[Milsurplus] [ARC5] Interesting ARC-3

[Bruce Gentry]

Been there, done that! The ARC-3s were surprisingly reliable and we had 
very few service calls on them despite the dirt and horrible air 
pollution inside a GCA van. The ARC-27s cooked themselves to death even 
though the vans were air conditioned. Total failures did happen, but the 
worst were the partial failures where sensitivety and power output would 
drop severely and defy hours of repair efforts. Our best remedy was to 
swap name tags and rigs with the aircraft radio shop for ARC-27s that 
were on airplanes headed home. They  had far fewer hours and looked 
pristine inside instead of charcoal gray and dark chocholate brown. 
ARC-3s were also very popular in those days for Unicom sets at tiny 
rural airfields and on old warbirds.

        Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY

On 11/26/17 3:27 PM, James Whartenby wrote:
> From mid 1968 to November 1969 I was stationed at Mactan AB, 
> Philippines as a ground radio tech.  The communications for the MPN-13 
> GCA radar was ground radio's responsibility.  Radios at that time were 
> ARC-3s for VHF and ARC-27s for UHF, three of each.
>
> Only problem I remember with the ARC-3 was a bad crystal which was 
> fixed by dropping it about a foot onto the radar operator's work 
> console table.  Worked fine after that!
> Fun times!
> Jim
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Jim Haynes <jhhaynes at earthlink.net>
> *To:* Ed# via ARC5 <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
> *Cc:* kk5f at arrl.net; milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
> *Sent:* Sunday, November 26, 2017 1:31 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Milsurplus] [ARC5] Interesting ARC-3
>
> On Sun, 26 Nov 2017, Ed# via ARC5 wrote:
>
>
> > Oddly enough  we had  ARC-3 units as  backup VHF tower com. and
>
>
> When I was at Edwards AFB 1960-1963 we had a number of ARC-3 sets with
> contractor-made AC power supplies as our main VHF capability.  It was
> my understanding that at the time the military was prohibited from buying
> any new VHF equipment as a way to force the transition from VHF to UHF
> for military users.
>
> We needed a lot of VHF because we had a lot of civilian contractors
> operating out of the base and they had to use VHF for their airplanes.
>
> There was also a mission of some nature that required flying around Europe
> from time to time.  I was in the frequency manager's office.  We had a
> suitcase full of ARC-3 crystals that we would issue to the airplane that
> was going to fly that mission; and it was equipped with ARC-3s for that
> reason.  I assume some poor radio operator had to sit there and swap
> crystals in-flight to effect frequency changes required by the European
> air traffic control system.
>
>
>
>
>
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