[Milsurplus] [Army-Radios] CAP

[Hubert Miller]

As you suggest, i agree the U.S. gov't was more interested in pushing out surplus than in verifying that there
were actual users for it. I recall some talk about a tech junior college, the talk was that there had been donated
some surplus rig that people actually use on the air still, but at the school it was just disassembled. A whole lot
of learning in that, right ? But there was a lot on hand....

The TRC-10, the only docs i have seen about the USN program, name eludes me right now but will come to me
as soon as i send this email, in China the weather outstations used TBX  ( surprise ! ) and the collecting forwarding
stations, TBW and RBM. Oh, the name of the program was "SACO", Sino American Cooperation Organization. 
These people i think did the Philippines communications until the Army, anticipating the Philippine invasion 
date, took over the comms and set up observation stations using, i think, BC-1306 and BC-654. Some documentation
exists to establish that, not a whole lot. Besides the Army observers, before that it was a USN game with Australian
radio equipment from jungle portables, reporting stations, and long distance to Australia transmitters. 

My factory docs on the TRC-10 seem to say it was still in development, or maybe improvement, when it was just
dropped. I don't know how that squares with the number of sets out there. But it seems "moderately rare". I do
not see any real proof it was ever used for its intended purpose. Oddly enough, it is very similar to the PRC-1 radio,
BUT...the PRC-1 is much more valuable. PRC-1 only used in Europe, AFAIK, but i question if it was even used there,
altho there "seems" to be printed proof, altho that may only be in books recently published. 

There are two books on 'Coastwatchers' in the Pacific area with some radio info, otherwise pretty interesting.
There is one book on USN operations in Philippines, "You're No Good To Me Dead", which mentions some 
radios and is well worth the money. It does mention the Navy MBM radio, and the author judged it a failure. 
It also mentions, you have to guess at it, the BC-474, which was also reckoned unsuitable, probably the upper
freq limit and the non - crystal transmitter. Or, i'm thinking now, maybe it was the BC-654, but the disdain the
users felt made me think it was the more "toy" looking BC-474.  ( The 474 of SCR-288 was also rejected by 
Navy scouts - - i can't remember the name of book right now, but i will. ) 

I saw a photo of a SACO man instructing Chinese on the DAG receiver, only contemporary photo of this rec i have
ever seen. But my guess is that was a make-work assignment and the receiver was never, ever really used. It didn't
really have a role anywhere. 

TBW - RBM plus the VHF superregen rec, i think wx balloon radiosonde receiver, VHF, can be spotted by attuned
eyes in the ca. 1961 movie "Destination Gobi", which is moderately interesting, not a total waste of time. Even in
1961 i knew that spares for the TBW were not 807's, not even cold 807's in the Gobi desert. But someone close to
the screenwriters for this movie obviously knew something about SACO's wx reporting network. 

I noted a half decade ago that there was online some kind of SACO veterans organization. BUT....the window has
pretty much closed for asking for any first-hand info, of the kind that obsesses ( some of ) us now. 
-Hue Miller