Russian DXpedition, BC-348 and ART-13 Still Active

[KA0HCP]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2fo2zKrSK4&feature=related

Russian DXpedition to activate new Arctic Islands in 2001.   While flying in Mi-8 helicopter it shows the aircraft HF radios in use...A BC-348 and an ART-13 above it!  Seen at 00:41 minutes.

This is the best DXpedition film I've seen. 

[AJ1G]

Well, not exactly...they look like the Russian reverse-engineered knock offs of our ART-13 and BC-348.    The Russians apparently copied the design of one or more B-29s that landed in Siberia after incurring damage on missions over Japan, to produce an early Cold War bomber, the TU-4, that looked very similar to our Superfortress.  They also developed their own versions of the two radio sets which of course were used as the main liaison set on the B-29.  IIRC, from pictures I have seen of them, their receiver looks very much like the 348. The transmitter is a bit smaller than the ART-13, but includes the autotune mechanisms.  According to Wikipedia postings on the BC-348 and ART-13, BC-348 receivers were copied and manufactured by the U.S.S.R. following War II by the Russian Vefon Works and labeled УС-9 (US-9 in English, US as Universal Superheterodyne, not United States.) The УС-9 continued to be produced in the Soviet Union through the 1970s, with such improvements as a solid state inverter to replace the dynamotor.  The Russian ART-13 clone transmitters were identified as the RSB-70 and R-807.

We may also have supplied them with some actual 348s and ART-13s on Lend Lease, but I am not certain of that.

The glimpse of them in the helo comes in at around the 41 minute mark. The video is actually 11 years old, shot in 2001.  Interesting to see these sets still being used airborne in the 21st century! Says a lot for their basic design.

[KA0HCP]

I knew I could get someone else to do all that typing!   

b.