R1300

The R1300 is a military mobile short-wave SSB radio station of 50 W, made by IEMI in Bucharest and designed at the ICE research institute in Bucharest [1]. It was the first Romanian SSB radio equipment of at least 50 W with frequency synthesis, for mobile use (including on artillery vehicles) or stationary use [2]. Two prototypes were approved in 1973, and IEMI made it until 1988 [2]. The navy version is the R1301 [2].

ICE’s short-wave professional radio communications laboratory took over in 1966 the staff and work of Electronica in this field; it designed radio stations, first-class receivers and accessories such as antennas and relays, mainly for the army, with civilian versions for the oil and forestry industries, building sites and agriculture; they were made at IEMI and IEI [1].

It was built in a stationary version and a mobile version on an ARO chassis, for short-wave links at regiment, division and army corps level [3].

It was made in large numbers, and gave the signal units links in a field that had been insufficiently covered [4].

Its prospectus describes a simplex station for upper- or lower-sideband telephony (with suppressed, reduced or nearly full carrier) and amplitude- or frequency-shift telegraphy, for stationary or vehicle use; it comprised the transceiver, antenna matching unit, power supply, rectifier, teleprinter adapter (up to 200 baud) and a remote control unit working over up to 2 km of telephone cable, and could work as a relay [5]. The prospectus gives 10,500 channels and a transmitter power of 40 W ± 3 dB, while the chapter text gives 50 W [5].

IEMI’s table of special production lists a line ‘XD 171 AM2 R1300’ with 430 units in 1983–1985 and one R 1300-D prototype in 1981 [6]. According to the memoirs of an army representative at IEMI, the East German army asked in the late 1970s for an R-1300 radio vehicle on a Volkswagen chassis, but the cooperation was not approved [7]. The book’s editors note that these memoirs contain some errors, especially in the names of equipment [7].