The AM Forum

In the early sixties I had a tank receiver briefly.  I have no pix, I'll try to describe it.

It was about, maybe, 12-14 inches high, and maybe 8 inches wide.  It was black with grey labels and had about a 3 inch round speaker behind a metal screen in the upper left hand corner...made it look a little like a 'scope.  Down the left side were silver tuning pushbuttons which, if I'm remembering correctly set just like old-time car radios..you know, pull out the button, tune the station, push the button back in.

The tuning control was a horizontal thumb wheel in the lower center (the thumbwheel was about 3/8" high), with the dial behind a window just above it.  There were volume and (I think) squelch controls.

It covered 30 to 50 Mc (maybe it didn't go all the way to 50) and received FM.

I rarely heard anything on it, but once I picked up a mobile telephone conversation between a guy and another guy at a bar.  They were making rude comments about one of the waitresses.   ;)

Anyone know about these?  (Receiver, not the waitress)  What nomenclature?

I'm pretty sure I know exactly what you're talking about, and have the mating transmitter to it. The transmitter uses 1624's, which are 6L6's with a 2.5V heater. I'll try to find you more information about what you had.
Regards,
Joe Cro N3IBX

It's the BC-603.  The companion transmitter is the BC-604.

* Receiver covers 20 - 27.9 MHz. FM, 10 tubes, i.f. is 2.65 MHz.
* Top end frequency corrected 9/17 1 a.m.

Photo below of it, courtesy of the Fair Radio Sales on-line catalog :

BC-603 was covered in TM 11-600.
BC-603A Series was covered in TM 11-4033.

Specs say it tunes from 20 to 28 MHz. FM only.

Ugly looking thing!

One on ebay right now, 13 hours to go:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Military-radio-BC-603-0_W0QQitemZ250027814843QQihZ015QQcategoryZ50595QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

(http://i3.ebayimg.com/06/i/08/54/be/ec_1.JPG)

There is another receiver that is basically identical to the BC-603; the BC-683 which covers 27 - 39 MHz.

Thanks,

The BC-683 sounds like what I might've had, I know my tuning range was above 10m.

The basic layout in the pix is what I had, but cosmetically mine looked different.  It didn't have the olive drab cover, but the black panel behind that looks the same.  Also, the speaker grill was silver screen.  Possibly the olive covering had been removed.

I see this doesn't have thumbwheel tuning.  Guess forty years can fog one's memory.   ;D

Anyone know what tank(s) it was in and have any in situ pix?

Not that this was a fun receiver.  Basically usless for ham operation, but it's still military radio gear.  What does the companion transmitter look like?

Paul

The SCR-694 radio station as used in many W.W.II US Armoured Fighting Vehicles, such as M3, M26, M5 and the famous M4 "Sherman Tank".

The radio station operates from 12 Volt vehicle battery supply and includes the BC-603-D Radio Receiver 1942 dated, BC-604-D Radio Transmitter 1945 dated, CH-264 Spares Parts Box and the FT-237-C Vehicle Mount 1942 dated.

BC-603-D Radio Receiver 20-28MHz, FM, IF 2.65MHz, continuous tuning and 10 presets channels, has squelch facility with a built-in loud-speaker, uses 10 tubes.

BC-604-D Radio Transmitter 20-28MHz, FM, 20 Watts output, 10 crystal channels, uses 8 tubes.

Here is a photo of the whole SCR-694 shootin' match including spares tubes and crystals I think :

The story was that all radios up to that time were AM and the new FM tank radios were a secret weapon introduced right after the battle of the bulge. They came late and that is one reason that there are so many still around as surplus.

The idea was that the US Army Air Corps would fly jammers over Germany and kill all conventional communications on HF. Certainly AM was wiped out. The new Super wideband FM sets like the BC-603 rejected the noise nicely and were in effect early Spread Spectrum technology of sorts. At some point only one army had communications.

Mike WU2D

Fair Radio has BC603s if you really need one.