[R-390] Field Day

[Roger Ruszkowski]

Field Day is always the fourth full weekend of June,beginning at 1800 UTC Saturday and running through 2059 UTC Sunday. Field Day2020 is June 27-28. Bands: 160, 80, 40, 20,15 and 10 Meter HF bands, as well asall bands 50 MHz and above, All modes. From my personal experience in New Orleans twenty years ago,I felt the then management of Avondale Ship Yard west of the river and north ofthe railroad bridge to be short on six-sigma experience and understanding.  I propose we R390/A owners have a real interest in theFowler Receivers. This is part of the receiver’s level of performance, historicuses, military mainstay, industrial interactions, and scientific legacy. R390/Areceivers are plain best in class. [Above and beyond the rest of Collins in myhumble opinion.] Bob Young has ask us not to go stupid here and thatmotion had a second by Mike Bracey KE5YTV. I take the advice to heart. Some badbusiness has occurred in the past and we keep seeing more examples of it pop upon E-bay. In the R390 R390/A world we are blessed with 2K 8 bit ferrite corememory and have recollections of events in our lives. A very diverse group weare. Right off the top, we need to know the history ofreceivers. Some left Viet Nam via Okinawa, Australia and now on to China. Some wentto Julien Creek. Some were trashed in California. There are some small private stashesof receivers held by pickers from other surplus sales. Some were refurbishedwith a better !!! single sideband detection circuit and sold to the Military inseveral South American Countries. The Army Signal Corp used these receivers bythe hundreds (see the original contract numbers on the R390.net site). The ArmySignal Corp used the receivers in long haul teletype systems for logisticsupport operations. The Air force air travel reservation system was punch tapeand teletype on the Army Signal Corp system. Every time someone in the militarychanged duty station that moved their payroll service point, a set of standardmessages went across the network. The intercept spooks (AKA United States ArmySecurity Agency AKA Lighting Fast Chicken Fuckers of Playboy magazine fame) hadover 3000 R390/A in service and was puting 20 recruits out of school each week togo to the field sites and maintain receivers. On the back side 20 soldiers whoknew a lot of radio theory and electronics had served four years were going home unemployed but with college education benefits.The ditty school was full of new operators. The NATO allies had a radio link onevery base with a mess hall. The collective history of the Receivers isinteresting. In the process of getting educated, we have had some bad lifeexperiences. I agree with the sediment of not bringing all the trash forward.The agency likely had 2000 radio repairpersons on the bench in the field aroundthe world. One repairperson giving each receiver 20 hours of thought per yearcould keep 100 receivers operational. We cared for more than just receiversevery day on the job. Hands down the R390/A is still the largest batch ofstandard item ever manufactured.
Les Locklear tells us that, The U.S. Navy in 1984 neglectedto remove the R-390A/URR requirement for the LSD Gunston Hall Class shipsGunston Hall 44 and Comstock 45 class LSD (Landing Ship Dock) ships being builtin Avondale shipyards. The purchasing department at Avondale shipyards sent outa bid for five (5) R-390A/URR receivers. Fowler Industries won. They builtfive. Fowler originated from Clavier Corp. that was once Capehart. So, they hadthe knowledge to build them.  Les is having problems with his moon base memories. Iunderstand and this is why I encourage us to get these memories into the cloudfor historical preservation. Can I get this months kidney stone memoriesexpunged. Nick England (navy.radio at gmail.com) reports the FWIW, theFFG-7 frigates were built about the same time as the Avondale Fowler Fiasco.Every ship had an R-390A installed. Somebody at Bath Iron Works knew how toprocure these receivers to meet the USN requirement. Here are photos of thevarious ships under construction 1979-87. How many R-390A receivers can youspot?http://www.navy-radio.com/ships/ffg7.htm The R390A/URR was used in the photo ops because an imageof a rack full of transistor receivers never seen or mentioned in public waslost on the viewing audience. In 1984 Avondale screwed up the “top side” part of theship build contract that Les refers to. This is where the Fowler Receivers werecaused to come into existence. Nick tells us R-390A/URR were going into Navyships at Bath Iron Works across the 70’s and 80’s. In 2000 Avondale shipyards had a ship contract to build ahull for the LPD-17 USS San Antonio. Bath Iron Works in Maine had the contractto build out the “top side” of the new ship. Bath Iron Works mostly installsthe artillery on Navy Ships. Raytheon still has the best artillery guidancesoftware. Raytheon had the shipboard fiber network to ensure the integratedcombat systems worked as expected by U. S. Marines. If the Raytheon systems failed,it was all on the Raytheon one stop engineering design. The Raytheon warfare specialtyinherited from the Hughes Aircraft Company is the software guiding one up someone else’s ass first.  I am a radio guy that knows what some item on a powerpoint slide labeled R390A/URR could be. I did eight years keeping radiosoperating for the ditty’s and my wife and friends who were trying to make some senseout what other bad people were planning to do or had done. ASA collected inputfrom many finks who unknowingly ratted other bad actors out while braggingabout attendance and missing paychecks. Who did that dastardly deed over yonder.May we suggest the employer mentioned in the radio traffic as not making payrollto a crew who claims some minor participation. OK now we have some clues whatwent wrong in the business world that caused collateral damages to be reportedin the news. Any guess on what tidily wink will be played next. Just asking forinsight. Yes, the ditties ideas were taken for input. These guys keep bets andodds on the story lines being tracked. How far in reporting time was the ASAtraffic, United Press world wire copy, white house, national news, Armed Forces Radio and theStars and Stripes stories behind the intercept? The amount of stuff our statedepartment declines to comment on daily fills a file drawer. I know a drawingfor a room full of radio intercept equipment when I see one. I know radiointercept is DC to daylight and the Navy has no reason to compromise the radiointercept noise floor with digital equipment noise generated in the radioreceiver spaces. The whole idea of putting a shit box next to their telephonewas lost on the young network engineers at Raytheon. In the year 2000 the shipdesign for the LPD-17 class of ships had space in a radio intercept equipmentsuite for four receivers in two rack with a cold spare in the ready racks. By the year 2000 old used R390A/URR receivers were onhand to be installed in the ship when that assembly date arrived in NewOrleans. Avondale Industries learned something about procurement in the interimbetween 1984 and 2004. The Navy can tether weather balloons and have amazing verticalantennas for the HF and VLF radio spectrum. Up top under the balloon micro wavereceivers on circuit boards capture signals no one expects to be intercepted anddown linked from the balloon to the deck on fiber optic cable paired with the tetherlines. The crew reels the balloons up and down as the weather permits and currentproximity to signals suggest. What is all this funny equipment near this deckdoor that has a network connection requirement with the other end of the VPNwhere? Antenna tuner and coax not fiber to what compartment? In God we trust and everyone else we monitor. Your taxdollars are at work and your government is not clue less. We the people are notlooking to throw bucks at thing other people in the world are not ready to letgo of. We can’t get no satisfaction and we know it. The kids on my neighborhoodFacebook page are calling me a baby killer again and wonder why we are not allvegan. I tell them every selfie is in the cloud forever and Clear View has acopy and they respond it will be impossible to haunt them and their creditrating for life. We will find a feeling comparator sensor some day and putrelative feelings into context. By the way, another 20 nations are equallyengaged in the monitoring of worldwide and local communications. The Chineseare running intercept on every internet switch on Earth. Every city of size inAmerica has switches where traffic over fiber routed through switches is echoedout of the switch on a VPN to a copied destination. A maintenance feature ofnetwork switches that can be hacked. Chinese Huawei wants the echo feature ondemand embedded in the G5 phone firmware, because G5 is capable of serving thegateway needs of large volume and dollar business enterprises. Think directconnect to the IRS at points of production and distribution. When the money moves,IRS will receive their exact share. For a monthly fee, you can listen to any MACaddress associated with a cell phone anywhere in the world if the signal isrouted through a switch where some echo firmware exist in the network switch device.Now Clear View is selling copies of all the images it can intercept and copy.As you get closer to the switch bad guy eddy uses, the more of his calls youintercept on your network tap point. Reach the cell tower bad eddy connectswith and you can copy all the Nextel walkie-talkie phone chatter of thesecurity people echoed out through the maintenance VPN. I digress, my apologiesto Les, yet again. Robert Meadows reflected sure seems to me that in 1984the Navy and other services had gone past the R390A design. I believe frommemory that the R1051 was a later radio and still in service. This is true for daily communication work with amazingsystems supporting all kinds of digital modulation and encryption. The R390A/URRreceivers are specifically for HF radio intercept. The HF radio apps the spookshave will copy anything up to 3 DB under the noise floor of the system at thefrequency of interest. Armature radio apps and an R390A/URR is still the best HF receiversystem. Once you’re operating against the wall every other system is againstthe same wall and thus equal. Risk assessment, the R390A/URR receivers may workafter and EMP event. Les said there were problems with spare parts being usedon the moon. Just saying the idea is in the sales literature. The R390A/URRreceivers were going on modern Navy ships for the spooks aboard the ships aslate as the LPD-17 designs. Used receivers from existing military inventory arebeing used as needed where needed. There is no rhyme of reason between the contract numbersto get a ship built in 1984 and have five R390A/URR receivers produced. Thisproblem has been a screaming contest in government accounting since someone askedfor a spot check on the bankbook. Someone holds a file cabinet of paper fromhistory. Maybe somewhere there are dates and contract details. We would havesome idea of what should have been on nameplates to fulfill contractrequirements for the nametag part of the total product to be delivered completeand given a serial number by stamp to the nameplate if accepted by Fowlerquality. Get this far and you can present the unit to a procurement inspectionwith a request to be paid for contract delivery of hardware assembly. We R390 enthuseshave no reason to enable the frauds to produce more e bay nightmares on ourgood name and legacy.  Still it is God only who knows what that last thing weseen on e bay was. Francesco Ledda K5URG commented. It makes no sense tomanufacture 5 new radios, while used units were available on the market. Theset up and manufacturing cost must have been astronomical. Probably, thecontract was cost plus, and the Navy had to pay for it.  I agree and I see at least three contracts in theprocurement process to get the receivers built. The first two contracts had apaper document for a deliverable item and the contacts were settled before thebuild contract was announced. How much to build? Justify that cost. Then okhere is a contract to build five each. What do we believe was built from what parts?How many sub-assemblies were built from scratch for demonstration? Any commenton the VFO’s that were used?  Some one in 84 had a science project line item to findthe real cost to produce R390A/URR receivers or someone at Avondale went downthe wrong procurement path to have some things built when they should have askedto have some things delivered. My lifetime experience from 2000 permits bothsolutions to occur simultaneously. The R390A/URR is not my only example ofscience projects written into a Navy ship building contract. I watched Avondalealmost screw up sound power phones on the LPD-17 in the year 2000 with apaperwork error entered into the wrong channel. This is where some real scienceoccurs. The contract line item was under risk assessment to review the technologyof the Navy’s sound powered phone system looking for changes in the science andtechnology. Some geeks at Lockheed did that study and completed the documentsto be paid. The line item did not tell Avondale to purchase something that didnot exist as a stock Navy ship part to replace a proposed pure nonexistent partno longer available. What the contract sentence said for the base line study guidanceand reality were detached in a contract. Part two was the review andjustification of the first cut estimate. Avondale was looking for companiesbuilding sound powered phones different from what the Navy has used since like1940. Sound powered phones on Navy ships existed before Deforest put togetheran Audion tube in 1906. There is no other source of sound power phones. Thecurrent manufacture may continue manufacturing, and billing the Navy for thesound powered emergency phones the Navy wants aboard their ships at the pricewanted for their cost to manufacture. An independent third party not overly nerdy had a studyconducted and it supports the claims and we have a price with support for soundpower phones on Navy ships. The old company can have the contract to producethe parts at the contracted and agreed to new cost of production. We see thisjust checking process in the contacts all the time. The Saudi Government paid a million dollars to move aprogram out of a building just so the Saudi contractors in Los Angles couldhave the whole building to themselves. It was a throw away in the bid list, andthe Saudi said why yes we chose privacy with no one else in the building wherethe Saudi will do receiving. Hughes could not keep walking the same parts pastthem for inspection and delivering unchecked items at the other end of thefactory. The Saudi paid construction cost for new secure areas, moving cost,and a premium for lost time to the evicted tenants on their contact performance. People in Avondale were sensitive about some pastbusiness myths. Hay we were Hughes and former GM and now Raytheon and had a gymbag with a million dollars of lottery winnings in small mixed bills left behindby Howard for Richard. Bath Iron Works and Lockheed had their sore businesspoints also. This did not keep us field engineers from enjoying dinner togetherin New Orleans. The crazy old Army vet ragging on Tom Clancy over the Hunt forRed October software science was a good dinner story. The other Raytheon fieldengineers in New Orleans were impeccable as expected. My big system view hadits uses and caused me frequent problems. I have never found a gracious way oftelling my cubicle buddy he is chewing the requirement wrong and will haveheart burn for it. We need to know who built the Fowler receivers and whathappened to the receivers since being built. Along the way, some bad actors hadroles in history. I read about the color of paint on front panels and ask whyit is not ANSI 48 Gray. These are just radios in the dashboard, not the paintjob on the ride. You are the Fellow who took part in the history of thislegacy. Donald has done three years and never mentioned some sore points with otherstakeholders and we clearly know the state of the Union this year. This post clearly adds nothing to our shared knowledge ofthe Fowler receivers. It is about time we had put together some more R390A/URRstory line for the Fowler receivers and give them the attention and respectthey are due. Respectfully,  Roger Ruszkowski AI4NI  P.S. I am looking at call sign options as I move fromSouth Carolina to Michigan with the FCC here after Field Day later today. It isabout time I put the AM Heath kit DX 100’s back on the air here in Michiganwith the R390A/URR for the receive side of the shack. The micro phonic tubessound awesome on the air from one transmitter that was rebuilt before I knew thatthe tube in use were not stock. I can do RTTY for the for the round up andcontest events. I like my 50 watt Ten Tec Argosy for Single sidebandoperations. I have the hill top in Mott Park a geographic high point in thecounty on the sand bar named Michigan in the Great Lake. With record high waterlevels on the Great Lakes, broken dams, drained reservoirs, and flood water Ihave never had a ground plane water level this high to work with. Sun spots aredown this year. Mother has passed, my book is published, I am over a kidneystone, on the ballot for Republican party precinct organizer, and annoyingMayor Neeley with social media comments. What do you for show and tell on FieldDay at Kettering University next to the First Robotics robots ripping up thecarpet. I wear my first place robotics team medal and grin. I have a firstplace alliance team member award for that also. My autonomous software was indemand and best of show all weekend for the first 30 seconds of a match and thestudents could drive in their time slot. I was gracious to my teammates and letthem do their own pre event check off and they got it wrong. We went on to bepart of the winning alliance. Our robot failed to show off as expected by thecrowd but we did not necessarily lose any points. Just because the robotlaunched smurf balls in the direction of the target, there is no reason tobelieve any ball will score. Not launching ten balls on autonomous and movingin closer under human control and rethinking the joy stick operation pasted sixof ten for scored points. A quick recover from an assemble error in the pit andpre event check fail is not exactly a winning performance. This was not a sixsigma performance it was just best of show that day. I do have mental problemsand it show is all of my test scores. 
Enjoy field day 2020.