[Milsurplus] Hand Held radios

[aGEnuine ham]

Group:

The recent thread on BC-611 successors brings back a memory which may be
remotely relevant here.  About the time the URC-4s started becoming
available, and only the elite had them, there must have been an article
in some magazine about building a two (battery) tube transceiver for 2
meters.  This would have been in the mid 50s. 1U4 and 3V4 maybe.    I no
longer recall the origin of this, but I configured the circuit and
batteries to fit in a (IIRC) 2� X 2� X 12 inch minibox, and mounted a
mike and earepiece sawed off a handset in a form reminiscent of the 611. 
Word of this marvelous radio circulated around, and I was asked to make a
presentation about it to the local radio club.  (they were in as bad a
need of speakers then as now).  Anyway, it turned out to be the best
attended meting of the time, I had numerous offers to buy my 2 radios,
and a half-dozen guys duplicated the idea in various forms.  Anyway, that
size and form factor seems to have been the most desirable configuration
for a radio back then.  It was a modulated oscillator/superregen, legal
in those days, similar in circuit to the Abbot DK-3 of WW2 WERS fame.  

I recall several of the low VHF radios which have been described, some of
which had battery tubes, and operated from various combinations of
battery and utility power, but I don't recall any which were the size and
shape of the 611.  My question out of all this is were there any later HF
hand held radios after the 611?  Or did everything migrate higher in
frequency as circuit efficiency up there matured?  And does anyone else
remember the construction article about the two meter, two battery tube
transceiver?

73,
George
W5VPQ

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