[Spooks] Spooks Digest, Vol 78, Issue 26

[Beaumont, Paul]

I should have said, these Embassy radios are not small. The one I saw was capable of running 1 -2kW of RF, the inline antenna filters were the size of barrels. 

The working parts were housed in cabinets 5ft high by 4ft wide by 2ft6in deep. It filled a room. The operating console was the size of two Kenwood TS850s stacked on each other and had a decent digital display.

I also have a Russian Receiver, the R-326, details here:  http://www.qsl.net/ik1xpv/r326/r326.htm
It weighs around 12kg, doesn't drift and remains accurate from switch on. 19 valves all off 2.4v dc.
It's built like a battleship.

Regards
Paul

________________________________________
From: spooks-bounces at mailman.qth.net [spooks-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of The Doctor [drwho at virtadpt.net]

Beaumont, Paul wrote:

> Embassy radio equipment, especially from the Iron Curtain,  is nothing
> like Ham or in some cases, Military gear. It can be accessed remotely,
> reprogrammed and retransmit messages without any human intervention.
> They are really nice bits of kit too.

A couple of years ago at a conference (The Last HOPE, July 2008) there
was a panel on unusual communications methods ("Off the Grid Voice/Data
Communications", by bernieS and Skip Avery, and I think one or two other
people).  Near the end of the panel one of the presenters held up a
shoebox sized shortwave transmitted that he called a grenade (if he gave
the official name for it, I don't remember what it is off the top of my
head). It was claimed that they were very sturdy and had been used to
set up numbers stations a few times in the past.

I don't know anything else about it, but visually it seemed to fit the
description of military RF gear: big, sturdy, chunky, and probably able
to take a 20 foot fall without breaking.

If anyone's interested, the audio of the presentation can be downloaded
(officially, legally, and for free) from here:

http://www.thelasthope.org/media/audio/64kbps/Off_the_Grid_VoiceData_Communications.mp3

It's near the end of the recording; if anyone knows anything more about
this transmitter I'd be interested in asking a couple of questions about it.

- --

The Doctor [412/724/301/703]