[Milsurplus] Who was the original designer of the "Old Family"FM radios?

[John Vendely]

Gents,

This article is one of those I referred to in my earlier post.  The article 
is unfortunately vague about who did what in the development of this 
generation of radios.  But Raytheon did most of the design work on the 
AN/PRC-6, RCA did the AN/PRC-8, -9, and -10, and Federal Telephone & Radio 
Corp. evidently did the RT-66, 67, 68, and probably RT-70 development.  All 
reportedly worked closely with Bell Laboratories and Ft. Monmouth.  Another 
article I once had, but which I haven't yet managed to dig up, indicated 
that Crosley was involved in development of the latter four radios, but 
their role may have been a small one compared to Federal.  Crosley did 
produce the radios in large quantity, perhaps their role was limited to 
rework or production engineering.

Later Crosley, by then a division of Avco, developed the AN/VRC-12 family 
vehicular radios, again with the  involvement of Bell Laboratories, as well 
as with Ft. Monmouth, to a lesser extent.  A couple of interesting technical 
articles on development of the CRS frequency control system and center-fed 
whip antenna for the "new family" radios were published, and may still be 
available.  I believe Bell's main contribution was the phase locked loop 
techniques used in the CRS, plus the wide deviation VCXO with 
lumped-constant quarter wave line used in the modulator.  It's interesting 
to note that Crosley's earliest VRC-12 prototypes featured the unique 
"textured" case design of the GRC family sets.

It's good to see some discussion of the "old family" FM gear--perhaps it 
will generate further interest...

73,

John K9WT


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Ross" <ross at hypertools.com>
To: <Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2008 2:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Who was the original designer of the "Old 
Family"FM radios?


> Nick -
>
>  Thanks for doing the research and for posting this link:
> <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/10783/33970/01621548.pdf?isnumber=33970&prod=JNL&arnumber=1621548&arSt=+24&ared=+32&arAuthor=Durrer%2C+J.H.>
>  It would be nice to see the entire .PDF file but membership is required 
> to do more than just see the abstract.
>
>  I have seen lots of these "Old Family" radios built by Lewyt and 'small' 
> subcontractor outfits like that, and just could not imagine that they 
> would have the engineering resources to come up with that whole family 
> design.  But yeah, Raytheon & RCA & Federal would have the engineering & 
> production horsepower to do it.  After the designs are finished & debugged 
> and the production tooling is created and the pilot runs are shipped and 
> the high-dollar contracts are fulfilled, the little guys can take over 
> manufacturing.
>
> 73
> Dave Ross    N7EPI
>
>
>
> Nick England wrote:
>> I was able to download a PDF of the following article at
>> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/10783/33970/01621548.pdf?isnumber=33970&prod
>> =JNL&arnumber=1621548&arSt=+24&ared=+32&arAuthor=Durrer%2C+J.H.
>>
>> It says development was cooperative effort of Ft. Monmouth, Bell Labs, 
>> RCA,
>> Raytheon, & Federal.
>>
>> ---------------------------
>> New developments in army mobile communication equipment
>> Durrer, J.H.
>> This paper appears in: Vehicular Communications, Transactions of the IRE
>> Professional Group on
>> Publication Date: Aug 1952
>> Volume: 2,  Issue: 1
>> On page(s): 24- 32
>> ISSN: 0097-6628 Date Published in Issue: 2006-06-26 10:57:25.0
>>  Abstract
>> In 1945 the operation of vehicular and field equipments in World War II 
>> was
>> carefully analyzed and military characteristics for a new series of
>> vehicular equipments established. The primary improvements over World War 
>> II
>> equipments considered necessary were: reduction in the number of crystals
>> required; more flexibility of channel assignment; complete
>> immersionproofing; and capability of operating from storage batteries or
>> from hand generators and dry battery sources in the field. The new
>> equipments developed to meet these requirements, Radio Sets AN/GRC-3 
>> through
>> 8, are comprised of various assemblies of a group of major standardized
>> components. Vehicular equipments to meet various communication needs may 
>> be
>> assembled from these components on a building block principle. Each of 
>> the
>> components and the acoustic accessories have been made immersionproof, 
>> this
>> much-needed protection that was found necessary to attain reliability 
>> under
>> tropical conditions. The equipments are designed for operation over an
>> ambient temperature range from -40°C to up to 65°C.
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