[Milsurplus] TCS used as civilian marine radios, re-posted with HTML removed.

[Boeing377]

"...but as an old time HF marine radio it's hard to beat, would assume that many were used
in small charter and fishing craft for decades and maybe right up to the
drop dead date for AM in that service as long as they had crystals in the
transmitters. Think back in th  e early seventies in order for the TCS to be
type accepted it had to be used in crystal control for the transmitter at
least, or so I was told."




There were quite a few TCS radios in (illegal) marine service in the 50s and 60s. 
They were cheap, plentiful and required essentially no conversion. 
Accessories and connectors were very easy to obtain unlike many other surplus sets. 
As far as I know TCS sets were never FCC type accepted even when xtal controlled. 
Their low power output didn't compete well on the crowded West Coast working channels: 2142, 2638 and 2738 KHz. 
Many days it seemed as if there was a constant howl on these freqs from carriers beating together.


I grew up in commercial fishing and saw many military surplus radios in bootleg service. 
I have submitted an article about this to Electric Radio and it will probably be published sometime in early 2106. 
Saw ART 13s, BC 191s and 375s, 18S-2s and others. Even saw a crude xtal control conversion for an ARC 5 xmtr-rcvr pair. 


Fishermen referred to their AM HF radios as "The Big Set" and their CBs as "The Little Set" or "The Mickey Mouse". 
A "good" Big Set ran 150 watts. A powerful AM radio with good modulation carried some status, as did a big boat. 
I helped several fishermen who had tried tuning up their own transmitters and in the process had dramatically reduced their output. 
These screwdriver jockeys had tuned the easily accessible one per channel variable caps for max plate current on the front panel meter rather than dipping. 


One Gulf Coast commercial conversion of BC 191-375 xmtrs repainted them in hammertone to make them look less "surplusy". 
BC-433 and ARN-7 ADFs were also seen. Never did see an ARN-6 on a fishing vessel although in many ways they were a better 
choice than the BC-433 and ARN-7 because they needed only DC power. 


 Almost all the LORAN A sets on fishing boats in the 50s and 60s were APN 4 or APN 9 sets.
 I can still hear that Jack and Heinz rotary inverter spooling up to supply 400 hz power and sounding like a siren. 


AF6IM
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