Latest update

24 Feb 2020

A tribute to its inventor, Sven H. Dodington.

VINTAGE AVIONICS

RT-220B , the  Receiver/Transmitter unit of the ARN-21B system.

The other parts are the cockpit instruments and the antenna.

TACAN — AN/ARN-21

 

TACAN stands for Tactical Air Navigation, a system that allows pilots to see the distance and direction to a ground beacon, usually at an airfield or carrier.

 It is over 60 years ago that the first system was built and tested, based on the ideas and patents of Sven Dodington and college’s

at ITT Nutley.

 

The TACAN system operates on 126 channels between 1025 MHz and 1150 MHz for the downlink. The uplink is 63MHz lower for the first 63 channels, or 63MHz higher for the last 63 channels.

 

Over 1000 TACAN beacons were commissioned since 1956, many are still operating.

 

TACAN cockpit instruments:

Control Panel    C-886 / ARN

Radio Bearing Indicator ID-307 / ARN

Range Indicator ID-310 /ARN

click here  for the cabling from these cockpit instruments via the rack mount MT-829  to the RT-220 unit .

This site is about old avionics, made between 1950 and 1965. These systems had mainly tubes, and a lot of rotating components.

If you use Safari 13.3 as browser, then set aA to 125% for best results.

 

Site made by  Koos Bouwknegt

 

You can email me at

 

VintageAvionics –at– ziggo.nl

(Replace –at– by @ )