[Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

[Nick England]

I like them fine too Ray, but your timing is off. These receivers were
primarily replacements for the pre-war RBA/RBB/RBC and RAL/RAK receivers,
and pre-dated the R-390A. They were replaced shipboard by R-390A + CV-591
for FSK/SSB (and later by R-1051).
They were part of the Navy's big change in maintenance philosophy from
component replacement to modular replacement that happened post-war.

The series included the following -
AN/SRR-11, -12, -13 shipboard LF, MF (rare), HF
AN/FRR-21, -22, -23 shore station LF, MF (rare), HF
AN/MRR-1, -2, -3 mobile in a waterproof case and 24v p/s option LF, MF, HF,
(all very rare)
AN/FRR-32 dual diversity HF with two R-618/FRR-32 receivers (modified
FRR-23 I think)
AN/FRR-18, -19 shore station 4 channel xtal control (or tunable) LF, HF
(very rare)


Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 9:24 AM, Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu> wrote:

> Additional thought on the SRR-13 family of radios, just to demonstrate
> that there are at least three people who find them interesting! Over the
> years I have owned three or four examples and have found them to be fun
> little radios. Have been told that they were intended to replace the R-390
> in fleet operations but due to their lack of stability and the unfortunate
> period of time that they were designed between the end of the vacuum tube
> era and the beginning of the solid state era they are little more than a
> footnote in history.
>
> Designed for AM, CW and RTTY the radio has a disadvantage in not including
> SSB although SSB can be copied it’s obvious that this radio was designed
> right before the widespread deployment of SSB for most operations. The
> radio also suffers from a drifting master oscillator in the first detector,
> at least on the 13 that’s the HF version I have no first hand experience on
> the LF version the SRR-11 or the mid band SRR-12.
>
> With the exception of one 6X4 tube in the power supply all of the other
> tubes are of the sub miniature peanut verity and are soldered onto small
> modules that in theory make maintenance easy but in reality unless you had
> a set of spare sub-assemblies or a second or part radio were almost
> impossible to work with. And the biggest problem was the switch arms that
> were produced from cast meatal that mate with sliding bars between
> sub-assemblies  that would move the appropriate switch when changing modes
> or bands and if overtighten would crack and brake and if under tighten
> would not work the switch.  I had the opportunity of meeting with one of
> the people who worked on the design back in the old days and he gave me a
> huge box of parts that included a bunch of steel switch levers that solved
> the problem along with a huge stock of spare sub-assemblies and the jumper
> cable that would allow you to operate the receiver outside of its case.
> This allowed me to keep one working and repair several others around that
> time back in the late eighties.
>
> The radio had an optical display that was fun, relatively good sounding AM
> and good image rejection. I gave one to a friend to use down in Mexico for
> a while being he was living next to a couple 50 Kw broadcast stations and
> most other radios would overloaded and did not work in that environment but
> the SRR-13 had no issues with the local broadcasters. Although not light is
> still smaller and lighter than the R-390 and I would also say its more
> users friendly then the R-390 with its thousand knobs. And despite its
> habit of braking switch levers would take the relatively simpler mechanical
> systems of the SRR over the overly complex R-390 any day of the week, but
> that’s just me.
>
> Looking at an SRR-13 you can see the evolutionary process taking place
> between the old generation of rack mount open frame receivers to the
> smaller tightly sealed for both environment and EMF/RFI to the next
> generation of radios like the R-1051, URC-32 and the RT-618, no the designs
> are not the same but you can see in the case design and the use of modular
> sub-assemblies the family lineage.
>
> I have not owned or used an SRR in maybe twenty years being that I
> progressed into sold state radios like the General Dynamics R-1051 and
> other Watkins Johnson receivers but with all this talk about the old SRR
> family wanted to put this out there.
>
> Question – Back in the seventies and eighties there were a lot of these
> radios in the Ham fest circuit, I am going to assume that because anywhere
> that they were deployed in active duty they were quickly replaced by R-1051
> receivers and many were deployed thru Navy MARS? Any thoughts?
>
>
>
> Ray F/KA3EKH
>
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