[Milsurplus] PSYOPS SONY 8600 VTRS! AIRBORNE LOW POWER BROADCASTING

[COURYHOUSE at aol.com]

Yepper!  this  was a 100 watt  system  small,  light!  Ok this is 
interesting on the lack of live broadcasts, would have  been easy to  do  from this 
platform ( although   the  helicopter  would have had  some hellatious 
background noise)
 
yea the 8600  pretty good   did color also...   I  am looking for 8650's  I 
use them here to convert  tapes
 
if  you find anything more  about this let me  know  I  want to give  some  
space to it on the  website
 
Ed#
 
 
 
In a message dated 6/21/2012 3:05:17 P.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu writes:

Commando  Solo the EC-130 J operated by the 4th PSYOP, 193rd Special 
Operations Wing of  the PA Air Guard in Middletown is the best example of 
broadcasting from the  air, but knowing a little of the history of this type of 
operation and how it  evolved from the EC-121, Coronet Solo in Vietnam in the 
late sixties and then  the EC-130 by 1980 have to wonder what the point of the 
helicopter operated  system was? The large ships provided a platform that 
would easily accommodate  AM, FM and television broadcast transmitters, 
antennas and the required  playback equipment. As far as I know live transmission 
was never conducted on  any of the PSYOP flights with all broadcasting 
being pre recorded. Acrodyne  has been a manufacture of television transmitters 
and translators forever and  over the years I have worked on much of their 
equipment and refer to them as  "Acrodog", they are still in business but 
that is only building high powered  television transmitters and selling Rhodes 
& Schwartz products for  anything below 5 to 10 kW. The Sony equipment in 
the report is fairly standard  early seventies stuff. The report is referring 
to a Sony VO-8600 that is a  1/2" open reel EIAJ B&W video recorder, they 
use to be as common as dirt  but thinking about it now I have not seen one in 
years but at one time spent  many hours operating and repairing them.  The 
VO-1600 they refer to is  the very first of the U-Matic 3/4" tape machine 
ever produced by Sony, they  rarely worked on the ground on a stable platform 
and cannot imagine them  working in a helicopter. Some of the later test used 
the Sony AV-3400 and  AVC-3400 Sony equipment that was Sony's first widely 
available B&W  portable system using a small portable 1/2" open reel VTR 
that was also EIAJ  standard so its tapes would play or it would play tapes 
from other systems and  the AVC-3400 portable B&W camera that connected 
directly to the AV-3400 by  a twelve pin connector. That set up is what many 
television stations first  used for remote news gathering before everyone went to 
color. The AKAI CVC  -150 color video camera was a two part two tube 
nightmare, cameras of that  time all had no electronic iris control so the operator 
had to manually adjust  the zoom, focus and iris, and then try to balance 
color for the type of light  the camera was being used under. The B&W cameras 
also had the same problem  but were generally better cameras and produced a 
useable picture over a wider  range and the B&W cameras were also much 
higher resolution then what was  available with the limited one or two tube 
color cameras, weird thing is AKAI  manufactured a 1/4 recorder for use with 
that camera and why they did not use  that as opposed to the Sony open reel 
color system. Everything used in the  report has the disadvantage of being 
right on the edge of when video equipment  evolved into something that was way 
ahead of the junk that was before it. By  1976/77 modern 3/4 Umatic portables 
appeared along with far superior cameras  and by 1980 8mm VCR and camera 
technology caused that stuff that was produced  in the early seventies to look 
like dinosaurs. You use to see that open reel  video stuff at Hamfest ten 
or fifteen years ago but have not seen any or not  bothered to notice any 
recently, the VO-8600 is easy to recognize because the  outside of the case and 
top cover are bright orange. The AV-3400/AVC-3400 were  tan or badge and 
usually came in a huge gray plastic transit case along with  the spare 
batteries and the leatherette brown plastic carrying bag.  I  have personally sent 
tons of this stuff to recycling.   
RF

-----Original Message-----
From:  milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net 
[mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net]  On Behalf Of COURYHOUSE at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 6:05  PM
To: Milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [Milsurplus] PSYOPS SONY 8600  VTRS! AIRBORNE LOW POWER 
BROADCASTING


PSYOPS SONY 8600  VTRS!   AIRBORNE LOW POWER BROADCASTING
PSYOPS SONY 8600  vtrs!  
_http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/780729.pdf_  
(http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/780729.pdf) 
as raved about on  _www.smecc.org_ (http://www.smecc.org) 

If  you have   anything related to this we are happy to buy  it.

ed sharpe  archivist for smecc