[Milsurplus] BC-640 TVI

[Jim Haynes]

On Tue, 6 Oct 2009, WA5CAB at cs.com wrote:

> The BC-639 and BC-640 probably hold the all time record for length of
> active service of US military radios.  The last revision that I know of to the

I was in the AF in the early 1960s, at Edwards AFB.  We had a BC-640 in
the MARS station but we never used it.  I don't think there wree any in
active service.

What we did have was a bunch of ARC-3s with AC power supplies used as
ground stations.  Edwards needs extensive VHF communication capability
because of all the civilian aircraft coming in and out, because they
are owned by the various aircraft companies that are contractors and
have operations at Edwards.  At the time I was told that the military
had a ban on buying any new VHF aviation band equipment as a means of
forcing the services to convert fully to the military UHF band.
Hence we had to keep the ARC-3s working to meet the needs of the base.

There was also some occasional mission that required flying an AF
aircraft to Europe.  I presume it had an ARC-3, or maybe there were
several that could be quickly installed in whatever plane needed it.
I know we kept a suitcase full of crystals in the frequency manager's
office; and the mission group would check them out when needed.
I assume they had to change the crystals in flight to communicate
with all the various ground stations, since the ARC-3 handled only 8
different frequencies.  There were modifications of the ARC-3 that
added more crystal sockets to increase the number of channels.

Around 2000 I was gratified to see that the AF has some neat little
air/ground radios for ground use that will operate either VHF or UHF
as needed.