Great video. Neat to see what the Army had to use before cell phones. Signal Corps seems to have taken the position that we dont need HF anymore, since soldiers can just use MS Teams and WhatsApp now. It'll be neat to see how that plays out wherever our next major conflict is. It'll be fine, I'm sure my VPN will work great on that day

I was a radio operator and instructor 05B4H in 1967-8 at Fort Huachuca, AZ We still had the GRC-19s on the bench to train on. Most were needless to say old and abused. In the Spring on 1968 we finally got several new GRC-106 sets and I was task with helping set up the new lab. Interesting radio.

Nice to find your series!! USAF HF Ground Radio Operator, 1976-2000.. Worked Airways, SAC Giant Talk , Mobile Combat Comm and Global HF... Saw the beginning of ALE while at RAF Croughton in 95-96...

@wes11bravo

3 жыл бұрын

"Skyking, Skyking - do not answer. Message follows: X-ray, November, Two, Hotel, Niner, Seven, Foxtrot, Uniform, One, Six, Kilo..."

Thanks for including the 160.

Thanks this has been very insightful!

Great video. I did note that the AN/GRC-26D, the PRC-25 and PRC-77 were missing from your video. They were great radios for the time.

Very interesting history and thanks for the detailed commentary. As a Brit, I know the earlier radios and was interested to see how the later US radios developed compared with the British Larkspur and Clansman series. I'm fortunate to have some of these but now you have whetted my appetite for some US PRCs!

Sucks this series was never finished.. I'd have really liked to see episodes 8 and 9

@jstrunck

8 ай бұрын

I concur.

MOS 32H was the HF specific MOS and later combined with 31E to become 29E. I operated the KWM2A with the 30S1 in Okinawa doing phone patches to California for about 4 hours each day with a three curtain rhombic antenna. Later on I got sent to Grenada to set up and operate a portable 50KW AM station as Rangers blew up the original radio Grenada. I was tasked to get the heliax cable buried so my team took turns digging when a SF guy came out and started playing with a dipole antenna and a small manpack. I commented 468 divided by the frequency to him and he asked how do you know that? I said, we do HF also but not with little radios. Latter on, I am SF and SATCOM is making HF not used, the PRC-138 was introduced to me in a special project, it was finally the holy grail and we achieved great success with two methodologies, ALE mode and then the managed net. This was the idea of programming the radios by computer and not spending any time training on how to hand jam radios as there are too many errors.

Really informative videos; you do a very nice job getting to the point (without any unnecessary or annoying distractions); Don't get me wrong, I do like some anecdotal information on a subject, but some people get carried away with a lot of person info. that really isn't interesting - of course this is just my very humble opinion.

I visited the Coleman Quartz mine in Arkansas, they hauled thousands of loads out of there during ww2. Best prices you'll find on massive prisms

the 106 is not auto tune and still has vacuum tubes ( the thing on the bottom is the modem )

Years ago, in the early 1970's a friend of mine had one of the GRC-19 setups with a pair of car batteries in series to get the high current 24 volts to operate it. As he was just a CBer I advised him to get rid of it before he got into trouble with it. (He had a tendency to overlook legalities.) So I checked it out for him, verified functionality on my workbench, then he (thankfully) sold it for more than he paid for it. But it was built like the proverbial brick outhouse. Nice gear for the vintage. AM and CW, not SSB, so not knowing code at the time I had no interest in it as a ham. I suspect someone was soon shouting "Breakity broke one niner, don'tcha know, good buddy," etc on some frequency far removed from the Citizens Band. Some people just shouldn't have money and microphones.

Did the Army ever use the Sunair GSB-900DX?

i am dyslexic,(not stupid)this is fantastic knoledge! from 400-600km to the top of the F2, the 300/500mHz= 0.6m and this radio is 150 pounds? i will give you £200!

As a 29E, I used to work on the PRC 77 and the 106. Good info.

@pressure687

4 жыл бұрын

Now 25U :]

@3366larryandrews

Жыл бұрын

A 29E? I was a repairman and had a 31E MOS.

@billloveless6869

Жыл бұрын

@@3366larryandrews What did you work on? When did you serve? I was in from 73 to 93.

@3366larryandrews

Жыл бұрын

@@billloveless6869 Hi Bill. That's great that you were able to serve 20 years. You must have seen a lot of change in that time. I only served from 1972 to 1974. I volunteered for the draft and got lucky on my MOS. I thought they were going to make a cook of me, and changed my MOS after basic, from a Tank Turret Mechanic to a Field Radio Mechanic. My primary MOS was a Field Radio Repairman 31E20, with training at Ft. Gordon. I only made the rank of Spec4. My secondary MOS was a Field Radio Mechanic 31B20 at Ft. Knox with the 2nd Armor Div. It was providing maintenance on field radios and voice communications in tanks. As a repairman, I repaired the jeep radios RT524 in all their configurations, the AN/GRC-19 in all their configurations, the AN/GRC-26D, and AN/GRC-106A in all their configurations. I also worked the PRC25/77, radio remote control units, and whatever other needs my shop supervisor could dream up. I had a great time.

@billloveless6869

Жыл бұрын

@@3366larryandrews Wow! I started out as a 13B, cannoner and switched to radio repair after my 1st enlistment. Although I did other jobs, that was my MOS until I retired. Spent a lot of time in Germany.

The WS19 set was a British designed set - developed by Pye Radio in Cambridge, England in 1940. So, for the British Empire & Commonwealth, that WAS a WW2 radio! 113,000 were made (thus the most manufactured radio of WW2) - mainly in the UK but also by AWA in Australia as well as Northern Electric and Rogers in Canada. These radios were extensively used by Canadian, British, Australian, NZ and Indian armed forces - mainly in AFVs. At some stage 19 sets were also made by RCA, Philco and Zenith in the USA. Many of these were supplied to the USSR under Lend-Lease but, I suspect, many US made 19 sets were never issued at all. The 19 set is a compact transceiver incorporating an AM HF set, a UHF interunit short range set and the AFV crew intercom system. The whole thing with ATU, and dynamometer weighs 70lbs - about one third of the equivalent US radio. So small it is that British M3 Grant tanks - a UK purchased (not Lend-Lease) version of the M3 Lee was able to dispense with an entire crew member (the radio op) by putting the 19 set next to the turret commander.

GRC-19 "Angery 19"

My first radios, when I was 12 years old were....an SP-600, and an R-390. How? my dad was a founding member of MARS. Also had a SX-28....a little easier to spin the dial on. Back then a rack of vacuum tube equipment could produce a few thousand BTU. Later in the USN I listened and did DF on East block radios on HF plus something called "boresite" ancient history now.

🇬🇧 RSI course No. 39 Warminster 1974. Specialised with HF (Larkspur A-13) bouncing via ionosphere 2 this day, K (now skipping in California 🇺🇸) Morse Code sadly down at 17 wpm (I’m now olde) 👍

why were the spark radios banned?

@militaryhfradio244

4 жыл бұрын

Too much interference and wide bandwidth of signal. Banned since 1934 in International Law. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spark-gap_transmitter

Too bad you left out the Collins R390 and R390A.

I love military radio I have managed to collect a 1950s radiosonde for weather balloon s. And a ww2 Navy Marine ship Crystal radio calibrators and monitor. 26.000 MHz to 28 MHz .. is this a specific ship frequency? GARROD. If anybody has any recollection of this please let me know it's a garode.. ship marine and Navy ship Crystal calibrator with 11 settings I believe it has two electron tubes and it is in a box I believe the size of a small ammo can I bought it off of eBay and I'm waiting on it but it does have a small antenna and a phone jack

Regarding the Harris (L3Harris nowadays) radios you talk about....the 150 and the 117F, there are three numbers associated with these and most other similar mil tactical radios in today’s world. First, the RT designation is the crypto account title. Nuff said in this forum. Second, then you have the AN/PRC- designator. That one can be quite complex. It is assigned by the US military, not the manufacture. And, in simplistic terms, it designates a “system”. Not necessarily the green radio device you are looking at. For example, the AN/PRC-117F designation consists of the green radio itself, PLUS a bag of accessories (instructions, pork-chop mic, battery box..but NOT a battery and charger as those are separate, antenna...etc). It seems that everybody has branded the green radio itself as the AN/PRC- number...but that is usually, technically incorrect. It is true that for some other tactical radios assigned an AN/PRC- (or similar) designator, it may be that the AN/PRC- number consists of only the radio itself. But NOT so for the AN/PRC-117F, which equals the radio AND a “bag of stuff”. In fact, no matter how hard you try, you will NOT see AN/PRC-117F printed or engraved anywhere on that green radio (unless done so by the mil or GOVT unit/owner). And finally, the third number usually assigned to a radio is the manufacture company assigned catalog or part number. I’m not suggesting that you don’t know this info...In fact maybe everybody knows about this. 73 es Cheers!

No, no! 'Higher power' was not some 'military advance' in WW2. Civilian broadcast stations had been using multi-kilowatt transmitters since the 1920s. The SCR-299 (399/499) is simply NOT comparable with lightweight portable sets like WS19 and SCR-245. The 299 series require truck transport (plus mighty gasoline genrators) - they were never used in AFVs or in front line tactical units and - to the end of WW2, no airborne version of the 299 existed. It was simply too large for glider transport. At best, the SCR-299 was deployed at Divisional rear HQ - like the British WS12HP (100 watts). The most powerful portable radio in the WW2 European theatre was the British 1.5kW 'Golden Arrow' unit which required 11 trucks to transport it and was used at Field Army/Army Group level.