[MRCG] Howdy, Just found you guys... What radio is this?

[K4IVE at linuxmail.org]

Howdy,

I found your organization through a link on the weekly ARRL online newsletter.

I spent 25 years an an army aviator and am still serving as a defense contractor, working with avionics and communication radios.

My introduction to cool old military radios was the Collins AN/ARC-102 Airborne HF transceiver.  It was installed in our ancient 1960's CH-47C helicopters and nobody knew what it was or how to operate it.  Being a radio junkie, I pulled out the massive box of tubes and coils and got a few of them working.  I was making HF phone patches to Long Beach, CA from Korea back to Korea and freaking my ops folks out!  That was lots of fun.

I was in the process of setting up an awesome HF base station with a few red/white Rohn tower sections I "found" in Teugu and a long center fed dipole made with a homebrew phenolic center insulator.  The radio I had was a pretty big unit that was supposed to be portable and was allegedly only issued to special operations forces initially and I found it in our arms room...

I don't remember ever writing down the noun nomenclature for the thing and there was no www internet back then, so I have no idea who made it and I have not seen a photo of it online anywhere!

It had a transceiver and an antenna tuner that were separate and hinged together. When opened up, there were big fat cables attaching the top and bottom units and there was a large antenna base at the top.  I'm pretty sure it was a greenish gray color and it was pretty heavy.  It must have been at least partly solid state, since I don't remember any cooling vents and maybe only one fan.  There were rotary knobs for selecting the band and little bitty push buttons for the transmit and receive frequencies right above the respective number display drum in a small window.

Anyway, the purpose of this message is to inquire what you all might think this radio was and maybe finding a photo of it, so I can finish my 34-year quest for this information!

Any ideas, assistance and insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and 73!

Kevin
K4IVE