Thanks to all for taking the time to reply. The historic background
from Biz & Bill puts this set in some context for me. Frank, thanks
for posting the Ostermann page to the binaries. Ron I appreciate the
website resource. If you are interested I have posted a photo of the
Scott , as well as some other items I found, at the following link;

http://home.att.net/~richs_radios/Whats_New.html

Also a friend supplied me with a large Scott advertisement via email.
I cut out the image of a Scott 'marine model' set and posted it next
to the SLR for comparison.

In article , Ron Hershey
writes:

There's a few pics and schematics here
http://www.schroeder-dieball.com/scottradiolabs/
but not a lot on the merchant marine sets.

Beautiful photos, of sets clear back to the 201-A days, and later ones with
more chrome than a '58 Olds.

The RCH entry is a single photo of the same radio I have, with a Hammarlund or
SX-28 style dial. I believe "RCH" is also used for a slide-rule dial type
Scott.

My RCH is probably a backup comm rx, not a morale entertainment set, since it
unfortunately sacrifices the AM BC band to include two LW bands, as for marine
communications. It does provide for feeding a second audio source into its
output stage; unclear what that was used for. The audio output is a single 6F6
or 6V6 or the like, so this RX would not be driving speakers all over the ship.
73, Mike K.

Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.

In article , "Frank
Dresser" writes:

All bets are off in the case of a regenerative receiver being used with the
detector's regeneration control turned up into the oscillation region in
order that an anticipated CW signal could be heard more clearly.


ISTR reading once that regen sets (and the Navy was using plenty of them,
especially for LW and VLF) really were a major problem. To copy CW, you do
have to adjust so the set is just barely oscillating. Fortunately, most Navy
regens had one or two RF stages ahead of the detector. I had an RAK VLF set
that was just incredibly sensitive and selective, with 3-gang tuning and
individual trimmer knobs on both RF stages. There was an HF edtion of this set
too.

The posted page also says the Germans were suspected of being able to listen
in on the 455 kc IF radiation. This would even more tenous than local
oscillator radiation. Again, not impossible, but I doubt long range
detection could be done with any reliability.

IF radiation would be pushing it, but it has the advantage that there's only a
very narrow band of freqs to monitor. An advantage (for the U-boats) of regen
rx is that one could listen to the enemy transmitter freqs, which you'd be
monitoring anyway, and a steady "carier" would mean a nice plump target nearby.

As for code cracking and good old "loose lips" in dockside bars, when enemy
U-boats are sinking your ships, you don't *know* why, you just grope for
possibilities, and radio receiver radiation was one explanation.

Along those lines, our Navy did fool the U-boats into thinking that we were
picking up on their super-regen radar detectors, thus causing them to shut
those off, making it easier to catch them on the surface. --Mike K.

Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.

in article , Frank
Dresser at wrote on 3/26/04 2:09 AM:


"Biz WDØHCO" wrote in message
...

This is fun! Well yea about the regen for sure - Some of those Superhets
leaked just as much. (Like a T.O. in a leatherette covered plywood box)


The page I posted on the binaries says the Scott REE was used in the crew's
quarters. Was the well shielded Scott radio provided so crewmen wouldn't be
tempted to bring their own radio on board?

I think at first they were.... until a ham plugged in headphones - pulled
the 6L6 audio power amp tube out with heaters and B+ voltages, got a cap and
wound a coil and had himself a nice little 2 watt transmitter. I can see him
asking the captain where's the best place to hang a 40m dipole. HI HI Of
course, a real spy would simply key the local oscillator to send a ships
position. Throughout the the rest of the war sailors were not allowed
personal radios or tube equipment of any kind. I believe that rule still
applies to this day about personal electronics.

As for the Scott SLR-12B - the typical install was to stack up 6 of them
together tuned to different stations and install squawk boxes with 6
pushbuttons and a vol control throughout the ship. You can select which
audio feed you could listen to but only morale officer decided which
stations to tune.


but think about this... middle of the ocean -
late at night -
100's of miles from anything -
floating around in a sub with everything turned off -

During a war under radio silence with just receivers turned on...

100 miles seems possible to me.



I think "possible" and "iffy" are two ways of saying the same thing from
different viewpoints. I suspect the usual thunderstorm crackle from South
and Central America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Africa would
overwhelm local oscillator radiation from a superhet at much less than 100
miles nearly all the time.

You are right - but we were talking about the North Atlantic sub activity -
45 to 55 deg lat. Very few lightning strikes within this region - it's quiet
most evenings even in the dead of summer. A dead carrier, even a weak one is
easy to find with the BFO just barely audible and the AGC turned off.

All bets are off in the case of a regenerative receiver being used with the
detector's regeneration control turned up into the oscillation region in
order that an anticipated CW signal could be heard more clearly.

The posted page also says the Germans were suspected of being able to listen
in on the 455 kc IF radiation. This would even more tenous than local
oscillator radiation. Again, not impossible, but I doubt long range
detection could be done with any reliability.

You must remember that LF "Huff-Duff" was pretty advanced at the time. LF
airport beacons were the primary form of Aircraft and coastal ship
navigation. (They still exist to this day but I doubt few pilots even know
how to use them.). Almost every ship and plane had one of those funny loop
antennas and if you look at old pictures - you'll see that German subs had
them too. Even though there were very few Nav beacons in Europe during the
war. !!??!!

You might be right about the range but NAVY was concerned enough to give
large RCVR contracts to Scott. The ARMY didn't care and they got Echophone
EC-6's and Halli RE-1 Sky Courier's. GI's could carry (later drag) their own
radios and many did. T.O.s were the most popular with officers. Poor solders
had the "Gillette Blue Blade" special. ;^)

I don't doubt ships were being detected at long range, and using well
shielded receivers was a wise precaution. But I'll speculate that German
code breaking detected at least as many ships as long range direction
finding, and it wasn't immediately obvious to our Navy just what tipped off
the ship's location.

Some Salvagers came across a sunken German Sub just off the New Jersey
coast. Clearly they were parked several miles offshore watching for the
start of a convoy. Somehow they signaled the German High Command which
ordered the wolf pack to form a sub screen (straight line of subs 100 miles
apart) and wait for the convoy to pass. Top speed for those concrete
"Victory" ships was about 6 knots so, for the most part, they were sitting
ducks once spotted.

Historically very little has been written about the bravery of merchant
seamen. If your ship was hit and went down - You would watch convoy ships
pass by because they were under orders not to stop. You would have an hour
or two splashing in the water till the end. If you could find a life boat -
you would be 1500 to 2500 miles or more from land. A slim chance at best.

Long Range Flying boats patrolling the North Atlantic and improved Sonar
technology finally ended the Nazi sub terror.

So you see, there is a little bit of history in every old radio ... :^)



- Biz WDØHCO

What a great source of information/history you all have provided. This
was a third party transaction. Sadly the primary party (the owner?)
called off the deal. It appears he has discovered another buyer (?).
It seems I missed my chance and (sadly) won't see any of these items
any time soon. Life goes on... Thanks to all for the assistance and
especially the history - great stuff! Any additional history is
appreciated and encouraged since there does not seem to be much
recorded except in the minds of the survivors.

"Biz WDØHCO" wrote in message
...
in article ,
Frank
Dresser at wrote on 3/26/04 2:09 AM:

You are right - but we were talking about the North Atlantic sub
activity -
45 to 55 deg lat. Very few lightning strikes within this region - it's
quiet
most evenings even in the dead of summer. A dead carrier, even a weak one
is
easy to find with the BFO just barely audible and the AGC turned off.

And a big storm can be heard for hundreds, if not thousands of miles,
especially at Long Wave.


You must remember that LF "Huff-Duff" was pretty advanced at the time. LF
airport beacons were the primary form of Aircraft and coastal ship
navigation. (They still exist to this day but I doubt few pilots even know
how to use them.). Almost every ship and plane had one of those funny loop
antennas and if you look at old pictures - you'll see that German subs had
them too. Even though there were very few Nav beacons in Europe during the
war. !!??!!


I'll assume they were capable of getting a fix on thier location using the
known locations of broadcast stations in the US and Europe.



You might be right about the range but NAVY was concerned enough to give
large RCVR contracts to Scott. The ARMY didn't care and they got Echophone
EC-6's and Halli RE-1 Sky Courier's. GI's could carry (later drag) their
own
radios and many did. T.O.s were the most popular with officers. Poor
solders
had the "Gillette Blue Blade" special. ;^)


The Germans may have let rumors spread about their advanced direction
finding capability. Such rumors would give some cover to other successful
intelligence gathering.



Some Salvagers came across a sunken German Sub just off the New Jersey
coast. Clearly they were parked several miles offshore watching for the
start of a convoy. Somehow they signaled the German High Command which
ordered the wolf pack to form a sub screen (straight line of subs 100
miles
apart) and wait for the convoy to pass. Top speed for those concrete
"Victory" ships was about 6 knots so, for the most part, they were sitting
ducks once spotted.


That brings up another couple of questions. Did the merchant marine have
receivers as good as the US Navy had? Were the Merchant radiomen as well
trained as the Navy radiomen?



Historically very little has been written about the bravery of merchant
seamen. If your ship was hit and went down - You would watch convoy ships
pass by because they were under orders not to stop. You would have an hour
or two splashing in the water till the end. If you could find a life
boat -
you would be 1500 to 2500 miles or more from land. A slim chance at best.


The survival rate of German submariners wasn't particularly high as the war
came to a close, either.


Long Range Flying boats patrolling the North Atlantic and improved Sonar
technology finally ended the Nazi sub terror.


I'll also mention code breaking in the anti-sub war.


So you see, there is a little bit of history in every old radio ... :^)



- Biz WDØHCO


Frank Dresser

Hi,

My RCH is probably a backup comm rx, not a morale entertainment set, since it
unfortunately sacrifices the AM BC band to include two LW bands, as for marine
communications. It does provide for feeding a second audio source into its
output stage; unclear what that was used for. The audio output is a single 6F6
or 6V6 or the like, so this RX would not be driving speakers all over the ship.
73, Mike K.

You can see one installed in a Mackay communications console in the
4th ed. of THe Radio Manual by Sterling & Monroe, 1950. Pages 511 to
553 are devoted to this console, including a fold-out schematic of the
Scott receiver itself (called an SLR-F). It was paired with a Mackay
128AV (15 - 650kHz, battery-powered)

Scott made a big deal of low-radiation receivers and German
direction-finding, but it's far more likely that the low radiation was
only to avoid interference with other receivers on the ship. It's a
very crowded RF environment.

I had an SLR12 once and its dial-drive mechanism was sluggish, not
a set you'd want for band-cruising. They were after all meant to be
left in one position and not re-tuned often. The geared dial on an
RCH works like a dream, in comparison.

73, Alan

In article , Alan Douglas
adouglasatgis.net writes:

You can see one installed in a Mackay communications console in the
4th ed. of THe Radio Manual by Sterling & Monroe, 1950. Pages 511 to
553 are devoted to this console, including a fold-out schematic of the
Scott receiver itself (called an SLR-F). It was paired with a Mackay
128AV (15 - 650kHz, battery-powered)

Does this mean the RCH served as the audio output stage for the Mackay? I can
imagine a lot of military rx wer made with only "line level" or "diode load"
outputs, meant to feed RTTY decoders and the like, and the RCH wuld provide a
speaker audio driver for such rx.

Scott made a big deal of low-radiation receivers and German
direction-finding, but it's far more likely that the low radiation was
only to avoid interference with other receivers on the ship. It's a
very crowded RF environment.

True, and this is why the R390 series has such a rugged multi-tuned front end,
and well into the sorry-state era was specified for shipboard use because it
could stand up to the onboard transmitters.

I had an SLR12 once and its dial-drive mechanism was sluggish, not
a set you'd want for band-cruising. They were after all meant to be
left in one position and not re-tuned often. The geared dial on an
RCH works like a dream, in comparison.

Right, the RCH tuning is silky smooth. Too bad Scott didn't put a vernier
0-100 readout on the knob shaft for ease in returning to a station, although
the 0-200 logging scale is better than nothing. I suspect some ops may have
put a 0-100 skirted knob on that shaft and scribed an index mark on the front
panel.

Since the RCH has a BFO with pitch control, I tend to believe it was for backup
comm rather than entertainment. Lack of xtal filter makes it only a backup for
CW.


Tnx fer the commentary, Alan. 73, Mike K. AA1UK

Oscar loves trash, but hates Spam! Delete him to reply to me.

The Germans may have let rumors spread about their advanced direction
finding capability. Such rumors would give some cover to other successful
intelligence gathering.

Yep and it works both ways - America's version was that the Army Air Corps
were giving carrots to fighter pilots to improve their eye site and this was
why so many German planes were being shot out of the sky. AAC even had
staged pictures of pilots at a mess hall with plates of carrots and standing
under airplanes chewing "ala Bugs Bunny" carrots. Life magazine ran those
pics and German pilots soon came under orders to eat more carrots.

This was a cover story for the fact that front line bases had started
receiving planes equipped with Radar. Carrots do nothing for eye site but
try telling that to your mother. Funny how these myths are still around.


That brings up another couple of questions. Did the merchant marine have
receivers as good as the US Navy had? Were the Merchant radiomen as well
trained as the Navy radiomen?


Shipboard receiver installations varied widely depending on how prosperous
the shipping company was. Some were every bit as equal to any land
installation while others were little more than (as an old timer once told
me) a Marconi turd with a cat whisker stuck in it.

About training - well first - many Merchant R OPs's joined the Armed Forces
right off - so that left those with age, foot or vision problems or retired
OPs to man the radio shacks. Most of these men were trained by RCA Worldwide
Wireless or Marconi. ALL had many years of practical experience on the high
seas.

Navy on the other hand had a problem - ships were being built at a fantastic
rate and only recently trained "8 Week Wonders" Radio Ops who never had been
out to sea to man the shacks. The Navy had to sprinkle experienced Ham Radio
and Merchant Marines as lead OPs throughout the fleet to keep things moving
till the green horns got up to speed. As it was, there were a number of
comical foulups related to mis-communications.


The survival rate of German submariners wasn't particularly high as the war
came to a close, either.

Yep - Ive heard of stories of passing Convoy ships firing their deck guns on
German Life boats - a big Geneva treaty NO NO. Also heard about s broken
down U-boat with the whole crew lined up outside on top waving white flags.
Passing ship turned toward it, increased speed and rammed it and kept on
going. I think it was safe to say there was some serious hatred there.

I'll also mention code breaking in the anti-sub war.

hmmm ok - where should I start?

We are of course talking about the British breaking the codes being sent and
received by German Enigma Code machines. Brits are proud of saying their
collection of eccentric mathematics wizards and puzzle solving misfits broke
the code in something like 3 or 4 weeks.

What is glossed over is that the front line German Radio OPs were somewhat
lazy and seldom if ever changed the code wheels on the machine. The German
high command believed their code machine unbreakable but even so still
changed the code wheels on a weekly basis for high level comms.

They believed even if front line comms could be broken - they were of little
strategic value to the enemy. Of course we now know, if you broken low level
comms you can follow the messages up the chain and stand a good chance of
breaking that code if you know what is in the message being sent.

The Bits did this and now had access to most of the Germany Armed Forces
comms.

Now what to do with it?

What now follows is my own speculation - much of the story still remains
classified to this day. I can only go back and look at the historical facts
and come up with some fairly logical deductions -

...in other words - I'm guessing...

(1) Clearly - Churchill could have told the Americans early on - He choose
not to do this until much later.

(2) Britan could not directly go after subs and ships. To do so would tip
the Germans that the code was broken and force them to change their wheels
on a daily (or hourly) basis. Remember it took 3 weeks (and I suspect much
more) to break each code. So even though they had a stolen Enigma and the
tools to break the code - it would have been of little use if the code was
changed daily.

(3) America at the time was isolationist. The Brits saw what a single Jap
Attack at Pearl Harbor had done. Almost overnight, America was at war - with
Japan. Most Americans wanted to fight the Japs only - they had no beef with
Germany.

(4) The Lend-Lease convoys were US Merchant Ships carrying U.S. War Material
protected by the U.S. Navy Ships manned by US Sailors. The Brits knew the
exact locations of German subs out to sink the convoys but kept quiet. The
loss of some shipping and American lives would keep the United States
focused and involved with the war in Europe.

(5) As you can imagine - the Americans were livid when finally told. Not so
much for the loss of American life but for the fact they were so well played
by Churchill.

(6) This and the massive defeat ("Heroic Retreat" as the Brits tell it) at
Dunkirk were probably the two major factors in selecting an American as
Supreme Allied Commander.


Of course all this is just idle speculation...

I think the code breaking used in the anti-sub effort came much later when
it was certain America would join the British War effort.

But we may never really know. -B

One comment to Mikes Post - Many WW2 Comm RCVRS didn't have Phasing or XTAL
Filters - Radio OPs were trained and expected to copy CW perfectly even with
a bunch of signals blaring out of the headphones. Just par for the course
back then. Myself - I can copy 30 WPM CW with 5 other stations nearby.

You train your brain to focus on just one tone and filter everything else
out. That ol noodle is a remarkable filter. I often listen to a Halli S-38D
on the 40 meter CW band at night and that's what 6 or 8 kc wide??

Hi,

You can see one installed in a Mackay communications console in the
4th ed. of THe Radio Manual by Sterling & Monroe, 1950. Pages 511 to
553 are devoted to this console, including a fold-out schematic of the
Scott receiver itself (called an SLR-F). It was paired with a Mackay
128AV (15 - 650kHz, battery-powered)

Does this mean the RCH served as the audio output stage for the Mackay? I can
imagine a lot of military rx wer made with only "line level" or "diode load"
outputs, meant to feed RTTY decoders and the like, and the RCH wuld provide a
speaker audio driver for such rx.

If I'm reading the text correctly, position 2 was not used, but the
"Mixed" mode fed time signals to check the chronometer.

73, Alan