[Milsurplus] Old Russian Longwave Receiver

[Hubert Miller]

One interesting item, interesting to me at least, that i found at the Rickreall Oregon hamfest is a Russian regenerative 4-tube
receiver, apparently a ship's receiver from the mid-1930s. The tubes are not present; the sockets are 4-pin quadrilateral pattern; t
think 'looking like the outline of a traditional kite'. It has a marked power connector on the front, and these controls: RF tuning,
detector tuning; antenna link adjustment; feedback link adjustment; and one unknown pot. The nameplate is very faded but
Robert Goff says he can make out 'Leningrad' on it and a '36', maybe indicating the date. The coils are very unique; they are
completely sealed in black phenolic covers. 4 coils plug in; the two tuning coils and the two adjustable links, and a very finely
made mechanical gearing moves the link coils from the front panel. Only one set of coils is present, for 4000 - 900 meters;
around 75 - 270 kHz.
How did a 1930s Russian ship's receiver make it to Oregon state? We were puzzling over this. Dan Howard had the facts and the
probable answer. During WW2, Russian ships called at West Coast ports, for war materials cargo i assume, and had their antiquated
radio equipment replaced by standard U.S. equipment. Dan's father, Don Howard, in fact has a 1920-era IP-501-A ship's receiver
which had been reworked to use Russian tubes.  I myself have a Marconi 730, a 4-tube regen ship's receiver, that i found in Seattle
around 1985, and i always wondered if something like this had brought it to that port city. I note that even up to WW2 many of
the world's ships still used pretty simple regen receivers with plug-in coils; in the U.S.A. for example, the Mackay 117 or the RCA
AR-8501. There was a British collier that sank in the North Atlantic in 1947, and the Admiralty inquiry published that the ship's radio
was the Marconi 730 and a spark transmitter. Yes, 1947. But in WW2 the ship would be travelling in convoys, not alone, and so would
be under radio silence.
I just now recalled something i hadn't thought of in many many years; since about 1980, in fact. Around 1978 in Seattle a WW2
veteran fellow i was talking to, told me he had in his basement a Russian ship's spark radio equipment. As i recall, he lived on
Bainbridge Island ( close off Seattle ) and had participated, he said, in the jungle warfare in the Philippines. Unfortunately at the
this was all pretty new to me, and i didn't make the logical move to interview him more in depth or get a look at the equipment, which
most likely went to the dump.
-Hue Miller













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