[MRCA] Torn Fu. restoration

[Ray Fantini]

Back in the seventies and eighties I remember that the state of Delaware had low band operations for the state police. They had one channel that the base in each county transmitted on and a second channel that the cars transmitted on. Most of the cars also had a second transmit crystal that allowed them to transmit on the base frequency to talk car to car. As late as the early eighties they were still using old RCA Supercarphones and GE Progress lines but that’s another story.

Couple of the legendary stories back in the day was about the GE Porta mobile radios that they had in some cars that if you were able to see the other car you were not able to talk to them. And how this all came to a head when they had a natural resources officer get stuck in the swamps of Kent County but was not able to reach anyone in Delaware Porta Mobile but did contact a station in the Carolinas and had them call back to Delaware and send help.

After that they did a major upgrade to VHF high band but kept the same two channel model. In order to save money they decided that they did not want to buy base stations for the three counties and instead built equipment racks that each had a 110 Watt GE radio attached to a panel, RCA DC remote control electronics and best of all this was tied to a deep cycle battery at the base of the rack with a Sears Craftsman battery charger to power this entire mess. In the early nineties they went to a 800 MHz system that was mostly installed by Motorola but I was away from the state by then so have no idea what they have today or if any of it works or not. Delaware is a weird little state.



Ray F/KA3EKH
________________________________
From: Mike Feher <n4fs at eozinc.com>
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 7:49 PM
To: 'Tim' <timsamm at gmail.com>; 'Mkdorney' <mkdorney at aol.com>
Cc: Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu>; mrca at mailman.qth.net <mrca at mailman.qth.net>; tbryan at nova.org <tbryan at nova.org>
Subject: RE: [MRCA] Torn Fu. restoration


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Back in the early 60’s. I could work all six continents within and hour running low power AM. When 10 opens up, it opens up. Lots of fun. Probably still have the QSL cards to prove it. 73 – Mike



Mike B. Feher, N4FS

89 Arnold Blvd.

Howell NJ 07731

848-245-9115



From: mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net <mrca-bounces at mailman.qth.net> On Behalf Of Tim
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 7:14 PM
To: Mkdorney <mkdorney at aol.com>
Cc: Ray Fantini <RAFANTINI at salisbury.edu>; mrca at mailman.qth.net; tbryan at nova.org
Subject: Re: [MRCA] Torn Fu. restoration



Ha!  Well, maybe.  During WWII German armored units in North Africa were reportedly being heard by hams in the US at times.  Presumably Lo VHF AM...

I don't doubt it..

Tim

N6CC



On Fri, May 29, 2020 at 2:02 PM Mkdorney <mkdorney at aol.com<mailto:mkdorney at aol.com>> wrote:

I’m about 3000 miles away from California, so I don’t thing the Torn Fu.d2 has quite the range to reach.



Mark D.

WW2RDO



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