[Milsurplus] Mystery Project-- Can you ID the Radio?

[Mike Morrow]

>I also keep two useless APN-9.

I still have the one I purchased from John Meshna Co. in 1976.
It represents a fairly important and long-used radio navigation
set.  The design is admirable for its era, which I believe includes
the very late WWII period.  

The only ship on which I served that used the R-65/APN-9 was the
Hr.Ms. Amsterdam (Destroyer D819, Royal Netherlands Navy), in 1973.
But it wasn't used in the north Atlantic...there, the Decca Navigator
System was far better than LORAN A.

I'd like to add the AN/APN-9 to my AN/ARC-8 (AN/ART-13A, AN/ARR-11)
if I can ever come up with the mount and connectors.  I've got the
CU-92/APN splitter.  Some of that is shown on some AN/ARC-8 wiring
diagrams.

In my dreams I'd like to have an AN/ARC-21, paired with the AN/ARR-36
aux MF/HF receiver and the AN/APN-70 LORAN A set!  That's the next
generation of USAF MF/HF communications and LORAN gear after the
AN/ARC-8 and AN/APN-9.

It looks like the various LF hyperbolic radio navigation systems
have run their course.  The last three were ALL displaced by GPS:

LORAN A   Shut down in 1980 (in North America)
OMEGA     Shut down in 1997
DECCA     Shut down in 2000
LORAN C   To be shut down in February 2010

GPS also displaced the U.S. Navy's TRANSIT/NAVSAT system, whose
principal purpose for more than 32 years was to provide position
information to western ballistic missile submarines.  Its navigation
function ceased in 1996.

I just hope the GPS system is never disrupted...there won't be much
in the way of backup radio navigation systems a few weeks from
now, when LORAN C dies.  (I'm ignoring other sat nav systems that
are run by non-western countries.)

Mike / KK5F