The Mississippi Historical Radio and Broadcasting Society
News Letter
Our regular club meeting was held on July 10. Attendance was the best we've had in a long time - even Roosevelt showed up. Our next meeting will be August 14, at 3:00PM. Bill Gerk noted that volunteers for the "mini-show" to be held down in the Hattiesburg area early this fall have been few and far between! Planning for this activity will get real serious at this meeting, so try and make it.
The Kresge Radio Museum celebrated it's grand opening on July 23rd. We congratulate all who worked so very hard on such a great project and saw it through to completion.
Radio prices continue to go both directions at once -- Auction reports and classified ads over the past month or so show that prices for "average" radios seem to be drifting down while "special" sets and advertising items in particular seem to be drifting higher -- a curious situation indeed!
Military sets seem to have peaked and are drifting back down -- Sams, Riders, etc. are up - way up... transistors (like the TR-1) are down a bit - others are down even more (except solar powered / re-chargables - which are way up), cathedrals are at the lowest prices they've been at in a couple of years. Consoles (except the obvious like Nocturnes and Stratospheres- etc.) are cheaper'n dirt... even catalins are down a bit. Hottest in "collecting" right now? Well it appears that "antique" HiFi / Stereo is where the "serious" money is -- i.e. Marantz 10B's are going for $1200 - $1500; High-end radios / amps from McIntosh, H.H.Scott, Lincoln, McMurdo Silver and the like are worth nearly their weight in gold! Tube prices are also continuing to drift up - although prices on the "hot" list seems to be leveling off...
Radio Collecting Today
Last time we left off talking about Radios in Uniform - specifically the BC-348 portable receiver. This time we'll look at a few other sets that were very important during WWII. Armstrong had FM working pretty well by the mid 30's. He felt that the range of FM was superior to AM and that this would allow better communications on the battlefield. In 1939 Armstrong, with engineering support from GE, demonstrated FM's superiority to the Signal Corps. Further, since it is very difficult to receive FM on an AM receiver, the enemy would have a harder time intercepting messages. With FM's increased range, lower power could be used to reduce interference - FM - with it's natural immunity to static, was ideal for use in / with tanks which generated a lot of static not only from their ignition systems, but static electricity generated by the treads.
The first result of the development program was the BC-659 Transceiver. Mated with a battery power pack PE-117 it was designated the SCR-609 portable field radio. In another version, the BC-659 is mated to a vehicular power supply and is designated the SCR-610. This configuration was first delivered to tanks and field command jeeps, and later the battery operated portable version was deployed to artillery units. The SCR-610 FM Tank Radio  |
The BC-659 has 120 crystal controlled channels spaced 100KC apart covering the frequency range of 27 to 38.9 Mhz. Any two channels could be preset from the available list, and chosen by an A/B switch. The radios worked well, when set up correctly, but there was a catch. The contracts to build these radios was let to several different companies, and it seems that there was some ambiguity about how the two operational channels were setup out of the 120 available. So two radios built by different companies set the same way wound up on different frequencies - and were unable to communicate! This wasn't discovered until D-Day... and caused a lot of units to be out of communications. This confusion is noted in the Motion Picture "The Longest Day" starring just about everyone in Hollywood! The problem was found and corrected quickly, but it sure caused a lot of confusion in the first day or so of the invasion. Once correct settings were in use, the BC-659 in both versions, vehicular and battery portable worked extremely well. The tank version has been credited with one of the reasons Patton was able to move his tanks so effectively against the superior tiger tanks of the Germans.
Speaking of WWII radios, we have acquired a copy of the Signal Corps TM-22-487A Directory of Signal Corps Equipment Radio Communication Equipment Dated August 1950. It catalogs (picture description and technical specifications) all of the radio equipment in active service at that time. It covers some 126 pieces of equipment - each item covered on two pages. If you need any information, illustration, etc. for Signal Corps radios of that era -- it is a good place to start.
Next time - we'll take a look at some more sets that went to war...
News snippetts...
The AWA and ARCA have agreed to merge. The Antique Wireless Association and the Antique Radio Club of America have agreed to merge their clubs into one national organization. We are seeking details so that we can decide on chapter membership, etc. Stay tuned...
The Bunis The Collector's Guide to Antique Radios third edition is due out in September. Advance orders now being taken, and if you order from the Bunis', they will autograph it for you... $18.95
Car radios finally represented... It has been noted several times that one glaring omission from our museum display is a car radio. That is about to change. On a recent trip to Los Angelos, club president yours truly sneaked into his parents garage and retrieved the spare 1960 Cadillac radio he had stored there some 25 years ago. Dusty, and a bit of rust here and there, the old radio still works. The Signal Seeking auto-tuning mechanism needed cleaning and lubrication, but now works just fine. A suitable display (and power supply) should be ready by our next annual show. By the way -- this radio is a hybrid - five tubes and a transistor. The highest voltage in the set? 12 volts! We have long had a 12EK6 12volt (filament & plate) tube in our tube display - this radio uses a 12EK6 as the IF amplifier -- the remaining 12V line-up is 12DZ6 RF amp, 12AD6 pentagrid converter, 12DV8 dual diode / triode detector & AF amp, and a Delco DS501 (2N235A) Germanium output.
© 1994, The Mississippi Historical Radio and Broadcasting Society.
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