Scott V. Johnson

The Man in the Cockpit with Collins on the Panel

There is a particular kind of authority that cannot be learned from a service manual alone. It comes from operating equipment in the environment for which it was designed — from sitting behind a Collins 618T in a cockpit at altitude, from signing off on an avionics repair under FAA oversight, from understanding not just how a piece of Collins military gear was built, but why it was built that way, what it felt like to depend on it, and what happens when it fails ten thousand feet above the ground.

Scott V. Johnson W7SVJ, of Scottsdale, Arizona, possesses that authority in a way that sets him apart from virtually every other figure in the Collins collecting community. A professional engineer by training, Scott has operated FAA-approved avionics repair facilities — for the United States Air Force and for his own business. He holds certification as a C-130 Hercules Flight Engineer and is a licensed pilot. His secondary callsign, AFA6SJ, marks him as an active participant in the Air Force Amateur Radio Service — a community with a direct operational connection to the Collins military equipment he collects and documents.

When Scott writes about Collins avionics and military communications equipment, he is not approaching the subject as an enthusiast reverse-engineering history from the outside. He has operated this equipment in airworthy condition, maintained it to current standards, and understands its operational context from professional experience. This perspective is unique in the CCA community — and it has produced some of the most authoritative primary-source documentation of Collins’ military product lines that the community possesses.

Beyond the credentials, Scott Johnson is a serious and committed collector. His holdings span Collins avionics and military “black boxes” across multiple eras and system families — equipment he does not merely display but actively operates, diagnoses, and keeps functional. The collection is, in the Signal Magazine’s own words, “prolific.”

The Military Niche Nobody Else Was Filling

The Collins Collectors Association has always had a strong base of knowledge about the amateur product lines — the A-Line, the S-Line, the KWM-2A, the 30S-1. These are the receivers and transceivers that attracted most members to Collins in the first place, and the Signal Magazine has documented them well over the years. But Collins Radio was much more than its amateur products. It was a defence contractor, an avionics manufacturer, and a builder of military communications systems that served the US armed forces for decades. The URG-1 and URG-2 system families. The 671U receiver-exciter in its many variants. The UHF communications equipment. The genesis of military SSB. These are complex, often underdocumented products that sit in a niche between the amateur radio community and the aerospace world — too technical for most collectors, too obscure for most engineers.

Scott Johnson stepped into that gap and made it his territory.

His Signal Magazine articles represent the most substantial body of original research into Collins military and avionics product history produced by any single contributor outside the Rockwell Collins organisation itself. Working from operational expertise, hands-on collection access, and deep research into Collins’ engineering archives and institutional memory, Scott has documented equipment families and historical developments that would otherwise exist only in scattered military technical manuals and the fading recollections of retired engineers.

The Signal Magazine — A Body of Technical History

Scott Johnson’s contributions to the Signal Magazine span more than a decade and cover the areas of Collins history most demanding of specialist expertise. Each article draws on his professional engineering background, his operational experience with airborne and military equipment, and his access to the systems themselves. Together they form a unique body of work documenting Collins’ military and avionics legacy at a level of authority the community could not otherwise access.

• Q3 Signal The Collins 671U Receiver-Exciter Family The definitive community reference for the 671U and its variants across the Collins URG-2 military HF system architecture. Covers the receiver-exciter’s role in the AN/TSC-60, AN/VRC-80/81, AN/TRC-169, and airborne installations from 100W to 10kW. Support files posted on the CCA website; currently featured content on the CCA homepage.
• Signal — Multi-Part The Genesis of Military SSB at Collins Radio (Parts I & II) A two-part historical investigation into how Collins Radio pioneered the application of Single Sideband modulation to military communications — one of the most consequential technological transitions in Cold War-era military radio. Draws on Collins institutional history and Scott’s deep knowledge of the military systems that implemented SSB in the field.
• Issue 72 — Q4 2013 UHF at Collins — A Consistent Breadwinner, Growing into the 21st Century Part of the landmark 80th Anniversary series. Traces Collins’ UHF communications product line from its origins through the Rockwell era. The only Signal article in the anniversary series authored by a contributor with direct operational experience of the products being documented.

Steward of the CCA at a Defining Moment

In mid-2022, past president Scott Kerr KE1RR issued a frank public warning to the CCA membership: the organisation was struggling to sustain its activities, volunteers were exhausted, and without new contributors the quality and scope of what the CCA provided would have to contract. The warning identified specific risks — the 20-metre Sunday net, the Signal Magazine’s production standard, and the website — as vulnerable to collapse without intervention.

Scott Johnson W7SVJ stepped into the most demanding of the roles that needed filling: he took on the CCA Board Presidency while simultaneously assuming the editorship of the Signal Magazine — the exact combined role Kerr had specifically warned was too much for one person. That Scott accepted both roles speaks to a level of commitment that the organisation could not survive without at that moment. He understood, as someone who had already contributed substantially to the magazine, exactly what the editorial workload entailed — and he took it on anyway.

The CCA today — its website, its nets, its Signal Magazine, its annual Dayton presence — functions because a small number of people have chosen to put in unrewarded hours to keep it alive. Scott Johnson is at the centre of that effort. His presidency is not ceremonial: it is operational stewardship of an organisation at genuine risk, carried by someone who also happens to be its most authoritative voice on the half of Collins history most in danger of being lost.

The Flightline and the Shack

There is a particular pleasure in finding someone whose professional life and their collecting passion are the same subject approached from different ends. Most Collins collectors come to the military equipment from the amateur radio side — they fell in love with the S-Line or the KWM-2A, and eventually found themselves curious about the 618T that flew in the same era, or the 671U that sat in the field shelter. They work backwards from the collector’s bench into the operational world.

Scott Johnson came from the other direction. As a professional avionics engineer and certified flight engineer, he knew Collins equipment in the context for which it was designed — not as a collectible, but as life-safety infrastructure. The 618T was not a curiosity to him; it was the HF radio in the aircraft. The 671U was not an interesting Cold War artefact; it was standard equipment in the shelter. This operational fluency, carried back into the collecting world, produces a quality of understanding and documentation that has no substitute.

It also produces a particular kind of advocacy for these lesser-known product lines. Scott writes about Collins military and avionics equipment with the passion of someone who knows what it was actually for — who understands that the engineering decisions in the URG-2 system were not abstract exercises but solutions to real operational problems in real tactical environments. That understanding, communicated through the Signal Magazine to a readership mostly unfamiliar with the military context, is one of the most valuable contributions any single author has made to the breadth of Collins historical documentation.

Timeline of Contributions

• Pre-2013 Initial Signal Magazine contributions noted (“has written for the Signal in the past”). Establishes himself as the community’s specialist voice on Collins avionics and military equipment. Builds a significant operating collection of Collins military and avionics hardware, maintained to airworthy standards through professional avionics facility operations.
• 2013 “UHF at Collins” published in Signal Issue 72 (Q4 2013 — 80th Anniversary Post-Rockwell issue). Joins a prestigious group of contributors including Loney Duncan W0GZV (TACAMO) and Rod Blocksome K0DAS (HF-80). Signal contributor biography confirms: engineer, FAA avionics facility operator, Certified C-130 Flight Engineer, pilot.
• Post-2013 “The Genesis of Military SSB at Collins Radio” — multi-part series published in the Signal, investigating Collins’ pivotal role in the transition from AM to SSB in military communications. Part II confirmed published; Part I in a preceding issue.
• Post-2022 Assumes the CCA Board Presidency and Signal Magazine Editorship simultaneously — stepping up in response to the volunteer shortage crisis publicly identified by past president Scott Kerr KE1RR. Takes on the combined role that Kerr had warned was “too much for one person.”
• 2025–26 “Collins 671U Receiver-Exciter” article published in Q3 Signal — the community’s primary technical reference for the 671U family and URG-2 system architecture. Support files posted on collinsradio.org. Article featured on the CCA homepage as current primary content. Continues as CCA President and Signal Editor.

The Legacy

When historians of Collins Radio reach for documentation on the military and avionics product lines — when someone tries to understand the evolution of the 671U, or the story of how Collins won the military SSB market, or the arc of Collins UHF communications development — a significant fraction of the accessible, community-facing primary-source material they will find was written by Scott Johnson.

That is a legacy built in the pages of the Signal Magazine, issue by careful issue. It is not the legacy of a single landmark publication. It is the legacy of sustained, expert contribution to a community record — work that fills a gap nobody else was equipped to fill, done with the rigour of a professional who understands the subject from the inside out.

In taking on the CCA Presidency and Signal editorship at a moment of institutional vulnerability, Scott Johnson has added a second dimension to that legacy: the person who kept the organisation alive and producing during one of its most difficult periods. These are different kinds of work — the technical writing and the organisational leadership — but they arrive from the same deep commitment to the preservation of Collins Radio’s history and community.

The air force amateur who flies the equipment, maintains it to certification standard, brings it home to the collection, and then sits down to write the community’s most authoritative account of what it is and why it matters. That is Scott Johnson W7SVJ — and that is, unambiguously, a Boatanchor Legend.