seem to point to late WWII when number assignments were made, but I've never seen manuals or order numbers earlier than 1949.   Ham magazines into the late 1960s regularly carried advertisments from commercial vendors seeking to buy components of this series...I suppose they were destined to go to foreign governments still using it.

> Vietnam War gear seems to have come out of that stage a little more
> quickly

What series of US military communications gear had the long active service life of the Vietnam-era AN/VRC-12 and AN/PRC-25/77 series?  It was about 30 years in the US military alone, and doubtless some foreign outfits are still using this gear.  Certainly a AN/PRC-77 is much easier to use than a AN/PRC-119 if frequency hopping isn't required.  This is pretty important gear in the history of US military communications technology.  Apparently the US government tries to de-militarize the stuff prior to release nowadays.

I suspect some collector interest in Vietnam War-era or Cold War-era gear also hinges on the collector having used this gear during his own period of military service.  That's the main reason I've acquired some later vintage gear, such as the AN/WRR-3B VLF/LF/MF receiver that was a standard set in the radio room of US Navy submarines in my era of service on them.  I'm less tempted by the AN/URC-9 that was on board, but maybe someday I'll try to get some of the R-1051, T-827, and AM-3007 stuff that we had (but almost never used).  I also recently acquired a 35-year old AN/APX-72 IFF set, just because that was the IFF set on my sub.  How silly is that?  A lot, I guess.

Mike / KK5F