The AM Forum

Some people I know are working thru selling off an old friends estate, W4VAG was a huge collector of old military radios. One thing I saw from the estate was an old BC-652 receiver, they are not real useful in today’s world only covering two to six Megahertz and being super wide band by there nature not real desirable for CW operations. Every year at Hamvention we all get together and run a AM Net on 3885 on Saturdays at noon using old WW2 radios, tried to use a TCS for NCS this year but it conspired agents me so had to use a more modern radio. It was only twenty-five years old as opposed to eighty.
Picked up this old receiver with the idea of running this as part of the NCS set up for next year. Still have some work to do getting a suitable power supply in it and the like but think this old war horse may be just the receiver for the WW2 Net next year.

I've never seen one before. What was on the top? Power supply maybe?

Its part of the SCR-506 set up. That’s a BC-652 receiver, BC-653 transmitter and FT-253 rack. Before everything went to Tactical FM sets HF AM had its day and this is an example of what would have been used in jeeps and tanks for AM. Not as high powered as something like a SCR-177/188 with the BC-191 transmitter and BC-342 receiver but required a lot less space, relatively.
We are celebrating D-Day and think by that late in the war all tactical communications on the battlefield migrated to FM with sets like the SCR-300 and much of the older first-generation HF AM stuff was removed from front line service but think a lot of the old HF AM mobile stuff like this was still in use.
I would like to someday have a SCR-506 because it was significant for early WW2 design. Also remember that in the CQ Surplus conversion manual they refer to that set as five hundred pounds of “Nothing” considering the size and weight.
Originally the top deck had a fourteen-volt dynamotor and a selectable 200 kHz calibrator for checking frequency. First thing all Hams did was remove all that stuff and install AC power supplies, that’s what happened to this radio. Will attach picture of what it looked like when I found it. My goal is to get it working from twelve volts again and use it in the field as a receiver for the 3885 AM WW2 net we do at the Hamvention every year. Other items of interest are that every black “chicklet” capacitor was shorted or super leaky. All that’s working now, just have to resolve putting together a power supply for field use.

Shameless self promotion! Did a video of the receiver and it can be seen at:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIwxZaF61k

W1NZR has been running an SCR-506 on the Milrad-CW Net.  It's pretty special to hear.
Good to see you are getting that RX back in action.