RCAF RCA ATR-11 Transceiver
 

Anyone familiar with this airborne wireless set? A friend has run across one in it's wooden transit chest but information regarding it is next to non-existent it seems.

A series of ATR-1 to ATR-7 radios were apparently built for the RCAF in the early part of the war by Canadian Marconi. This ATR-11 was built in 1940's by RCA's Montreal facility.

The only thing we can find so far on the internet is several RCAF Harvard sites documenting these training aircraft. Quite a number of the RCAF postwar Harvard fleet surplussed out in the 1960's appear with a notation the aircraft in question was upgraded to an ATR-11 radio system sometime post war.

We are trying to wrap our heads around why a radio designed and built in the first half of the war would have been a preferred upgrade to Harvard Mk IV's after the war.


David

Here are a couple of photos of an ATR 11A for reference. This one is a 1944 product from RCA. The four dials are for tuning the Receiver, Transmitter, Antenna Coupling and Antenna Tuner and each has provision for locking in two complete sets of frequencies. Frequency range was 2.5 to 6.0 MCycles.

Power came from it's stand alone 24V Remote Dynamotor and a Remote Control Box was typically installed in the Pilot's location.

These may have been the sets the RCAF Harvard fleet was upgraded to after the war.

David