[Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

[Ray Fantini]

I stand corrected on the time line, and if you look at the RBA,RBB and RBC dinosaurs and assume that the SRR was there direct descendant that makes the radio remarkable to the extent that almost nothing was carried over from the previous family of radios to the SRR family.  Also interesting to note that the SRR operational issues may have resulted them being replaced with a land base receiver like the R-390, some years back there was a discussion on what branch of the service pushed forward innovation and some of the best equipment and it’s good to see that a radio developed for the Army for teletype operation outperformed its Navy counterpart and ended up on ships.

RF

From: Nick England [mailto:navy.radio at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 11:25 AM
To: Ray Fantini
Cc: Military Surplus Mail List
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

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<http://www.navy-radio.com>

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