C-130A and C-130B Hercules radios

[yahya]

I'm looking for information on the COM and NAV radios used in the early C-130A and C-130B Hercules transport aircraft from the late 1950s and for pic of the original radio panels as from the flight manual. If anyone can help I would be most grateful.

 

[Blitzen]

I worked on the first C-130's at Eglin AFB during their operational tests in 1956-1957. The radios were the common ARC-27 UHF comm. The VHF nav radios were the also common ARN-14's. Additionally, the radar was an APS-42, maybe with an upgraded banana peel antenna instead of the standard round dish antenna. Intercom was AIC-10.
During that era, comm and nav boxes were pretty standardized. Nearly everything flying had the same stuff then.
The ARN-14 drove an ID-249 and ID-250 in the instrument panel. There might be pictures of those floating around the internet.

 

[yahya]

Thank you for the reply. I got a flight manual of the C-130B, which depicts the radio pedestal as below. I do not know if a similar setup was used on the C-130A. Do you recall if during the tests that you witnessed, these birds were fitted with the ARC-49 VHF command radio (#15 below) and two Collins 618S-1 HF liaison radios (#1 and #5 below)?

To my surprise, the early C-130s seem to have been fitted with the ARC-34 UHF sets (#20 below) rather than the ARC-27 ones.