[MRCG] Chinese Military Radios

[Geoff Fors]

I posted a bunch of photos of Chinese military radios over on the Yahoo 
ChineseMilitaryRadioSystems Group page.  There are some interesting photos 
of military surplus Chinese radios for sale over on the xbabc.com web pages 
although there are far fewer offerings than 8-10 years ago.

The D81 set is like a solid state GRC-9 all in one package.  The receiver 
section began as a GRC-9 clone, the 139, and grew into a solid state version 
as 139A, and as a FET version on the 139B. It's probably the most practical 
pack HF radio in its class other than the 2W-2C set, which has everything on 
one panel and is about the same size.

The VHF FM set originally called "Mercury Walk" by Col. Howard in his 
Electric Radio articles is a translation error.  The correct name is more 
accurately "Mercury Walkie Talkie."  And there were a bunch of models. 
Mercury was a famous radio factory in China, something like Zenith or 
Motorola would be here.  Unfortunately the Mercury VHF radios were somewhat 
thrown together design-wise during the Cultural Revolution and used mainly 
in the Vietnam War of 1978 (China vs. Vietnam) with thousands never used and 
filling depot warehouses.   The spectral purity is really rather bad on 
transmit.  There are a bunch of them in this country and how they got in is 
some sort of mystery as they don't meet type acceptance.  Apparently the 
ones here were dumped into a container of unrelated Chinese military surplus 
and got through customs.  FCC and Customs at one time were expressing 
interest in finding out who imported them.

Geoff
WB6NVH