Why are Luftwaffe radios the best?

So why are some WW2 Luftwaffe radios considered to be so good and ahead of their time? Presented by Dieter Beikirch and Robert J Dalby.

Overall, that's not an easy question to answer, and some assumptions about which aspects of military radio communications are being evaluated would have to be examined first. In this short video, we take a quick look at just one aspect - the build standard.

00:00 Introduction
00:11 The question restated
00:18 FuG 10 radio as an example
00:32 Build standard
00:40 Dieter Beikirch presents
00:43 the modular design philosophy
00:48 Radio collection
00:53 compact design of FuG 10
01:10 The benefits of modular design
01:21 P2000 valves used in the receiver
01:35 Lorenz rapid replacement system
01:42 modular design in detail
02:00 everything is little boxes!
02:27 complexity vs benefits
02:37 tuning capacitor build quality.
02:52 see whole FuG 10 video
02:59 Byeeeeeee!

This video is a short excerpt from our longer video about Lorenz's FuG 10 Luftwaffe radio system. Dieter Beikirch gives a full explanation of this, at the time, state-of-the-art radio transmitting and receiving system, using a fully restored and functioning model at his private collection in Germany.

[roderickmacduff]

Great video. This system was so well designed. The individual radios were also amazingly reliable. I bought a FuG10 EK shortwave receiver ten years ago that had lived in a Cologne attic since the war. Despite a few bashes on the case it powered up and only one resistor had gone high (in the local oscillator HT line. Remarkably all the 0.1uF decoupling capacitors were perfect and did not need replacing. In a British wartime aircraft HF receiver every decoupler would be very leaky and the equipment unusable today without major work. All valves were perfect on my EK (Empfaenger Kurzwelle - shortwave receiver). The stability was excellent and HF Volmet SSB stations stayed exactly on tune over a full day. I ultimately donated it to Clydebank museum.

[pricelesshistory]

EXCELLENT WORK! 1000x better than reading the manuals (in German for non German reader!) and figuring out how it works! Well done Dieter Beikirch and Robert J Dalby! I will let others in aviation community know, maybe incorporated in games.

[rizalardiansyah]

Quite interesting! I stumbled upon this channel in my feed. I've always underestimated the technology of radio system and this channel is pretty much an eye opener. Looking forward for more contents!

[tomsherwood]

Read an old radio magazine account of the Lorenz pre-1940 instrument landing system. Utilized at European airports. Did not use the same frequencies as todays standards, but gave the same kind of indications, marker beacon, localizer, and glideslope. That modular construction of those radios in the video was decades ahead of time.

[roderickmacduff]

There were so many ways this equipment was better than anything before and any of the British or American avionics. These include:
Very light weight and great strength and mechanical stability due to cast magnesium alloy chassis.
Modular design, rapidly swappable.
Simple logical controls. Ergonomic design.
Sockets for rapid fault diagnosis (like on modern cars)
Minimised inventory components - almost all the valves are the same.
Excellent thermal stability - oscillators are drift cancelled by precision PTC NTC ceramic capacitors.
Very robust, reliable miniature valves.
New generation of NP0 stable ceramic capacitors.
New generation of iron powder and ferrite materials allowing highly stable fixed and variable inductors.
Precision variable capacitors with ceramic insulation.
Hermetically sealed 0.1uF decoupling capacitors with a lifetime of more than 70 years.
Use of ISO symbols before the ISO existed such as A1, A3 for CW and AM and the < symbol for volume control.
Date code on components.
Excellent documentation and even training films (still in existence).
FuG10 was rolled out into most standard aircraft which must have made servicing so much more efficient.
Anyone who has owned one of these and an equivalent UK aircraft receiver (R1155) or US receiver (Command RX) can attest to the dramatic difference in design and build quality between them, the UK ones being by far the poorest.

[jamessanderson-hbdo]

I am trying to track down the circuit diagrams and or the front panel connections for the 10RT and 1- PT for 2 units that will appear in our ww2 museum. Can you help?

[kurt-jurgenremsperger]

Any Idea how can I see a H2S Radar fully functionable or a FUG Berlin

[sahhaf]

A circuit diagram or schematic would help us to understand what is going on better.

[Strike_Raid]

Wow, talk about overkill. That’s impressive build quality for sure but as rugged as it is, it can’t stop a bullet or survive a crash, so what’s the point? If you take the volume and weight of the low frequency transmitter, short wave transmitter and antenna tuner all together, it would surely exceed that of the lowly US made AN-ART-13 which has all that in one unit. So, the ART-13 would weigh less, take up less space, cost WAY less and the ART-13 puts out 400 watts A1 and 100 watts A3 which is almost 6 times as much, and to boot, the ART-13 had autotune capability.