Military Collector Group Post, Oct.30/97 Index: Gulf War Radios; BASIC JAPANESE RADIO COLLECTION PART II; By Bill Howard WHATSIT? More Inverter Design Discussion; Group Project Left Overs; HUMOR; I even chuckled at this one, just a little! *********************************************************** Gulf War Radios; Bill Howard & myself are in the process of co-authoring a artical on captured Iraqi equipment brought home as trouphies by our troops from Desert Storm. Though several have been well documented so far, we need additional information on others you may have seen or have. Please send me all the info you got , to include if possible how it was captured & by whom. Thanks, Dennis *********************************************************** BASIC JAPANESE RADIO COLLECTION PART II; In part 1, I described briefly some of the more common grouind radios and a few of the air craft radios. For anyone who is planning on collecting these sets or restoring them to an operational status should first get several important reference works. The basic reference book is a copy of the WW II TM E 11-227 A Japanese Radio Comminication Equipment, issued in Dec 1944 by the war Department. This TM covers all the radios that had been captured and reported on that allied troops were likely to encounter. It shows a picture of the radio and sometimes the complete station. It also provides some details on the set and from the picture and the tube lineup you can usually determine what you have gotten. There is a British equavilent to the above series TMs. Part A covers German radios, Part B covers Italian and Part C covers Japanese sets. These do not give as much detail as the US TM's but they do have a section that explains how to translate data plates, control marking and other Japanese radio terms. This is very useful and most collectors have a copy. The entire series cost $70.00 and is not worth it. TM 30 - 485 was another technical manual put out by the War Department in May of 1943. Titled, JAPANESE-ENGLISH GLOSSARY TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION TERMS. This is difficult to read or use unless you know Japanese . If you find a copy, pick it up. you will find it is useful as you gain experience in translating Japanese. If you can find a local Japanese translator, this will ease his/her task considerably. Most of the more commonly encountered radios, that could be utilized by U.S. personnel became the subject of a technical bulletin. These TB s are a must have item if you are going to work on a set. Thus far, there are two of these TBs floating around and copies usually are sold for about $20 to $25 dollars. More of these have been located and work is underway to obtain copies. Thus far TBs on the Type 94-5 Station and the Type 94-6 set are in existance. Both of these sets have been written about and have had articles published. Dick rollema wrote an article on the Type 94-6 and Ken Lakin has written two articles on the Type 94-5 transmitter and the receiver. He has both sets operational. Ken?s receiver was a major restoration case but he did it and it came out very well. The last major military publication of WW II on Japanese equipment was TME 30 - 480, ?HANDBOOK ON JAPANESE MILITARY FORCES? This covers all aspects of the Japanese Military from Artillery to communication equipment, tanks, and tactics. It was re printed in the 1970's and sold for about $25.00 per copy. Many items not shown elsewhere are shown in this manual. If a copy can be found, make copies of the section on communication equipment if you can not buy the entire book. There is a post war book on Japanese radios as well as other radios done in the 1970s. The text was in Japanese but the pictures will enable you to identify many of the aircraft radios that you may encounter. Once you have identified the set, you can work on the text. There are a series of books done on various aircraft that show the different radios.. It is possible by looking through them to identify a particular component. These books may surface at aviation, book, or gun shows. Since they deal with air craft, they seldom show up at radio related swap meets. In addition to the above books, there are numerous books on the war in the Pacific and they may contain pictures of the various radios in use. Shigeo Sugawa of New York has published several excellent books which show Japanese radios but alas the text is in Japanese. The best book for this type of reference work is a large coffee table book titled, Pearl harbor and the War in the Pacific. It has one page devoted to color pictures of Japanese communication gear. It has an excellent picture of the Type 94 -3A wireless set in the transport Chest. In the next part we will discuss some of the details of where these sets can be found. and a brief discussion of the more common sets. William L. Howard THE WILLIAM L. HOWARD ORDNANCE TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE MUSEUM e-mail wlhoward@gte.net Telephone AC 813 585-7756 *********************************************************** WHATSIT? DENNIS: A guy I know with military ties gave me a "Rubber Duck" Antenna, 9" tall and it has a "BLUE" band around the base that is marked " 145 MHz ". 3/8 threaded stud that is also internally threaded (about 1/8th.) WHATS it For? PasqualeNJ@AOL.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pat, It's probably not 3/8" is most likely 7/16 x 32thrd & is a very common standard type used on many Motorola HT's like MT-500 & HT-200,220,MH-70 also others. It could have been used on many of the late 60's to mid 80's Motorola's, Repco's, Ham 2mtr sets, as well as the PRC-91 or 94 family of radios. Dennis *********************************************************** More Inverter Design Discussion; Dennis: I etched the first board for the 12 to 24 project, will probably build it within a week or so. That thing has sucked up more time than I thought....... Jim K. wants me to do a BC-611 supply next. I'm going to try to do a design that will use two or three D cells, you are right all along in that lower input voltage converters are better as you need few batteries and space is limited. I have two versions in mind- a tiny one (50 mA) thats adjustable 90-105 V with a tap for 1/2 voltage for things like CPRC-26, PRC-6, BC-611, and a bigger 90-135V unit that will do at least 100 mA for things like PRC-10's. A "kit" possibility..... I was over at Jim K's house on Monday, and we fixed my PRC-74. Had bad 6 MHz band, and the antenna tuner meter crapped out. He has a bunch of '74 parts. One way or another, I'm hoping to ttade him out of enough parts to build up a PRC-70 from his scrap heap- It may take a while, and it ain't gonna be pretty, but I think I can be done. Hope your enjoying your new house. I will be in St. Louis on a biz trip Nov 13 and 14, and might be going to the Blues-Red Wings hockey game on Sat the 15. How long of a drive is it to your place from St. Louis? Mark ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark, About time you woke up. Regard two sizes of inverter supplies, there is no need to build two completely different supplies, one will do the job of all our portable types with an adjustment of the primary voltage source. You can fit four "D" cells in the normal heater battery location on the BC-611, though the plunger will need to be removed(small sacrifice). If a four "D" cell end stacked battery is made for this radio, we will have the added advantage of being able to use the same battery pack in the PRC-6, & two of them in the PRC-10, thus we have further expanded on our attempts at a universal supply. At worst it might be advisable to have the same supply using a common circuit ,board & transformer, but with different windings on the transformer. At all cost the goal should be on the universal nature of the supply, lest it be re-designed for each application(sure as shit don't wanna do that!) I presently only use one design for ALL the portable radios of interest, it is the same for each radio it's installed in, the only difference in each is the DC supply voltage. The only draw back of mine is that it uses 44(for up to 70v) & 88(for up to 135v) mh toroids that can no longer be found with any regularity. Also as this circuit uses the original windings as the secondary, it is impossible to get other voltages like heaters, & bias. The only thing that is hand wound on these are the primary & feedback windings. The completed transformer is only about 1.5"x .5",& the completed supply can be put in a box 1.5 x 1.5 x 2" with ample room left over for such things as bias batteries etc. My point in telling all this is to show that even with a supply of this simple nature, & limited utility,we can still do all the things we need to do, just not as easily. The same battery pack is used in all my radios with the exception of the BC-611. Four "D" cell nicads are included in a cardboard package made from a cereal box turned inside out, & all the flaps glued with a hot glue gun. The cells are arranged so that there are 2 pair/side by side. This setup can be used in the CPRC-26,PRC-6, & 3 packs are used in my PRC-25. Thus I need not carry around a box full of different batteries to operated the various radios in hand. The biggest problem we will be faced with in the case of the BC-611 is power on/off switching without modifieing the radio. In mine, a piece of double sided PC board was used between the battery & the radios normal contact. Between the copper sides of the board is wired a small 5v really that turns on the inverter when the radio is switched on normally. The coil of this really just happened to be of the correct resistance to also act as a ballast resistor for the heaters, so fat chance of repeating this circuit again. P.S. I like the KIT form idea, Build me a PRC-70 while your at it, & I'm a four hour drive from St.Louis. Dennis ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dennis: Those 88 mH inductors sure were handy..... I'm gonna work on a 4 D cell supply for the BC-611s that Jim and I have, then see what happens as far as a kit after I have something working. Probably something like a 1x3 PCB with a TO-220 fet hanging off one end will do it size wise. Mark ****************************************************** Group Project Left Overs; >From the PRC-47 group project, we have the following left overs, Lots of Whip antennas with their canvas bags, $15.00ea 3ea PRC-47's, these are complete radios, they may even work, but for the most part they look like shit. As nobody seems to need any parts from them, & I have a serious storage problem, they can be had for $55.00 ea. Dennis ******************************************************* HUMOR; > Did you hear about the New 3 Million Dollar Arkansas State Lottery? > 3 dollars a year for a million years. > > Why do Arkansans go to the movie theater in groups of 18 or more? > Nobody admitted 17 and under. > > What do you get when you have 32 Arkansans in the same room? > A full set of teeth. > > Why did OJ Simpson want to move to Arkansas? > Everyone has the same DNA. > > Two Arkansans are walking down different ends of a street toward > each other and one is carrying a sack. When they meet, one > Arkansan says, "Hey Tommy Ray, what'cha got in th' bag?" > "Jus' some chickens." > "If I guess how many there are, can I have one?" > "I'll give you both of them." > "OK. Umm, five?" > > An Arkansan came home and found his house on fire, rushed next > door, telephoned the fire department and shouted, "Hurry over here, > my house is on fire!" > "OK," replied the fireman, "how do we get there?" > "Say, don't you still have those big red trucks?" > > An Arkansan hitchhiker was picked up by a guy in a big Lincoln > Continental. The Arkansan noticed a bunch of golf tees on the front > seat and asked, "What are those things for?" > The driver said, "They hold my balls when I drive." > "Boy," exclaimed the Arkansan, "these Lincolns have everything, > don't they?" > > Did you hear that the governor's mansion in Arkansas burned down? > Almost took out the whole trailer park. When finished reading use browser back button or go to http://www.prc68.com/MCGP/MCGP.html