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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 15th Apr 2019, 1:20 pm   #1
thoyer454
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Default RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

Greetings fellow RCA owners. This is my first posting on this forum. Below is a copy of what I have posted on the Antique Radio Forum. Hoping maybe someone on this forum can provide some info also......

Some more iron followed me home last weekend. It may be a CR-88 or CR-88A but you typically don't see them with the black panel.

Please follow this link to a bunch of pics https://www.thdesignsinc.com/Mystery_RCA.html

I've been in contact with Henry, WA7YBS, at radioblvd and he is a bit stumped also.

Any guesses? Note the black IF transformer tops and silver cans. The tops appear to be original and not something someone painted.

I'll also need a GOOD source for parts - need some dials and a couple other things.

This one is going to be a project.......

Tom

W3TA
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 3:10 pm   #2
trh01uk
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

I only have a plain vanilla AR-88D, and know very little about the history of these receivers, so maybe my comment will be merely stating the obvious.

And that is that surely a big clue is on the knob marked "Diversity IF Gain"? So my guess would be that you have a variant designed for a rack of receivers using diversity of some type. Usually all the receivers in such a stack have a common local oscillator, which would usually be the oscillator in just of the receivers (the master), which is then distributed to the others (the slaves). Normally in other such receiver systems there are extra coax sockets on the back of the receivers to distribute the local oscillator signal - but you didn't show us the back, so I can't check that from the photos.

Richard
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 3:57 pm   #3
ms660
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

I wonder if it's a CRV-46246-b which was used in the RDM1 diversity setup and that the S meter was a later addition?:

http://www.navy-radio.com/manuals/rdm1.pdf

Lawrence.
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 4:24 pm   #4
trh01uk
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

Quote:
Originally Posted by ms660 View Post
I wonder if it's a CRV-46246-b which was used in the RDM1 diversity setup and that the S meter was a later addition?:

http://www.navy-radio.com/manuals/rdm1.pdf

Lawrence.
Its looking like a strong candidate given that the manul for the RDM1 mentions the Diversity IF Gain control.

I am interested to see that the three RDM1 receivers operate entirely independently - so an operator has to tune each receiver individually to the incoming signal, unlike the scheme I described above where the local oscillator of one is fed to the other two receivers. Probably not a big problem on fixed links where changes of frequency were rare.

Richard
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 4:29 pm   #5
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

The S meter wiring at its terminals and its pot and pot wiring look modern.

Lawrence.
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 5:53 pm   #6
thoyer454
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

Thanks for all of the replies!

The mystery may be solved - CR-88A. Turns out a previous owner of this radio contacted me.

See the thread at:

https://antiqueradios.com/forums/vie...p?f=5&t=357505

Tom
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Old 15th Apr 2019, 6:08 pm   #7
ms660
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Default Re: RCA AR-?? or CR-?? What is it that I've gotten myself into?

CRV-46246-b was the number given to the CR88a when it was part of the diversity system so far as I can make out, different original colour/finish of front panels does crop up from time to time, I had an AR88D that had an original front panel finish that didn't match what it supposedly should have been for its year of production etc.

Lawrence.
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