[Milsurplus] FW: ARC 3 / T 67 questions

[Mike Morrow]

>link pretty well tells what planes the ARC-3 was in.
>
>http://www.designation-systems.net/usmilav/jetds/an-ara2arc.html

Take it with a grain of salt.  The lists of aircraft are seldom very
complete.  But at least, it doesn't confuse the A.R.C. Type 12 with the
AN/ARC-12.

Examine almost ANY aircraft flown by the USAAF/USAF between 1945 and
1964 and you'd find it had an AN/ARC-3/36/49 VHF-AM command set,
unless it was really old and still had a SCR-522-A, or really recent
and had one of the brand new AN/ARC-73 sets.

The USAF retained VHF command sets, usually along side a UHF command
set of the era like the AN/ARC-27/55.  The USN pretty readily dropped
VHF capability when UHF sets became available.  The beauty of the USN's
UHF RT-58/ARC-12 was that it could be plugged into the same rack that
the USN RT-18/ARC-1 VHF set had been using, and use all the wiring and
controls of the old VHF set.  Change the antenna, and now you have a UHF
set in place of the VHF.

The AN/ARC-27 UHF command set came out around 1952.  It was still in
service in many aircraft more that two decades later.  It deserves IMHO
the title of most classic long-lived command set of all time, used by all
services.  But in its own way, the AN/ARC-3 deserves appreciation too.
An old former USAAF/USAF radio tech told me that the AN/ARC-3 was a godsend
when re-channeling had to be performed, compared to the SCR-522-A that it
replaced.  It auto-tunes itself each time a new channel is selected, even
if the channel now holds a crystal of a different frequency.  The SCR-522-A,
AN/ARC-1, -4, and -5 don't do that.

I think that an early to mid-1950s USAF aircraft with a MF/HF AN/ARC-8
(AN/ART-13 and BC-348), VHF AN/ARC-3, UHF AN/ARC-27, plus LF/MF AN/ARN-6 ADF
and AN/APN-9 LORAN A, along with the AN/ARN-5D plus RC-103-A ILS, would have
been a pretty well-equiped aircraft.  I've got just about everything to
complete these sets except the AN/APN-9.  All I've got there is the
R-65/APN-9 and CU-92/APN, but no racks, connectors, or scope hood yet.
I need some RC-103-A mounts too.

Mike / KK5F