Saturday, June 1, 2013

Vintage Korean and Vietnam war Survival Radio

A few weeks ago a friend gave me a couple of old tube type portable survival radios that had been sitting in his basement. The radios are both Hoffman RT-159/URC-4 models. One is Army green and the other bright yellow. Both are in pretty good condition. They are dual band transceivers set up to transmit and receive on the air band emergency channels 121.5 Mhz and 243.0 Mhz. One of the coolest things are the telescoping dipole antennas that you can unfold and set for either VHF or UHF.

I started to do some research on the history of this radio and found it dates back to the early 1950's. One of these days I will have to try to find a power source to try and see if they will function (though I better use a dummy load, as both frequencies are still the main aircraft emergency channels). If you know anything about these radios, please leave a comment on this blog entry or e-mail me through my QRZ e-mail address.

Here is a link to an interesting article about the Hoffman RT-159A/URC-4: http://www.eetimes.com/design/power-management-design/4006313/Retro-wireless-Hoffman-RT-159A-URC-4-survival-radio


73- Tony - KC2VER


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