[Milsurplus] SCR-583 thoughts

[Mike Morrow]

>SCR-583 manual ( "TENTATIVE April 1944" ) states this radio was
>for "cavalry, horse artillery, and vehicles". At 70 lbs. plus another 
>70 for the accessory chest, it was clearly too heavy to manpack
>for any long distance. There is also a packframe for pack animal.
>However, the only WW2 US Army use of pack animals i know of,
>was in CBI.

There seems to be a progression of the pack-animal sets from SCR-179 to SCR-203 to SCR-583.  I have most of the SCR-178 non-pack animal version of the SCR-179, but I've never even seen a picture of the SCR-203 or SCR-583.

There were a lot of radio dead ends, and I guess this was one of them.  Why were they wasting resources making the grossly obsolete SCR-178/179 sets in WWII, most of which have 1942 contract dates?  A set like the SCR-288 would have well outperformed these dinosaurs, at about one-third the weight and likely at lower cost.

Does the SCR-583 continue the paleo-radio tradition of its predecessors?

Mike / KK5F