[Milsurplus] Randy Zelick: PRC-66 on the 222 ham band?

[Randy Zelick]

Hi Al and others,

I did indeed successfully use a PRC-66 on the 220 MHz ham band.  Worked
fine, and I really did not tune it to optimize for operation at the low
end of its frequency range. Measurements revealed a small loss in
sensitivity and power out, but very minimal. Having said that, I found the
set to be relatively low performance. One thing I did which might be
interesting to duplicate is use a GRR-24 as a base station receiver for
the PRC-66. There is a matching exciter and power amp to the GRR-24, but I
forget the nomenclature at the moment. The power amps show up all the time
at swaps and are often converted to 440 MHz. (there is the GRR-23 and
matching 140 MHz exciter/PA too).

In general, using tactical sets as ham radios is fun but not very useful.  
You can go with six meters (PRC 25, 77, 68, etc) and suffer heavy weight,
and long antennas. The commercial 2-way folks figured out a long time ago
it is a poor choice to use 50 MHz for portable operation because of
antenna inefficiency. This is why there were so many pac-rt vehicular
repeater units made. You have a UHF portable which talks to a micro
repeater in the trunk and keys the low band radio there.

On the other hand, you can use PRC-66 and other 220 MHz air band radios
with short, convenient antennas and in principle greater antenna
efficiency *except* you are on AM and in an urban environment the noise
kills you. The military could have included noise suppression, but I guess
when the application is calling in air strikes on a battlefield, urban
noise pollution is not a major design point.

Later,

=Randy=

-- 
R. Zelick				email: zelickr@pdx.edu
Department of Biology			voice: 503-725-3086
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