[Milsurplus] 1950's Navy airborne HF question

[Mike Morrow]

Michael wrote:

>When I went through flight training at Whiting Field (part of the Pensacola 
>based Naval Air Training Command) in 1955, our SNJs were equipped with 
>ARC-5s.  You transmitted to the tower on the MHF transmitter and received 
>them on the LF receiver.

I've got a picture of a similar AN/ARC-5 installation in USN training aircraft
some years after WWII.  It consisted of the 

R-23/ARC-5 (.19 to .55 MC)
R-26/ARC-5 (3.0 to 6.0 MC)
T-19/ARC-5 (3.0 to 4.0 MC),

plus the racks, MD-7/ARC-5, etc.

>Tuning was set by the techs and there were no tuning controls in the cockpit.

The installation I describe allowed remote tuning of the R-23 and R-26, each 
with a C-125/ARC-5 control panel.  It would seem odd to not allow pilot remote
tuning of the R-23 LF/MF beacon band receiver.  In that era, the single most
important radio on board was the tunable beacon band receiver for reception of
tower transmissions, and for reception in flight of the directional Adcock A-N
LF/MF beacons that were the backbone of air navigation in the pre-VOR era.

>The only control was the transmit/intercom switch.

Plus the PTT switch, of course.  The same was true of the installation I cite,
for the transmitter.  In a single-transmitter AN/ARC-5 installation, the
transmitter control box (like a C-30A/ARC-5) would be superfluous.

>Can't remember the exact frequencies, but I beleive they were common to all
>towers at that time.

That would be 278 KC on the R-23, and 3105 KC on the T-19.  (A few towers were
on frequencies other than 278 KC for ground-to-air, but 3105 KC was pretty
universal for air-to-ground until traffic was shifted to 3023.5 KC in the
mid-1950s.)  The R-26 HF receiver would have been tuned to 3105 (or 3023.5) KC
for air-to-air communication.

Mike / KK5F