[R-390] Please spare us

[Flowertime01 at wmconnect.com]

Fellows,

>From my military education, by 1950, Post W.W.II our military was moving away 
from dits. RTTY imposed a level of "security" on our communications, You just 
were not going to copy RTTY by ear with a stick in hand. So the R390 was just 
great
for that RTTY use. The linear PTO let you deal with drift and other facets of 
radio reception.

Post W.W.II the Spooks were closed down, we did not need to listen to any one
except our commanding officers. And you did not need a radio to do that.

The rest of the world just was not up to RTTY, so they still used a lot of 
dits.
Once it occurred to the command that we may like to receive the dits or 
others, the spooks were stuck with the existing hardware. Spooks never got to pick 
their receiver with an essay question test. The spook choices were do you want 
these or not?

A lot of communications were still dits, even if the official line was we do 
RTTY.

While the signal corp used lots of R390 or R390/A for long haul 
communications,
short haul was done on telephone lines. Most of the com work was via a RTTY
link. And spooks were using the only stock military receiver available in 
production 
to copy dits. The spooks could buy any radio in the warehouse with a military 
stock number. We were not calling it a NSN yet. By the late 50's when spooks 
got to radios in a big way, there were very few choices on the shelf to be 
acquired by the
hundreds being requested. So more R390 and Later R390/A receivers were
built just for spooks. Never mine that the receiver was a poor spook 
receiver. It
was what was in stock and in production. End of story solider, go listen to 
your
receiver and get those dits. Its a receiver good enough for the military 
brass 
and its good enough for you. How dare you even think the military brass has 
not 
provided you the best receiver money could buy. Troops were told the R390/A
was an improved receiver, not a cost reduced receiver.

While the spooks done lots of dit intercept on the R390 and R390/A the 
military
never considered the receiver a ditty catcher. They also did not consider it 
an
Arm Forces Radio catcher or a SSB catcher either.

What management was thinking when the receiver were being designed and
purchased had no relation to how they were to actually be used over the
next 40 plus years of their life. That is not what management expected to 
happen
but then reality bits every one now and then. And reality rules.

Roger KC6TRU