[Milsurplus] Nems Clark in C-119

[Ray Fantini]

With the show out in Hagerstown at the old Fairchild plant have been looking at C-119 Flying Boxcars a lot. To support the CORONA satellite program a group of especially equipped C-119 with  boom attachment that was used to capture a Satellite Return Vehicle (SRV) as it reentered into the atmosphere attached to a parachute.
Back in the sixties and late fifties when the CORONA program was developed video scanning technology and live video images were too poor quality to use for intelligence so the Agena launch vehicle was used with a film camera to do phot recon over the USSR with the film being packed in the SRV and that dethatching upon mission completion and returning to earth for processing. Later missions had several SRV that would allow for extended operation.
The attached picture shows the radio operators station on one of the boom equipped C-119 that in addition to the usual ARC-8 set up and loran receiver you can see the Nems Clark rack that has a VHF Telemetry receiver that would be used to pick up the VHF beacon on the SRV along with a scope that I am assuming was set up to chop between the two antennas on the ship to give an idea where the payload was falling.
At the top of the rack is a crystal signal generator that I think was switched on to set the receiver at the correct frequency of the SRV beacon.
They have pictures of the pilots and co-pilots station but don't see any methods to assist them in locating the chutes and just assume they were given gross coordinates of the reentry and using the beacon receiver with instructions from the radio operator they would fly around until they saw the chutes and then move in for the capture.
>From 1959 to 1972 over one hundred fifty successful recoveries were accomplished for both the publicly known Discovery payloads and the secret KH-1 thru KH-4B and KH-5 satellite programs by the USAF 6593 Test Squadron.
Thought the picture would be interesting to the group to see the ART-13 and BC-348 in its natural setting along with the often less photographed Nems Clark gear.
Sorry for the low resolution but that's the nature of this reflector. The USAF Museum has a page with a bunch of the photos including a high resolution copy of this at:

https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/197556/fairchild-c-119j-flying-boxcar/

Ray F/KA3EKH

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