[Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

[Nick England]

Well, I wouldn't call the SRR-13 a "direct descendent" of the RBC as that
implies too much genetic material. It was a functional replacement. I don't
know if any of the RCA engineers worked on both. It's possible I suppose.

Here are some personal thoughts on USN rcvr evolution. No warranty express
or implied and I'd love to learn more.

Bear in mind that the biggest revolution for the Navy post-war was the
switch to RTTY. There were huge advantages to doing this given the Fleet
Broadcast mode of operation and on-line crypto that the Navy needed. So the
SRR-13 was the first attempt at a shipboard rcvr that would be stable and
reliable enough for 24/7 RTTY service.

The next step in Navy evolution was for synthesized frequency control
needed for VFCT tone-pack multiplexed multi-channel RTTY (85 Hz shift). We
hams tend to think of SSB for voice but that was pretty secondary in navy
thinking.

So the Navy's next real step up was to the synthesized National WRR-2 (aka
FRR-59).

The R-390A was a transition rcvr in a way. It was far better than the
SRR-13 for RTTY and with the CV-591 did a fine job at SSB. It could be used
for multi-channel RTTY but I understand not normally and not without
occasional retuning. With a synthesized rcvr it was set and forget.

The WRR-2 was pretty expensive, big, and bulky so wasn't so widely
deployed. The R-1051 was the real answer to the Navy's need for a
synthesized receiver.

It is somewhat amazing that the usual petty inter-service rivalry didn't
keep the Navy from adopting the R-390A in huge numbers, for communications
as well as intercept.

So far as I know the Navy never had a program to develop anything
comparable to the R-390A. They just skipped that generation of receiver
architecture. They did fund Collins to develop a PTO-based receiver as part
of the URC-8 prototype but this was a sideline TCS replacement, not a
mainline fleet comms receiver.

These observations may be worth exactly what you paid for them.

Cheers
Nick

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

> 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
>
>
>

-- 
Nick England K4NYW
www.navy-radio.com
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