When I was in the Marines and stationed on Okinawa in 1967 I repaired Motorola hand held and back pack two-way radios that had been war damaged in Vietnam. The tubes were quite small and not very reliable. Motorola did a good job laying out the electronic circuits and the units were easy to align. Many units had to be scrapped because they had huge holes made from bullets and shrapnel. I was glad I was in a safe place and I often felt sorry for my fellow Marines who were in the jungles facing the enemy.
U.S.ARMY 1999-2006: Does anyone have a battery for this damn radio!!!! Leave on patrol four batteries off the charger and tested 100% percent charge. First battery change, no battery change FML! Thank you tax payers for this SatPhone. Dr. Pepper each of those radios you fixed make sure one of your brothers made it home. Also to call the Navy and Air Force to join the barbecue.
I picked up a pair of those 80 meter handie talkies at a ham fest in the early 70s, like General Patton, I found no batteries, and quickly found someone who wanted them more than I did. Enjoy your videos. 73, K5FZ
Fascinating. I’ve seen the bulky handheld and backpack radios in period footage and always assumed the backpack version was first and then refined and miniaturised. No idea it was the other way around 😎
Back in the 70's my dad bought crates of WWII/Korea era Army/Navy surplus Walkie Talkies, there must have been something in them worth recycling, remember playing with some as a kid. Wish he had kept a crate of them intact, probably quite collectable now.
If you think they are rubbish, just try and buy one now. They normally seem to operate on 3885 KHz, and are used by hams as toys and at hamfests and military meets, and are apparently sufficient for walking around the venue and for getting nostalgia jollies. I would like one but they are priced out of reach now. The Chinese could build solid state replicas with the same performance pretty cheap and sell them quite well to hams that operate the AM calling frequency.
The chinx would use them to monitor everything else that is not already being captured through the use of tiktok, etc. by the lowly Westerners that the PRC wish to permanently enslave/annihilate.
I'm almost 70 now and had a 31 set in the mid-60s. There were lots of the here in the UK for sale as army surplus. It came with a vital valve missing from the transmit stage for obvious reasons. All I did was write to the supplier asking for the missing valve, and back it came return post! I blacked out the BBC evening news in my whole village! It eventually burst into flames when I tried to run a dyno motor for the HT from a power output pin at the back. Happy days!
Ironically, though actual hand held traditional radios were much smaller by the 1980s, due to the use of transistors and integrated circuits (chips), the extra digital circuits needed for meta-communication with cell towers to make it work like a dial telephone in 1981 caused the form factor to expand to almost the size of the WWII Handi-Talkies described in this video.
There were also "PT" series radios (I believe stood for porta-talkie) that we called lunchbox radios widely used by the railroads. The earliest one used acorn tubes, later models used the boards from HT & MT portables. The Motorola shop I worked for had a HT200 in the attic, but the oldest radio I worked on was the HT220.
Walkie Talkie is a backpack radio. We often call that a field radio these days. Handie Talkie, or HT, is a handheld radio as the advertising material states.
The old Walkie Talkies of WW2 used instant hot filaments to activate the tubes. Yes it was a tube type. The transistor was not even a dream in those days.
Very interesting. I can't remember if you have covered the Joan Eleanor (J-E) radio system. It was used by the OSS in WW2 so that spies on the ground could conmmunicate with reconnaissance aircraft. It was 260MHz (VHF) and AM and made by RCA. A very clever design.
The SCR-536 had a certain 'wow' factor by virtue of its relatively tiny form factor mainly due to the use of miniature vacuum tubes (which were first invented by Britain, not the USA, BTW). But, it was a troublesome radio which required many iterations to iron out the design faults (by the end of WW2, it had got to Version -H having started as '-A'). The antenna locating/insulating ring in the case was fragile, the antenna was (in chrome form) too visibly shiny and had to be redesigned matt black, the complex 12 pole (yes, 12) send/receive switch gave endless trouble, water ingress was a perennial issue and on the early models. the microphone inserts got wet with the operator's breath and froze solid in cold weather.
All those battery-tube radios were weaklings. Everything in them was very high impedance so it didn’t take much moisture to dampen the signals. For example the Zenith "Trans-Oceanic" radio did not work well in Florida and other damp states-- the coils would get damp and lose effectiveness. Zenith recommended that you open the rear cover and leave the radio in the sun for a few hours if the radio got kinda deaf. The SCR was though not technically bad- a very clever use of five tubes, all used for different purposes in receive versus transmit. All switched by a 14-pole receive/transmit switch. The things they had to do back then!
Damn that's gotta be right up there with something like expecting the record/playback switch in cassette decks to record and play back a 15 second loop every pass.. indefinitely... Who come up with that one lol Edit now that I think about this a little... What are the alternatives... Electronic switching was out of the question, tubes aren't efficient at it at best, no transistors lol, relays *may* have been a solution (latching of course, battery killer if not)... Mechanical linkage going who knows all where and how...? From a "get r done" angle, a single multipole switch is about as good as it got... Revise for easily replaced unit but then you're still working with more connectors and all... It can get silly. I guess sometimes you really do just gotta let the problems come to you because the solutions are infinite in possibly when you're guessing what they are lol
@@MadScientist267 They also had issues with the switch insulation-- cloth-core bakelite and phenolic absorb moisture pretty well. And neither silver nor gold plating were in common use so the switches would get scratchy and intermittent.
Referring to your title, it may have been bad, but at the time it was state of the art. A lot of water had to flow under the bridge before we had semi-reliable communications during wars. In reality, it wasn't until the desert storm that we had reasonably reliable comms in war time for ground pounders. I don't know if you intended bias, but Moto pushed the state of the art for several decades. We are all used to having a cell in your pocket, but when I was growing up, having a phone small enough to wear on your wrist was only seen in the comics. I remember when marketing AM radios was by the transistor count, and if you were well off, you could maybe afford an AM/FM portable radio.
Great video! I actually enjoy it when someone does a video mentioning the Handie-Talkie just so we can yell at each other and get in a fight about the origin of "HT".
When I was a kid -- I was born in 1961 -- my parents would occasionly have to call _"Frank,"_ a TV repairman to come to our house in St. Petersburg, Florida to fix the TV. I remember looking inside the television as he was working on it and seeing all the vacuum tubes. That also reminds me of the the _Eckerd Drugstore_ {a drugstore chain in the USA} that I would shop at occasionally. Just inside the entrance there was a vacuum tube testing machine you could used for free to test vacuum tubes.
That was educational and enjoyable Lewis. I hope you continue with the history of MilComms to include Korea, Vietnam, to modern day ! British and American
Great video Lewis the handheld set reminds me of the one used by clint Eastwood in "Kelly's heros"......(fantastic movie)... now I know why he pulled that antenna up first then called his buddy hiding in the church tower of the village where they were about to rob the bank of its gold
I have been watching your vids for some time now..Just wanted to say they are very enjoyable as well as educational... I really enjoyed the pirate radio series you done...Im going through your older vids now..Keep up the good work!!
It would be interesting if you did some videos on the various radios sets used by the Allies and Axis during WW2. It's a topic about the war type that's not often discussed.
As well as internal dissimilarities, there are obvious differences between the Motorola (Galvin) SCR-300 (1942) and the British WS31 (1946) tactical set. Most apparent is that the WS31 lacks both a squelch AND a volume control. There ARE some (sorta) good reasons for these omissions on the British radio - to do with the FM 'capture' and 'threshold' effects as well as a soldier's natural tendency to knob twiddle. I used the WS31 in the Cadet Force (CCF) in the late 1960s - and having the set roaring in your headphones (yes, without squelch, FM sets only go quiet in the presence of received RF signal) was pretty bloody wearing after a few hours. Allegedly, a licensing dispute between Motorola and the British MoD meant that the WS31 is as near a copy of the American radio as could be made without infringing copyright. Other countries just purchased American made sets and France, at least, licensed the technology and made their own SCR-300s. I say allegedly - I heard this story from multiple sources but haven't been able to convincingly confirm it.
Thank you for this interesting film. Motorola always produced superb devices. I am Polish radio amateur and have the great fondness to old radio devices. There radio amateurs was the small museum of radio and military equipment in my club SP2ZBE. There were here also old radiotelephones mobile Motorola BC-611. I do not have the notion, where from they took hold in the Poland. I suppose, from they could come from the deliveries of the American Army ( parachuting drops ) for the soldiers of the Varsovian Rise in year 1944. But I do not have the certainty. I greet from Poland all radio amateurs.
Did you folks have Realistic brand 2 way radios in the UK? Here in America, they were very popular in the 80's and 90's for those who couldn't afford the expensive Motorola radios.
@@risvegliato Yeah, there's only a handful of RadioShack stores left in this US. Some of their radios were alright though. I still have a CB base station that's going strong from 1991.
All I know is none of these units ever failed when I played with my green army men. Those gray Nazi buggers with their fudge sickles (Hand Grenades) didn't stand a chance! Also, you'll take note @ 3:13 what kind of batteries these radios took. I've had people ask me about batteries: "How come there's AA, AAA, C and D Batteries but no B Batteries?" I always replied, "Because then if you asked for B Batteries, the person would think you are stuttering... But seriously B Batteries were a thing in WWII radios...
In spite of how poorly they work they now are HOT collector's items! They occasionally show up on ebay and go for a few hundred dollars in good condition.
I worked on a number of Motorola Radios, both hand portable and Mobile. They always made well built sets, using quality materials. I remember the HT200 Series, we still had some old stock in the storeroom, that was in the mid 80s. I always wanted to get my hands on one of those ww2 Hand sets to restore as a project for myself.
@@rupe53 I think I remember the MT- 500. They were quite rugged and expensive compared to other similar types. You could fit them with an encryption Module if I remember correctly. Very fancy for that period. We serviced them for HM Customs & Excise.
@@stephensmith4480 ... yup, rugged would be a good term. We never had one break in our fire department, although the rubber ducky antenna would fail every few years. We solved that by adding a piece or two of heat shrink tubing at the base where they split. Their more recent claim to fame is being used in Ghost Busters movie series.
@@rupe53 Ha ha, I didn`t know they were in Ghost Busters. When our Customs officers used them, they came with a special Motorola Cradle mount that we used to fix to the floor under the Drivers seat in a vehicle. When the Radio was inserted into this, it not only charged the Battery, but it connected it to the Vehicles own manufacturers Antenna that had been Stub Matched for Transmit Purposes. It could utilise either a normal hand Mic, or a hidden pin head Mic and a Mini PTT switch. All this would be hidden for covert use. I miss those days 😊
@@stephensmith4480 ... we had those too. I believe they were called a "converta-com" and we added a 50 watt power booster to that for expended range. At the time that package was half the price of buying a mobile vehicle radio.... then Motorola came out with the first of their smaller mobile sets. (don't recall the model) I did all of the installs for the department, and I was a busy guy in that era. I paid attention to antenna tuning and knew where the tweaks were in the sets. We were known for being able to talk all over the county... and then some. We actually got comments from the next state that we were crowding on their frequency, but I soon pointed out that we were assigned / licensed decades before they even had radios. That's the funny thing about rural areas with hills. You can talk for over 100 miles on low band when the weather is good.
I was the 1IC Serc. We used HT600's for 25 yrs. They worked - until the Batt's would not hold an 8 hr shift. A hazard - when you thought they worked - and the gent on the other end - never received anything. Thank you!
In the film Objective Burma with Errol Fyn they show a SC536 contacting an aircraft which would have never happened, the CRC-7 was a pilot survival radio which would have been the radio to do this, a ground to air radio and was also used by some airborne units during the war, where they invented the TRC-7 with two channels for ground to air, first set believed to be used and tested at Operation Varsity 1945 and used in Korea and by the French in Indo China, the French still using the SCR 536 till the 1980s with slight differences between WW2 modes and post war.
Sounds a lot like their current phones. We got new phones at work ,and I might as well send smoke signals because of the constant crashes. Nice when you're trying to use your GPS for directions, because you drive a lot for work.
It was the SCR-300 had an output of 300mW - not the SCR-536 Handy-Talkie. Output specs for the 536 vary by source (and, anyway, there's no agreed method of measuring 'output') but, almost all of them indicate an output power of 30-50mW with most sources going for 30mW. Looking at the schematic and the battery specs, there's NO way this little single-superhet AM radio matched the 300mW output of the SCR-300, the British WS18/68 (250mW) and similar backpack radios of the era.
I haven't measured it, but the DL92 output tube of the BC611-F can deliver 270mW in LF circuits. 320mW is the maximum permissible. So 300mW in intermittent RF duty seems realistic to me. The ERP will of course be much lower than 300mW - the antenna is too short to be efficient. But the transmitter output power of 300mW seems completely realistic to me. PA3ESY reports 35mA total anode current during transmitting at 100ish volt. So 300mW RF output does not seem impossible at all. My own experience with one of these, is that they give plenty of signal for 100% intelligiblility a kilometer away with an embankment between me and the receiver. The reason why there is no power difference between the SCR536 and the SCR300 despite the latter being much bigger, is that the SCR300 works on VHF, modulates FM, and is continuously tunable. That requires more tubes and space than a single channel AM shortwave TRX.
When I got my amateur radio license in 1974, I had a succession of radios starting with a Drake TR-22C VHF radio. Not quite hand-held. I did find an HT-200 at a hamfest fleamarket that I bought and used briefly on the 2M amateur VHF band. It was quickly replaced by another "surplus" VHF Motorola HT-220 which was an amazing radio. Great battery life, and built like a tank. You could grab the "rubber duckie" flexible antenna and wield that radio as a weapon and bludgeon people with it if you had to defend yourself. And then afterwards, use it call for help. Some of that quality construction continued on into Moto cell phones; my StarTac flip-phone was also built to some of those same quality and ruggedness standards. And then the market started a race to the bottom, and the build quality and ruggedness in consumer cell phones went to crap. These were no longer Motorola 2-way radios, and it was a sad result.
It seems _incredible_ to me that men went into combat with handheld and backpack 2-way radios that used *_vacuum tubes,_* {or *_valves_* as you call them in the UK}.
Somewhere in my stuff, I have an HT-200 and a pair of later MT-500 portables. I also had a lunch box sized Motorola unit with a shoulder strap but lost track of it. That one actually had a base loaded antenna for low band. (30 - 50 Mhz)
Rumor has it the German language use of "Handy" meaning "cell phone" was derived from the "Handy Talkie". Another case of "tech wasn't there yet, but the concept stuck" I guess?
I remember the ANPRC-25 radio that I had to carry at times when I was in the Australian Army Reserves....as for the first walkie talkie ... I would not be too hard on it from our future perspective. It clearly fulfilled at need that at the time there was nothing....
I have a rare, foldable, RDF loop antenna designed as an accessory for the SCR-536 and am in the process of fabricating the requisite antenna coupler for it.
In my school cadet force we had a 31 set and about six 88 sets, so when I saw the SCR300 in the video, the first thing that came to mind, was it looked identical to a 31 set! So now I know.
Interesting and factual, but the conclusion that Motorola's first handheld offering was "bad" isn't fair and is arguably incorrect. First and foremost, the RF product it replaced was non-existent, so from that standpoint it was an infinite improvement over the status quo. What invention wasn't "bad" in its first iteration, and what invention wasn't inferior to later improved versions? Was the first light bulb "bad" because it didn't incorporate LED technology? Transistors weren't even invented until years after the war, and the only alternative to Motorola's offering was a hardwired field phone. Given the available technology of the day and the timeline under which it was developed, Motorola's first handheld radio was nothing short of groundbreaking.
Yes the miniature battery powered tubes or valves were a brand new thing at that point. Some field portable radios before that were rather crude devices and other nations not really ahead of that. Japanese used alot of regenerative receivers paired with a one tube oscillator transmitter and such basic gear. With normal large size tubes.
Fully agree, this video is unnecessarily harsh on a device that REALLY pushed the limits of technology at the time. I was hoping to hear the word 'innovative' in the commentary, but sadly not forthcoming, only the clickbait-worthy word 'bad' in the title. BTW I love my BC-611's.
As strange as it may seem, field phones were still in widespread military use behind-the-lines into the 70's. More secure, more reliable than the military alternatives, and needed almost zero training to use. Indeed the Handie-Talkie was groundbreaking when other voice transmitters of the day were the size of a small suitcase and still needed an external power source.
That was a very cool video thank you.. i use Motorola T81 EXTREME walkie talkies on a very regular bases every week have done for months its interesting to see the first of there kind in this video
I have two of these old walkie talkies some of the first ones come Motorola my father got him at a military surplus store when I was about 10 years old
I think Motorola hit their peak in the '70's with the SyntorX first responder mobile radios. I tuned them up to 160 Watts on the 2 meter ham band and they weren't even working hard. The circuit boards were mounted in compartments in a cast aluminum chassis. You could stand on the radio while you were talking on it. They were, and still are a great rig.
I used this or it's brother as a young EMT in the mid-70s. I remember the aluminum chassis well. The battery module twisted off the bottom. Used this type right thru the 80s. At one place I worked one of the guys would literally kick it across the floor. Damn things held up thru that and much more.
I liked the movie “Money never sleeps” where Gordon Gekko is released from prison and his property is returned to him including the huge Motorola phone. I read later that phone was a sales dummy.
that radio could pass off as a brick phone with no Dialpad LOL. if you had to, you could have knocked the enemy out just by bumping him on the head and it probably wouldn't have taken much force lol.
The problem with this radio is that the wavelength that it was operating on was roughly 80 through 40 m. That means that you need a very large antenna. What they had on the handheld could not really be considered an antenna. It did allow some signal to leak out. But you typically like to use at least a quarter wavelength antenna. At 3 and 1/2 MHz that's about 66 ft. At 7 MHz it's 33 ft. The other thing you need to know about that part of the radio spectrum is that it is open to propagation via the ionosphere pretty much around the clock. During the day the noise level tends to be high especially down at 3 MHz and absorption will keep you from communicating very far via the ionosphere. At 7 MHz though you have to deal with signals that may be coming in from a few thousand miles away during the daytime and at night it's a worldwide band. The idea of putting a handheld radio in that part of the radio spectrum is so stupid that it's unbelievable that they actually did it and people were actually stupid enough to buy that product. During World War II they were making radios up into the UHF range. Ideally they would have put the handheld up in the VHF High part of the radio spectrum. A full half wave antenna is only about a yard and it is a very efficient radiator. The noise floor and that part of the radio spectrum is much less than the very high noise floor down in the lower HF portion of the radio spectrum. Now as far as the walkie-talkie at least they had the sense to move that up to VHF low you know the 30 to 50 MHz portion of the radio spectrum. On a backpack mounted radio you could put a efficient antenna for that part of the radio spectrum on a radio like that but in truth they still would be better with vhfi or even UHF. Typically if you're going to be operating in the 3 to 7 MHz part of the radio spectrum you're going to be using a much larger antenna, preferably a half wave and you're going to be operating at 100 Watts or more. You don't get on that part of the radio spectrum with a few hundred milliwatts into a rod that can't even be called an antenna. It is closer to a dummy load then it is to an antenna. Again you typically want to have an end fed halfway antenna on a handheld for maximum performance. You can get by with a quarter wave provided that the frequency is high enough so that the middle case of the radio can act as the other half of the antenna. So at 3 MHz you're talking about a 70 ft antenna for a quarter wave and then you need another 70 ft of metal in the case of the radio to act as the other half of the antenna. So obviously you do not put a handheld down on a long wavelength like that because you cannot put a proper antenna on a handheld radio. Even if you could you certainly want a lot more power then just a few hundred milliwatts. So this was basically a really stupid idea. I'm surprised that the person that wrote up the commentary that went with this video never mentioned that. It's a very important part of why this radio was so bad. This is not something that you would want to rely on. During World War II VHF and UHF we're in use so there's no technical reason why they could not have made a proper handheld radio. A similar situation was at your local Radio Shack store in the 70s and '80s. They were selling CB radio handhelds. A quarter wavelength at the 27 MHz band that is used by CB radios is 102 in. That's kind of a big antenna to put on a hand held radio. But that's only half the antenna. You still got another 102 in that you need to work into it. Not practical. Finally in the early 90s Radio Shack petitioned the FCC for some radio spectrum up at UHF where a quarter wave antenna is only 6 in. When you are building a handheld at UHF it is very easy to incorporate and efficient antenna. So these FRS radios using fm@uhf actually worked quite well. Somebody at Radio Shack was actually thinking and came up with a very good idea. All of a sudden you could get handheld radios that were cheap and they actually worked. As I say putting the handheld down at 3 to 7 MHz was really stupid. If you were going to operate at 3 to 7 MHz. You'd want a half wave dipole and at least 100 Watts of power a KW would be better. Especially if you are not using single Side Band which was not used during World War II except by the phone companies for transatlantic and other radio telephone links. During World War II or during D-Day and after radio was used to transmit voice using am. CW which is Morse code, radio teletype, fax, and also high-resolution pictures. The high-res pictures took a while to transmit but they were fairly high resolution and could be printed in newspapers. The pictures sent would also be Battlefield pictures, you remember a picture is worth a thousand words. There is a very interesting document put out by the military and it goes into very great detail about the communications that were used for D-Day and after. It's actually a very good read. If you are interested in that type of thing. In summary the problem with this handheld was the poor choice of frequency which meant that they could not put an effective antenna on that handheld, the power output of the handheld was quite low, and the part of the radio spectrum was fairly noisy. During the day you know 3 MHz has a high noise floor and a lot of times people avoid it during the summer. 7 MHz would be better but typically the stations that are operating in that frequency range are using at least 100 watts into a dipole. So that's going to completely Wipe Out the handhelds and the stations probably would never even hear the handhelds. Just a really bad part of the spectrum to be running low power with almost no antenna. I would have thought that Motorola would have known better. Whoever came up with this really had their head up there ass and knew nothing about radio.
I had two BC-611 Handie Talkies (& the associated alignment kit) plus an Australian A-510 transceiver back in 1978 that I crystalled up on the Air Cadet frequency of 5.245 MHz. They worked great up to 3 miles, the best thing was they were 'Green' 😉
Strange that with all their history and experience, Motorola never made ham equipment. I have heard a lot of fellow hams calling their HT's handie-talkies.
15 is a bit optimistic. I can only really make it 12 miles at ground level in the one direction using 10 watts from a mobile to a 35 ft high antenna at base.
The SCR-300 had a long and distinguished career in the US (and other countries) military(s). Not so the SCR-536 'handy-talkie' which had largely been junked by American combat units within 10 years. Many SCR-536s (but not SCR-300s) were offloaded onto the French and French colonial units for their 1950s Vietnam ('Indochine') campaigns. I also read (possibly in the Max Hastings' book) that the 536 performed poorly in Korea, 1952/3. The SCR-300 is really the base model from which the successful US AN/PRC-8 (9/10) and AN/PRC-25 developed later.
@@briang.7206 The AN/PRC-77 is the first fully transistorised tactical radio from the SCR-300 ancestry. Even into the 1960s, vacuum tubes were still regarded as essential in some parts of those radios. Vacuum tubes get a bad press. They competed successfully with newfangled transistors for nearly two decades
@@briang.7206 Yup. Still can't be beat valves for very high power outputs. Were your radar pulse tubes (presumably ship-borne) water cooled? The vacuum tubes used in very high power AM/LW broadcast transmitters (250-1000 kW) are inevitably water cooled. The anodes (plates) would vaporise otherwise
I once owned a pair of SCR536 Handie Talkies. You really could shout further than they could transmit. And they ate batteries for breakfast. Nowadays, really cheap and tiny children's walkie talkies perform far better than those old beasts. Times certainly have changed.
When you put it into perspective . . . . . calling it 'bad' certainly is influenced by our standards of today. In that very day of time, if you were on the battlefield and this device worked at least once when you needed it, truly lives were saved (as well as lost to the enemy)
This radio had a range of approximately 100-300 meters in a field, flat terrain without metal objects. It reached above one kilometer, usually 2 - 3 km, while the operators were standing in salted sea water. 2 - 3 miles is an incredibly high range, today it is a competitive achievement for portable stations in flat, lowland terrain. In the past, there were no problems with interference from electronic devices, everyone who interfered with radio waves - according to the old law, was either imprisoned or shot for treason to the homeland, i.e. - for obstructing communication. Today there is anarchy. Both GSM and other standard radio systems are constantly increasing their power to overcome interference from illegal electronic devices. The currently used UHF has the advantage of penetrating through small electrically conductive spaces and the communication range increases significantly as the altitude increases. However, it is very toxic, hence attempts were made not to transmit such frequencies to people without operator training, and to use low short wave frequencies, such as CB radio, i.e. the former military band. The SCR-300 had a range of about 3-4 km in a flat, lowland field, it was a modern VHF backpack radio. Currently, the latest backpack radios have 5-10 W of power and achieve a range of 7-10 km in the field, lowlands. Unfortunately, they have worse broadband antennas.
Hi Lewis, I am certainly no Radio expert, but you did say at the beginning of your video, "that the SCR 536 two-way had only 1 Channel and therefore easy for the enemy to monitor", but then went on to say a little bit later "they had 50 Channels"? So which is it? I'm confused, please explain.🤔
My understanding is that it covered 50 channels but would only work on 1 that it was “pre-programmed” for want of a better word. A bit like a crystal controlled radio would.
Not much left to be discovered about electronics historically with the only 'secrets' unrevealed being manufacturing processes for the tiny chips being made today. When the HT came along Motorola was the leader in making small rugged car radio receivers and transmitters so they were a natural choice here, and everyone else caught up later.
The GE "PE series" used thick-film hybrid ICs when Motorola was still using discrete devices in their HT220 design ... I will have to post some pics from the GE PE series service manual ...
The big "Bat Winged Terrorists", an internal joke held by ex Motorolans ( former dealers). Still have an HT90 but it has been incorporated into a PacPL cross band repeater for mobile use. Have a collection of the MX300 series portables with chargers and convertacomms, aka vehicular chargers and interface allowing for an external microphone, speaker and for some, a special power amplifier to boost tx signal levels. The pride of the MX collection is an MX 360S, a full size synthesized portable. Case sizes were determined by the options one ordered at time of purchase. There were even three additional radios based on the MX chassis, a rack mount low power repeater, a "lunch box style" portable radio as well as the infamous FBI repeater in a Halliburton aluminum case which was equipped with DVP encryption, an internal battery and power amplifier as well as an unusual duplexer the would accommodate the eight different channel combinations. In the early days Motorola pretty much had a standard configuration for volume, squelch, audio impedance levels and channel selection in both their mobile and handheld line. Many armatures in the states would swap out the older crystal chassis for the newer Warris line of radios (HT600 series) which were synthesized in the repeaters and vehicular repeaters, a truly fun time for armatures!
