Lyon (radio station)

In 1973, between the Ministry of Radio Industry of the USSR and the Ministry of Electronics and Electrical Engineering of the People’s Republic of Bulgaria (NRB), the “Agreement on the creation of a joint Constructorate of Specialists of the USSR and NRB” was signed. The purpose of the agreement was the coordination of work in the creation of radio equipment for agriculture and other industries of the two countries. Constructed by K.Ya. Petrov, Director of the Voronezh Scientific Research Institute of Communications , became his deputies - I.I. The duty officer, an employee of VNIIS, and K. Krystanov from the People's Republic of Bulgaria.

"Len" was the first brainchild of a joint design. The initial version was developed separately by the Bulgarian and Soviet groups. During the meeting in Molodechno, it was decided to adopt the Soviet version, since it had a unified block design and, when changing the circuit decisions of standard blocks, allowed creating radio stations with different functional and operational capabilities, which was also implemented in other Mayak radio stations (150 MHz ), Dawn (330 MHz), Altai ARS . Kuzmin V.M., from the Soviet side and Pyotr Khinkov (LZ1LEN) from the Bulgarian ^[1] , the deputies - O. D. Fomin, L. V. Davidov (USSR), N. Lyutskanov (NRB ) All subsequent technical solutions were discussed and approved at periodic joint meetings.

For its time, “Len” was distinguished by its small dimensions, weight, economy and good operating parameters, it was made on transistors and integrated circuits, and in a minimal configuration it was a monoblock design to which only an external antenna was connected, unlike radio stations of previous generations (“Granit” -M "," Viliya "), consisting of several blocks connected by multicore cables. At the same time, the Flax transceiver occupied as much space as one control panel of the previous radio stations.

In 1975, it was first exhibited at the Svyaz-75 international exhibition. In 1977, Flax was tested on the Russia collective farm of the Krasnodar Territory, where a stationary dispatch radio station with an antenna on a 25-meter mast provided communication within a radius of 70 km, and another 20 radio stations were located on mobile objects. The chairman’s car’s daily mileage immediately fell from 300–500 km to 50–70 km, while the collective farm chairman, Maistrenko, who initially opposed the test, said that he would not give the equipment to anyone, and ordered 30 more sets for all the equipment of the enterprise.

Serial production began at the Sputnik plants in Molodechno (Len-M) and Mikhail Antonov in Gotse-Delchev (Len-B), and later at the Voronezh Elektrosignal plant (Len-V) . The annual release ranged from 35 to 70 thousand units, in total over 1 million radio stations of all modifications were released. According to the technical specifications of the Soviet side in Bulgaria, the Len-Service test complex was also developed for the diagnosis and repair of radio stations in laboratories and in the field, which was located in a suitcase. Subsequently, Bulgarian experts created “Len-IV” - a 6-channel 40 MHz radio station with additional units for expanding operational capabilities (building a trunking network with automatic access to the telephone exchange, selective calling of subscribers, relaying, remote control, etc.), and also, according to the technical specifications of the Soviet side, the equipment of the communication system of the Ministry of Railways of the Transport series was developed, etc.

The developers were awarded state awards of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. VNIIS K.Ya. employees were awarded the badges “Excellence in the Ministry of Engineering and Electronics”. Petrov, I.I. Duty, V.M. Kuzmin, O.D. Fomin, V.I. Zubkov, I.I. Lukin, A.A. Bashkirtsev, I.M. Kuznetsov, A.S. Babenko. ^{[2] [3]}

Radio stations “Lyon” were used very widely in the national economy, often they worked on the same network as the radio stations “Granite” and “Viliya”. Installed on cars , tractors , tractors , road equipment, special vehicles. In addition to agriculture, it was used by builders, the fire service , ambulance , forest industry , etc. In addition to the CMEA countries, it was also supplied to Cuba, where it was used in agriculture on sugar plantations and showed good reliability in the tropics ^[4] .

In 1983, the Soviet-Bulgarian state tests of the Len-160 radio station passed, which had a range of 136-174 MHz and was incompatible with the previous line of the family using the range of 33-57.5 MHz. "Len-160" was used as a train radio station in railway transport.

Lyon radio stations were produced until about the mid-1990s, then they began to be actively squeezed out of the market by imported CB radio stations (25.6–30.1 MHz) and Low Band (33–50 MHz) bands. Particularly quickly abandoned single-channel modifications, due to their mutual incompatibility. Nevertheless, due to its reliability and good maintainability, multichannel “Flax” with a frequency synthesizer can be found in transport today.

• One or more channels in the frequency range - 33-46 MHz or 57-57.5 MHz.
• The output power of the transmitter is 8 - 9.9 W (Len-B), 10.5 ± 2.5 W (Len-B).
• Modes of operation - a telephone with frequency modulation .
• The sensitivity of the receiver is 1.2 μV.
• Communication range with the same type of radio station in poor terrain:
  • between mobile radio stations - 15 km;
  • mobile - stationary radio station - not less than 30 km;
• Power source - 10.7 - 14.5 V car battery or AC adapter.
• The dimensions of the transceiver are 266 × 246.5 × 56 mm.
• The weight of the transceiver is 3.5 kg.

As a rule, subscriber radio stations in networks of up to 20 correspondents had one frequency channel, which was allocated by the USSR State Telecommunication Inspectorate at the request of the consumer and was “sewn up” at the plant during production. With a small workload of ether in the 1970s, this was quite enough. Less often, with a large number of correspondents, radio stations on several channels were used. Initially, the operating frequency (channel) was set by one or more switchable crystal oscillators, later multichannel modifications of radio stations with frequency synthesizers appeared.

Scope of Delivery (Len-B)

• Radio station (transceiver unit)
• External speaker with integrated VLF
• Car or stationary antenna
• The rectifier stabilized by TST 12-3 or TST 12-5
• Set of spare fuses, cables and fasteners
• Documentation

33-46 MHz, 57-57.5 MHz

Len-B - transportable and stationary with a network power supply unit TST 12-3. ^[5]
Lyon-V and Lyon-M

• 1P21V-3 - transportable.
• 1P21S-4 - stationary with a network power supply.
• 1Р21С-5 - stationary control room with a network power supply and a desktop control room. ^{[6] [7]}

Len-IV - 6-channel radio station with enhanced operational capabilities (trunking network with access to the telephone exchange, selective call, relay, remote control).
Lyon-BM is a multi-channel radio station with a frequency synthesizer.

136-174MHz

Len-160 (Len-B160) is a multi-channel radio station with a frequency synthesizer in the range of 136 MHz to 174 MHz. It is used on the railways in the Transport communications complex.

Only major modifications are presented. Later models had a large number of types of performance, differing in structural and circuit solutions, design. This was reflected in the additional numbers and letters of the designation according to GOST 12252-77, GOST 12252-86. The transceiver cases of all the radio stations were standard.

• Bowels (radio station)
• Harvest (radio station)

• Duty I.I., Kuzmin V.M., Kanibolotsky Yu.N., Shapiro M.G. Mobile radio stations. Directory. - M.: Communication, 1979, p. 80-83

• International "Flax" - for Russian fields
• Radio station "Len-V"