[Milsurplus] Red Star Radio and such

[Hue Miller]

Ken Lakin KD6B was at the hamfest trying to sell his 
Chinese handcrank generators for the 102E set. He 
told me that altho Red Star has kept a low profile lately
he still has 102E sets to sell. Sez Red Star has other 
import business from China and so radios are just not 
a priority. Ken had for display a 1.6 - 5.6 backpack 
CW/ USB set. Had 4 freq switches, one MHz and 3 kHz
like the PRC-47. This thing was about half the total height
of a PRC-10. Ken said it actually had no nomenclature 
number on it, nameplate said only "USB Radio" or something
like that. He says Red Star seems to know a lot about 
the radios and their usage but not at the engineering level.
Said he got the "USB Radio" out by installments as the 
China gov't seems to prohibit its export as something ??
critical ?? Don't understand. He also described a "73 Set"
which seems to cover same freq as 81 Set but he describes
it as better radio. Also sez the all-in-one package 102E set
to be very rare. I think he also said the 81 Set backpack 
radio was impossible to net on CW; when you switch to xmt
(or recv??) the freq ends up offset by more than a few kHz,
as there is insufficient buffering on the trans. oscillator. He also
said the "USB set" in CW mode injects a tone, common enuff
system, tho in this set not a sinewave and so sounds on the air
like A2 mode, which may be a feature when working to AM sets.
However i was thinking, it seems with China radios there is always
a fly to be noticed in the soup. -Hue Miller