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Tank radios v aircraft radios...


Jack

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I may be stupid but....

 

 

Would radios used in WW11 tanks be the same as radios used in aircraft and/or land based vehicles?

 

The reason that I ask is that I have been offered a collection of WW11 radios that are reputed to come from armoured vehicles from the Battle of the Bulge...and the armoured vehicles aren't American.

 

Personally I think they belong in a museum so may be that is the direction I will point this offer in.

 

Kind regards,

 

Jack.

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Post puicces! Then we can really go to town. :-D If the Bodgedodge was an airfeild unit it wouild at least have a method of monitoring the aircraft surley? I don't know if ground control vehicles would actually be able to talk to the aircraft directly though. for some reason, at least on Dackotas, 48 volt and 120 volt DC are coming to mind.

Edited by Tony B
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Military inter-vehicle communication tends to be in the military HF and military VHF bands for practical reasons, namely balancing range and clarity. With an HF radio and the right antenna, you can talk to anyone anywhere in the world if the atmospheric conditions are right. VHF sacrifices range for clarity and also enables digitisation. I suspect submarines using ULF (ultra-low frequency) can databurst at extremely low frequency, but their technology is a lot more sophisticated, having more space and power and a less damaging working environment.

 

Aircraft and ground stations talking to aircraft tend to use the military UHF band. As a recce regiment Command Troop signals NCO, I had stored away a LArkspur (pre-Clansman) manpack intended to allow the FOO to talk to FGA. If there had been anybody else in the battlegroup with such a radio, its surface-to-surface range was only a couple of miles, rising to many tens of miles when talking to aircraft at increasingly high altitude.

 

Note that attack helicopters which are Army assets work on military VHF to be able to communicate with ground assets.

 

If you had a C13, you'd see that it gave military HF band coverage between 1.5 and 30MHz.

C42 gave military VHF band coverage between 36 and 60MHz.

 

This manpack (whose designation I forget) gave coverage of the military UHF band somewhere between about 240 and 360MHz - but it was a long time ago and we never used it in anger.

 

Clansman gave slightly better coverage (including closer channel spacing) particularly in VHF which ISTR was 30 - 76MHz.

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'tis all in the band then? I know VHF is line of sight, so you can talk to the moon but not round the corner. HF and MF are the ones that bounce of the layer aren't they? There is a fair amount on the web about ELF Extra Low Frequency, that can penetrate to submerged subs, it annoys the tree huggers as it allegedly frys birds and the antenna length is measured in miles. didn't some aircraft sets use HF with atrailing antenna? Baylee Air Charter Apaches had them. The ariel was on a reel streamed from the lowest point of the tail. Better make clear, Piper Apache fixed wign aircraft.

Edited by Tony B
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<snipped>

I suspect submarines using ULF (ultra-low frequency) can databurst at extremely low frequency, but their technology is a lot more sophisticated, having more space and power and a less damaging working environment.

<snipped>.

 

Nuclear subs use ELF transmissions to keep abreast of the day to day situation. Each sub has a specific time slot to approach to reception depth (300m is the max depth an ELF signal can reach in high salinity water) to receive the signal. ELF works in the range 76 to 82 Hz - NATO uses the 76 Hz band whilst the Soviet Union uses (used?) the 82 Hz one. To use the Soviet band then 82 Hz - or 0.000082 MHz equals a wavelength of 3658536.5 metres or 3658.5 km ) This is a massive length -but there is a neat trick of physics which allows the Earth itself to be used as the antenna. All thats needed is a pair of 60 Km long feeders. The down-side of the system is that data transmission rates are VERY slow - this is not a vo-com system at all, merely data. As such ELF transmissions tend be of the sort "Alls OK" or "Contact Base" - and either would take about 15 minutes to receive and decode. The alternative method is for the transmitting station to send a continuous "Alls Well" signal - any break in this triggers a series of actions for the receiving submarine that could be highly unpleasant for someone...

When I was digging into this back in the Nineties there was talk of another, allied, system known as HAARP which used the ionesphere as the antenna and worked as low as 2.xx Hz - I would assume by now it's a reality???

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The big problem with ELF, the antenna efficency is poor. I think it's less that 1%, at best. So a 1000 watt transmitter, means an effective power of 10 watts! And like you say, it's v-e-r-y s-l-o-w.

 

Interesting subject though...

Funny thing - literally -is what picqued my curiosity was hearing two Navy types talking about ELF whilst at a Portsmouth Open Day.. Proves the old WW2 posters about "Careless Talk" were absolutely right!! :):)

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

While at the Nuenen engine rally in Holland a week ago, we were approached by a restorer from the Wings of Liberation Museum, located at Best, near Eindhoven.

 

He wanted to buy some of our WWII generators for their display.

 

We ended up doing a deal that we were all happy with, and we also donated an extra power unit for spares to go with the three they bought.

 

On the Monday evening, we delivered the generators and engines to the museum, and had a great hour or so in their radio room, full of restored and working WWII radio gear from Russia, Germany, UK and USA, plus some other eastern bloc countries.

 

Jan Hulleman is always looking out for equipment for the museum, so if anything is available, big or small, we can help with transport as we go to the Nuenen show every year.

 

I am just compiling a few menu pages of pictures of the radio room, hope to have them up on the websites in a day or so.

 

http://www.wingsofliberation.nl

 

Peter

Edited by listerdiesel
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Jan Hulleman of the Museum has sent by regular post some extra pictures, including a compendium of Russian radios, a Russian spy base station and a U-Boat receiver.

 

They are tacked onto the end of Menu Page 8 on both sites.

 

He has also asked for any help with obtaining the following:

 

WS No 12 (We have a WS12 Generator that we will be donating to the museum)

WS No 33

 

Rotary Converters for T1154 and R1155 Transmitter/Receiver

 

Any Lancaster/Spitfire radio gear (They already have a bit of such kit)

 

Any leads/asistance would be welcome.

 

Many thanks,

 

Peter

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  • 5 months later...

The main difference, apart from frequency bands, between tank and aircraft radios, is that the ones fitted to tanks had the control panel on them, whilst aircrfat radios were usually fitted in an avionics bay (something to do with trim). The controls came up on a small control panel in the cockpit. Try fitting a 19 set in a Spitfire cockpit!

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