Project update January 16th, 2003:
Please check your name against the enclosed master
spreadsheet
which was posted to the armyradios files area on October 28th..
If you had placed an order, and your name is not on this list,
please email me.
Project update September 20th, 2002:
There is now a downloadable
order form that will be used for
consolidating all crystal orders by members of the
armyradios mailing list. The actual order will be placed with
MH Crystal Company from a friend of mine in Rolla Missouri,
who is consolidating this project for us..
The channel plan is listed at the bottom of this page..
The first photo below is from a set that I recently
put on the air.
this is a set in which I had just finished wiring up some 12AH
gellcel battery packs: This photo was taken on
May 23rd, 2002:
Now get this:
I had the radio on the living room table, and
decided to cut two 30 foot
lengths of wire for a dipole antenna in order to just listen to stuff
for a
while on 40 meters.. the rig was on 7037 KHz.. The 30 foot wires were
run across the floor of the house, with one end down the hallway, and
the
other end out the front door and out on the ground..
So I decide, like an idiot, to call a few CQ's from
my location near
San Jose, and Gregg, KD6LME answered me from Arcata, about
200 miles away.. and gave me a 559 report with slight QSB
This was at 10PM this evening..
Not even with all my years of fooling around with
NVIS, and stealthy radio
antennas, would I have believed this was going to work on 40 meters
at 10PM at night. we yakked for about 40 minutes, with me
staring at
this set, in a canvas bag, with one of the 12AH batteries
hooked up and
planted in the bottom .. even have room for a set of headphones, and
a
telegraph key...
Amazing that the receivers in these sets only draw
20MA .. !!!
Wow .. this is going to end up being really fun
once several of us
get these things crystalled up!!
Below are a couple of photos of an AN/TRC77. At one time I had
three of these units which I had purchased from Fair Radio Sales,
<http://www.fairradio.com>
back in the early 1980's.
These units have all solid-state receivers with Collins mechanical
filters
and the units cover from 2.0 to 8.0 MHz. As I understand it, they
were
created during the Vietnam conflict and were for LRRP operations,
utilizing CW. The TRC77's are compatible with the AN/GRA71 code-burst
keyer unit for 300 wpm morse message transmission.
The photo below is a bit old, however I ran across it
while doing some house-cleanup. This radio is NOT to be
confused with the AN/PRC77 which is a tactical-FM voice
radio.
The sets are crystal-controlled with a separate 6-position channel
selector for the receiver section and a separate one for the
transmitter section. I set mine up on: 3530, 3560, 3710, and 7040,
7112.5, and
7117.5 KHz on the amateur bands.
Below is the arrangement that was put together for one of these
units, utilizing a green canvas carry bag that was for a Motorola
PT400 Pack-set:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 12th, 2002:
With sincere thanks to Sean Kelly, I now have another
AN/TRC-77 Transceiver..
I'll be crystalling the new one up for the following channels:
Channel 01: 3560.0 KHz - National Traffic System, and QRP channel
Channel 02: 3565.0
Channel 03: 7040.0 - 40 Meter QRP channel
Channel 04: 7041.0
Channel 05: 7042.0
Channel 06: 7141.0 - Agent Net Channel
Alternate for channel 6, if 7125-7150 KHz is reallocated to voice
service, will be 7112.5 KHz, provided that wide-band data
(Pactor III) does not then become a problem there..
One nice thing to note about the design of these sets is that the
current drain on receive is only 15 mA!!
I recently ran across another source on the internet, which
also has some photos of the accessories
that are used
with this unit...
