AOR scanners on Cold War Conversation Pod Cast

[AOR2515]

Very entertaining podcast with an ex East German radio reconnaissance operator based near the inner German border during the Cold War, who was tasked with monitoring NATO surface-to-air missile batteries such as Patriots, and Nike Hercules, tracking NATO air traffic in West Europe, and listening to air-to-ground transmissions using AOR scanners.

https://coldwarconversations.com/episode312/

[22A]

"and listening to air-to-ground transmissions using AOR scanners."
When serving in 4 sqn's RIC, both at Gut and on deployments we'd receive inflight reports from returning aircrew to which we'd acknowledge. with "Spyglass copied"
The CO stopped that practice and had us just click twice on the mic instead. "Your voice is now on a voice recognition computer in Moscow" he warned.

20 years later as a Civil Servant I had to ring the Russian Embassy in London. They picked up their phone and before speaking I could actually hear the click of a tape recorder going on. If their system worked they'd realise that Spyglass was now working for the Nature Conservancy Council.

[2e1var]

Wonder they heard a thing using an AOR

[Tanker Ray]

Wonder they heard a thing using an AOR

Really? Although over 35 years old and of course limited to just 20 channels, my AOR-2002 is still the best receiver I have ever owned and its sensitivity and clarity beats the hand held receivers all round.

TR

[Rick]

AOR was my first scanner, can't remember if it was an AOR1000 or 2000

[Hellicopter44]

I agree. The first AOR V/UHF scanner, the 2001, was a huge leap forward from the Eddystone 770U valve receiver I used to use or, even worse, listening to the UHF harmonics on a cheap VHF airband receiver.
The AOR 2001 had excellent sensitivity.

[2e1var]

Wonder they heard a thing using an AOR

Really? Although over 35 years old and of course limited to just 20 channels, my AOR-2002 is still the best receiver I have ever owned and its sensitivity and clarity beats the hand held receivers all round.

TR

Yup, that's half the problem, 20 channels and chronically slow scan/search rate. Even the modern ones aren't great. Really the ones marketed as scanners are entry level comms receivers. I own an AR-8600 and it's great on the bedside table for a bit of HF late at night or scanning a few local channels but a combination of even a base level HF Radio and Uniden scanner will wipe the floor with it.

[ColoradoRedlands]

I remember seeing an AOR-2000 built into the cockpit control panel in the left side back seat of the USN EA-6B.

[gyvespa]

Well I’m posting in support of AOR scanners.

I’ve had scanners from Realistic, Alinco, Uniden and AOR. Also several marineband radios.
My AOR 8000 is definitely the most sensitive of them all and as yet has never locked up or needed resetting, unlike the others.
Not bad for something that was a ‘buy it now’ on bayE for £100.
It’ll often pick up a transmission that the Alinco or Uniden will miss and yes I’ve tried swapping the antennas about. It even picks up marineband better than a proper marine handheld.
As for the military use, I’ve seen another EA-6B picture with a AR3000 built into the cockpit and lots of Government Agencies use AR5000 series receivers.

As for the newer digital type ones, I think they may have had a few niggles to start with (understatement).

[Malcolm]

I bought an AOR-2001 in 1984? having seen it in the window of a shop on the Edgeware Road. It is by far the most sensitive scanner I ever owned. You could sit in the old Gen-Pen at Mildenhall and listen to the ground controllers of Eastern Radar.

There are some simple internal mods you can make to increase the scanning frequency by a factor of two, and increase the number of channels from 20 to 30. The membrane keyboard wearing out was a problem, but I replaced mine with proper buttons.

The lower end was 27MHz IIRC, so no real use for HF, but for VHF/UHF it was unbeatable. Ok - the slow scanning speed is no match for a modern SDR, but once programmed up with 30 known Studs/Channels it was fantastic. For many years it was built into the "Cockpit" of my Vauxhall Cavalier SRi - dubbed the CavWacs by by some of my friends.

[Malcolm]

I remember seeing an AOR-2000 built into the cockpit control panel in the left side back seat of the USN EA-6B.

First and fifth pictures in this reddit thread show what looks like an AOR2002 in the left side rear dash. That's got to be extremely unusual - getting a piece of commercial kit installed in a military aircraft, and a carrier borne fighter at that - is a real certification nightmare.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comme ... /#lightbox

[gyvespa]

I’m not being pedantic here but.

The tuning knob looks different to any of the 2000 and 3000 series AOR scanners, perhaps they were specced with a different one to enable use with gloves on.
The picture I saw years ago showed something very similar but identified it as a 3000 so the jury is out as they say.

I also had a 3030 shortwave receiver this had a certain old school robustness about it, it was probably better made than some of the military spec test gear I used at work.

As for Military procurement being a nightmare, the word nightmare is nowhere near strong enough. You wouldn’t believe how picky and thorough a MilSpec audit is, I remember having to respectfully argue my case with an American lady who insisted she was correct and I wasn’t, when in fact she’d read the specification wrong and confused +/- tolerances on a value. I won.

[ColoradoRedlands]

I remember seeing an AOR-2000 built into the cockpit control panel in the left side back seat of the USN EA-6B.

First and fifth pictures in this reddit thread show what looks like an AOR2002 in the left side rear dash. That's got to be extremely unusual - getting a piece of commercial kit installed in a military aircraft, and a carrier borne fighter at that - is a real certification nightmare.

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comme ... /#lightbox

That's it! I wasn't positive of the model number, but I remember seeing it. As far as I know all the EA-6B's had that set up. I remember the frequency limit on that one was pretty high and maybe they used it to "hear" specific radars or ground defense voice nets. It seems like how some of the fighters used out of the box "Fuzz-Buster" police radar detectors in Viet Nam.