Could this be the elusive ER-88?
The only discription I have of the ER-88 receiver comes from
a statement of capabilities sent to the Soviet government in late 1944
or early 1945. It was part of an attempt to reactivate the 1935
technology-transfer deal under which RCA built a TV transmitter for
Moscow, etc. READ IT HERE
It
describes an AR-88 receiver with a 10-watt audio output, likely using
push-pull beam power tubes.
The pictures below come from Brian
Goldsmith. Brian and this radio are in Australia.
November 2019: Another receiver like this has surfaced in New Jersey: ../jc/JC__AR-88.html
August 2020: A post I made to rca@mailman.qth.net.
The ER-88 mentioned HERE on page 50 under "Authorized Broadcast Receivers."
This document lists receivers, approved and disapproved, by the US navy
for shipboard use based on oscillator radiation. This was a
concern because of the possibility that the enemy could DF a ship via
these signals. In the world of superhets, that seems a little
iffy, but at the outbreak of WWII, some commercial ships were still
using radios like the IP-501
(scroll down), that had a regenerative detector connected directly to
the antenna, standing watch on 500 KHz, so everyone knew where to
listen..
The document also lists the AR-88 under "Authorized Communication
Receivers." So I speculate that the ER-88 was designed for the
crew entertainment role, where the receiver was expected to feed
multiple speakers. Another example of this is the Radio Marine
Corp. AR-8511, that used 6 35L6 tubes in push-pull-parallel to get
enough audio output while operating with 115 VDC (ships power) on the
plates.
Please
share your thoughts. - Al - N3FRQ
CR-88B - This looks like the real incarnation of the ER-88
Compare above to the standard CR-88 chassis layout:
