[Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

[Ray Fantini]

But what’s better? The R-390 or R-390A variant or the FRR-59???? I would think that the FRR-59 is a superior receiver in terms of phase noise being that all injection oscillators are synchronous to a signal time base. If working properly it appears that the FRR is far superior to the R-390 with several time bases that are all non-related. Not that up on the CV-591 and wonder if that sampled the LO and offset oscillators in the 390 but that would be a challenge with all the Rupee Goldberg conversion schemes  that take place in the R-390
I have seen FRR-59 receivers at Dayton for around $250 and not much interest in them when compared to the R-390A receivers that sell for way more although have noticed in the past couple years the beat up ones have been selling at around that price. The thing is that you have a cult of R-390 people who somehow claim that to be the ultimate radio where no one sings about the FRR-59.

RF

From: Nick England [mailto:navy.radio at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2016 2:58 PM
To: Ray Fantini; Military Surplus Mail List
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] thoughts on the SRR family of radios

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

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