[Milsurplus] BC-1000 The Fun begins

[WA5CAB at cs.com]

The BC-1000 is certainly a bit of a bear to work on.  But I suspect that 
its retirement from US service in the 50's had more to do with (a) the 
AN/PRC-10 was lighter and from a support viewpoint had much in common with the 
AN/PRC-8 and -9 (and also had a vehicular variant).  And (b) it did not match up 
well with the frequency range of the newer FM equipment that began to 
appear in quantity around 1952.  And except for the SCR-619, the rest of the 
WW-II FM gear was retired not much later.

But compare its weight and volume to its nearest competitor in 1944, the 
SCR-609.  Or its reliability and range to that of the SCR-536.  Most of the 
other sets were also given in some quantity to the French, Italians, Greeks 
and Israelis.  Pretty much the same thing was done with the Korean War vintage 
FM gear when it was replaced in the 60's by the AN/VRC-12 family.

In a message dated 4/27/2011 11:02:24 AM Central Daylight Time, 
RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu writes: 
> Just personal observations from working nets with all the radios. The 
> BC-1000 always sounds way over modulated. PRC-6, PRC-10 and the RT sets from 
> the fifties are wide but nowhere near as wide as the 1000 and newer sets 
> like the PRC-25, 77, VRC series radios are usually around 15 to 25 kHz with 
> around 2 kHz to 5 kHz of PL. On my PRC-68 I can copy all of the above with 
> little or no issue except the BC-1000 that always sound loud or off 
> frequency. Don't know what the IF filters is on the PRC-68 but think it's an issue 
> for netting with the old sets, I have also used my Russian R-107 couple 
> times at Dayton and think I remember that the BC-1000 always sounded better on 
> that. The BC-1000 is a great radio considering when it was designed, built 
> and fielded and cretin with working with all the old SCR series FM radios 
> frequency stability and bandwidth were not issues but would think it may 
> have had a very short service life and was obsolete as soon as the PRC-6, 10 
> and RT-68, 70 families of radios were brought out in the fifties. They do 
> appear to have been sent too many other countries so maybe that was a way of 
> getting them out of our inventory?
> Ray F. KA3EKH

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