On May 1, 1:43�pm, John from Detroit wrote:
K�HB wrote:

Better in what way?

Better in that it's more advanced..

At the risk of echoing K0HB: More advanced in what way?

Several years ago (about 30) I was
chatting with a ham who had just finished his hitch in the military, He
commented on being ask to check out some equeptment
since he was a
certified electronics tech both in civilian life and military life.

At the time they were still using HT-200's (I
do admit the 200 is more solid (durable) than the 220)

Is an HT-220 really that much more advanced than an HT-200?

I watched his dad bounce a 200 off the pavement.
.....
The radio continued to work.

In a lot of situations - and not just military ones - that it
continued to work is a lot more important than how advanced the radio
is.

I think the main point is that how "good" or "advanced" a rig is
depends in large part on the application, and judging military radio
stuff by amateur standards - or the reverse - is an apples-and-oranges
thing.

For example, the R-390 and R-390A were designed way back in the early
1950s, and one of the requirements was a digital frequency readout. A
lot of mechanical complexity went into producing a system where you
could just look at one set of numbers and know exactly (well, within a
couple of hundred Hz) where the receiver was tuned. No interpretation
needed. Such a feature would not appear in manufactured ham rigs until
the 1960s (National NCX-5) and wouldn't become common in ham rigs
until the 1980s.

Or consider the R-1051 receivers, which used a row of knobs to set
each digit of the frequency, rather than a single large knob. That
kind of frequency control became common in military HF sets but not in
ham gear, because the operating environments are so different.

The T2FD resistively-loaded antenna is another example.

the amplifier or transmistter was a common Ham
unit with a new paint job and military style knobs.

Several pieces of gear, Henry, Collins, Drake and more,
came in civilian and military versions. The only difference
was the olive drab paint and the military style knobs and
an "A" for Army (or some other designator
to indicate the cosmetic differences)

As recently as Viet Nam they were still using ham gear
in the Military. Good Solid KWM-2's in fact

In some roles, yes. But not in all roles. I suspect that the use
of ham gear in military applications came about only when nothing else
was available at the time.

Remember too that a lot of ham gear and components (such as the PTOs
developed by Collins) were originally developed for military
applications and then used for ham stuff.

Plus US military involvement in Viet Nam ended at least 35 years
ago. A lot has changed since then.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On May 1, 10:43�am, John from Detroit wrote:
K�HB wrote:
"John from Detroit" wrote in message
...

So he called back to the states.... �Direct to the President and
founder
of Henry Radio.. yes, the amplifier or transmistter was a common Ham
unit with a new paint job and military style knobs.

Several pieces of gear, Henry, Collins, Drake and more, came in civilian
and military versions. The only difference was the olive drab paint and
the military style knobs and an "A" for Army (or some other designator
to indicate the cosmetic differences)

As recently as Viet Nam they were still using ham gear in the Military.
� Good Solid KWM-2's in fact

The Collins KWM-2 (all-frequency-band maritime version) was used for
MARS under the AN/FRC-93 designation through the Vietnam War. No
change in color or knobs or much of anything else. For reference, see
TM 11-5820-554-12 for the "set-up-and-operate" TM. This is essentially
the Collins document under DoD wrapper. Date of TM is June 1976.

There have been a great number of civilian fixed station equipments that
have been designated as "military" (by the addition of a sticker/label)
as far back as 1953 without any special tests, physical or
electronic, without any changes or additions in appearance. None of
these were intended for field use up to about 1980 or so, therefore they
would not have undergone full environmental testing. Consider them
"COTS" (Commercial Off-The- Shelf) equipments as described by Hans.

Those of us who have served in the USA military usually
define "military" as those equipments which have gone through full
environmental testing and are used in the field or afloat. MARS is not
normally part of the standard tactical communications used by the
military even though such equipment may have military or NSN (National
Stock Number) designations for procurement purposes.

73, Len K6LHA

From: N2EY
Date: Sun, 2 May 2010 12:31:56 EDT
Subject: What makes a real ham

On Apr 29, 6:01 pm, K0HB wrote:

MIL-STD 810 related to shock, vibration, salt spray, etc.
It is unrelated to any "performance" criteria.

IOW, it's an environmental specification, not a radio-performance
one.

I followed the links provided by K3FU and noticed that in each
description the rigs were only said to meet the shock and vibration
requirements of MIL-STD 810, not the entire specification. The
description also didn't mention which version(s) were used. IMHO those
are important points.

TEMPERATURE, both ambient and internal is an important factor. We
can't do the "wait a half hour" or "20 minutes" for the radio to warm
up. Radios don't get to sit in "room temperature" environments during
emergencies. [recall the 1928 "Amateur's Code" and the imperatives of
being ready for "emergency communications"]

Full water immersion for a specified period is a NEEDED specification
for an HT to perform in an emergency such as flood or torrential rain.
Operating mobile or pedestrian (with a manpack radio) has its own
needs for shock and vibration. Mobile installations aren't always
nice and plush with comfy seats for radios. Saying a pedestrian
station remains cushioned by the wearer ignores the fact that the
manpack wearer can fall down in rugged terrain.

Meeting the shock and vibration requirements is a matter of mechanical
design.

At first. That's when the designer first begins to "lay lead." What
comes next is the prototype which is (or should be) tried out in the
field or afloat...and (probably) several iterations of trying a fix
and
seeing how that performs. Sometimes that is easy, sometimes it is
difficult.

Meeting requirements such as salt spray, temperature and
humidity extremes, high altitude, water immersion, etc., is a
completely different game because each and every component must either
meet the specification or be protected from the environment.

A generalized statement like that indicates no experience with adverse
environments. One can "perform" like a champ at room temperature in a
residence environment but try it below freezing or in a vehicle that
has been in +118 degrees F all day (interior is MUCH hotter). I've
been
in both environments more than once and don't care to do it again, but
if there IS a need to have a radio perform, then I've had some
experience
in making them do just that.

Components that meet the spec are more expensive and fewer, while
protecting from the environment is complex and often impractical for
size/weight/cost reasons

If so there wouldn't be an aircraft able to fly today, nor with the
radios that enable comm and nav functions to tell pilots where they
are. That's been done for over 65 years now. Read some ARINC specs
and, especially, meetings minutes about their standards to get a
fuller picture.
Or, you do another thing I've done: work in an environmental test lab
and DO the testing...plus sweeping up the pieces of those designs
that failed testing. shrug

73, Len K6LHA

In a discussion of MIL-STD 810

K6LHA wrote:

A generalized statement like that indicates no experience with adverse
environments. One can "perform" like a champ at room temperature in a
residence environment but try it below freezing or in a vehicle that
has been in +118 degrees F all day (interior is MUCH hotter). I've
been
in both environments more than once and don't care to do it again, but
if there IS a need to have a radio perform, then I've had some
experience
in making them do just that.



Well, I've been out and about when the temps read -40 (your choice of F
or C) and I've been in cars where 118 (F) would have been "Cooling off"
and in both cases my ham radio hardware was working just fine

Though I do admit at -40 the car itself failed

And I put the transciever INSIDE my coat)(At least one of them, I was
"layered" that day since I was working parking lot detail) only the
Plantronics mic voice pick up tube was fully exposed, the mice itself
was under my hat

N2EY wrote:

In a lot of situations - and not just military ones - that it
continued to work is a lot more important than how advanced the radio
is.

I think the main point is that how "good" or "advanced" a rig is
depends in large part on the application, and judging military radio
stuff by amateur standards - or the reverse - is an apples-and-oranges
thing.

I think, here, we are starting to reach the same page, we may be viewing
it differently but we are, at least, viewing the same page.

I agree, Ruggedness (Continuing to work under adverse conditions) beats
"Advanced" in many cases and generally in most all military cases.

Fiction story: IN a Star Trek book some rick kid is putting down the
comm gear on the Enterprise till Uhura explains why the older clunkier
and easier to fix hardware beats the heck out of his little one chip
hyper-intergrated circuit radio. (Of course she's fixing it at the time)

Fact.. That is very true. something that can be "Field fixed" is better
than a "Toss it in the trash and break out a new one" epically if you
have a parts store but no complete new box




For example, the R-390 and R-390A were designed way back in the early
1950s, and one of the requirements was a digital frequency readout. A
lot of mechanical complexity went into producing a system where you
could just look at one set of numbers and know exactly (well, within a
couple of hundred Hz) where the receiver was tuned. No interpretation
needed. Such a feature would not appear in manufactured ham rigs until
the 1960s (National NCX-5) and wouldn't become common in ham rigs
until the 1980s.

I recall some digital readout hardware much earlier.. But then,,, When
you think about it. after WWII many hams used government surplus
hardware. So the Military stuff, BECAME the ham stuff.. Alas, modern
military rules kind of make that hard to do since they "De-militarize"
so much stuff.

Or consider the R-1051 receivers, which used a row of knobs to set
each digit of the frequency, rather than a single large knob. That
kind of frequency control became common in military HF sets but not in
ham gear, because the operating environments are so different.

Gee... I have a 2-meter rig in my motor home (Currently set to 146.52)
that is 30 years old and which you set the frequency by a row of dials
(Knobs turned sideways) just like you describe. It's 100% ham. The
Wilson WE-800 Revision 3 (3rd production run) and I might add, it had
operated from -40 to well over 120 degrees. F

In a discussion of MIL-STD 810:

I guess the real point here about various standards and with
regards to anecdotal stories about "Well this did..."

The bottom line on buying hardware for adverse conditions is
whether or not the manufacture is willing to say that it
"Absolutely and without fail will work under the following
conditions."

As opposed to specifying a narrow range and if works out side
of that, well, fine.

Also, remember, advertising is based on the perception by
marketing as to who the potential buyer is.

If there was a "MIL-STD-xxx" specifying that a piece of
equipment should be shiny and have lots of buttons, they'd
be pushing that too.

Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi

K6LHA wrote:

There have been a great number of civilian fixed station equipments that
have been designated as "military" (by the addition of a sticker/label)
as far back as 1953 without any special tests, physical or
electronic, without any changes or additions in appearance. None of
these were intended for field use up to about 1980 or so, therefore they
would not have undergone full environmental testing. Consider them
"COTS" (Commercial Off-The- Shelf) equipments as described by Hans.

Let me put it this way.

If you are going to design a product for the military, (And you must
admit military contracts are the "800 pound gorillas" in the business).
And by simply tweaking a tuning slug it will work as well on the ham
bands.. and the device is not "Classified" in and of itself.

Why not market to hams as well?

Now, I do admit that the military has some classified stuff that I'll
likely never set eyes on.. But then one of the reasons I know they were
using KWM-2a's in Viet Nam is a ham who returned from there, tears in
his eyes, telling of how a fairly large number of said radios were
"De-Militarized" (Trust me folks, you don't want to know) Perfectly
good ham radios were being totaly reduced to their atoms because they
were part,, Mind you just part, of a classified communications system.

Never mind that they were a part you could buy over the counter at Ham
Radio Outlet.. they were still part of a classified system so they were
blown up, drilled, shot, flamed, run over with tanks and otherwise
redced to powder.

A total waste of thousands of dollars worth of hardware that could have
been sold, without danger of compromising the classified system at all
since this was just a part.

I mean.. I'm sure that somewhere in that system was a 5 amp AGC-3 size
fuse... How would re-selling that part comprimise the entire system (it
was, at the time, a common car part)

On May 3, 7:52 am, K6LHA wrote:

some snippage

Meeting requirements such as salt spray, temperature and
humidity extremes, high altitude, water immersion, etc., is a
completely different game because each and every component must either
meet the specification or be protected from the environment.

A generalized statement like that indicates no experience with adverse
environments. One can "perform" like a champ at room temperature in a
residence environment but try it below freezing or in a vehicle that
has been in +118 degrees F all day (interior is MUCH hotter).

I haven't been involved in Mil spec testing. I was involved in Cable
Television testing, in which we cycled between extreme temps - don't
remember the exact temps, so I just used "extreme". We did immersion
tests in salt and fresh water. We did vibration testing. Neat device,
it was a sort of mini-system, we sent signals through it, and tried to
run to failure. Shake and Bake, we called it. After a month or so
without a failure, we'd give up. Some equipment was used by the Navy,
so the testing method must have meant something. note, we tested all
the models this way.

Personally, I wouldn't pay for a completely mil spec tested HT or
other Ham equipment. Even for emergency use, I wouldn't. There could
be some argument there, but we're Hams, and not soldiers in this
context. I have a FT-50 that has passed vibration and water testing
both model wise and by personal experience.

It's gone in the drink a couple times, and been dropped several more.
I'm embarrassed to admit that it spent a very wet weekend on the roof
of my SUV, I only discovered that sad fact when it fell off and
bounced a few times in my driveway. I picked it up, dried it off with
a towel, and mashed the power button. Didn't miss a beat.

So while mil-spec testing is great if the equipment needs it, I have
no trouble at all with accepting - and paying for - equipment that is
tested to a level of ruggedness more in line with Amateur needs.

On May 3, 9:00�am, John from Detroit wrote:
N2EY wrote:
I think the main point is that how "good" or "advanced" a rig is
depends in large part on the application, and judging military
radio stuff by amateur standards - or the reverse - is
an apples-and-oranges thing.

I think, here, we are starting to reach the same page,
we may be viewing
it differently but we are, at least, viewing the same page.

I agree, Ruggedness (Continuing to work
under adverse conditions) beats
"Advanced" in many cases and generally in most
all military cases.

And not just military cases.

Fiction story: IN a Star Trek book some rick kid is
putting down the
comm gear on the Enterprise till Uhura explains
why the older clunkier
and easier to fix hardware beats the heck out of
his little one chip
hyper-intergrated circuit radio. �(Of course she's
fixing it at the time)

As Scotty used to say, the more complicated you make the plumbing, the
easier it is to stop up the drain.

Fact.. That is very true. something that can
be "Field fixed" is better
than a "Toss it in the trash and break out a new one"
epically if you
have a parts store but no complete new box

Yes and no. In some situations the time and resources it takes to fix
something is more than the resource-cost to have a spare new box.

Again, it all depends on the situation. And on what we consider
"fixable" and "a component".

For example, for about 10 years I've been assembling my own PCs from
pieces of old ones. (The machine this was written on was built just
that way). I've also fixed many PCs with hardware problems using parts
from the boneyard.

But in practically all repair and assembly situations involving PCs,
the "components" are drives, motherboards, memory sticks, video cards,
etc. Such components aren't usually repaired if they fail, they are
simply replaced, because the replacements are available and
inexpensive (often free).

For example, the R-390 and R-390A were
designed way back in the early
1950s, and one of the requirements
was a digital frequency readout. A
lot of mechanical complexity went into
producing a system where you
could just look at one set of numbers
and know exactly (well, within a
couple of hundred Hz) where the receiver was
tuned. No interpretation
needed. Such a feature would not appear
in manufactured ham rigs until
the 1960s (National NCX-5) and wouldn't
become common in ham rigs
until the 1980s.

I recall some digital readout hardware much earlier..

Can you give some examples in radio equipment?

But then,,, When
you think about it. after WWII many hams used
government surplus
hardware. �So the Military stuff, �BECAME the ham stuff..
Alas, modern
military rules kind of make that hard to do since they
"De-militarize"
so much stuff.

I still have working WW2 surplus radio stuff. Like my $2
BC-342-N, built by Farnsworth Radio and Television...

The reason hams used surplus stuff was that it was inexpensive.
The reason it was inexpensive was the sudden end to WW2 in
late summer 1945.

Military hardware of all kinds was being manufactured and
stockpiled in great quantities for the invasion of Japan. When
the war ended suddenly, those stockpiles became surplus.

Note that much of that surplus required modification to be useful
to hams. Some of it was only really useful if torn down for the parts.

Those mods don't mean the original design was faulty. They
simply mean the application was different. For example, my
BC-342-N had its sensitivity improved by changing the values
of the cathode and screen resistors of the RF and IF stages. The
original design used different values because they were more
concerned with dynamic range than sensitivity.

Or consider the R-1051 receivers, which used a
row of knobs to set
each digit of the frequency, rather than a single
large knob. That
kind of frequency control became common in military
HF sets but not in
ham gear, because the operating environments are so different.

Gee... I have a 2-meter rig in my
motor home (Currently set to 146.52)
that is 30 years old and which you set
the frequency by a row of dials
(Knobs turned sideways) just like you describe.
�It's 100% ham.

And I have a 1977 vintage HW-2036 2 meter rig that is similar.

But they are not HF rigs; they're 2 meter FM rigs. The R-1051 family
are HF receivers, and date from the early 1960s.

The point is that the military application required a receiver that
could be set to a known frequency with great accuracy, not the
ability to smoothly tune through the spectrum looking for signals.

The
Wilson WE-800 Revision 3 (3rd production run) and I might add, it had o
perated from -40 to well over 120 degrees. F

You've got me beat there!

The coldest I've ever personally experienced was -36 degrees F. (Yes I
was outside working in it).

The hottest was about 110 degrees F

73 de Jim, N2EY

N2EY wrote:
WA8YXM said:
The
Wilson WE-800 Revision 3 (3rd production run) and I might add, it had o
perated from -40 to well over 120 degrees. F

You've got me beat there!

The coldest I've ever personally experienced was -36 degrees F. (Yes I
was outside working in it).

The hottest was about 110 degrees F

73 de Jim, N2EY


Well, I clipped a lot: You ask for examples of earlier digital readout
(pre-1980) stiff, and then agreed that many hams used Surplus Military
hardware.. Likely the digital stuff I saw was ex-military. It has been
like 40 years since I saw it so I can't recall much.

Now,, the -40.. I had parking lot detail at a swap fest
The 120+ was the temp recorded inside a car. facing NORTH, in Michigan,
IN JANUARY of all months. Imagine what it hit in August?

The only time the radio did not work properly was when the battery
voltage went low. Then it would would not receive properly till the
voltage came up a bit.