1970s CF Radios

[maple_leaf_eh]

I want to echo Rob Love's comment about 1x RT524 per troop vehicle. Add a Prick 77 set and maybe a pair of T-43 field telephones with WD1 wire. The risk is overthinking the restoration based on possibilities rather than realities.

The facts of life in my small town militia unit were simple: we were 100 miles from our support base, the regular support staff were more worried about advising the CO, RSM, Chief Clerk and QM than policing the troops. We didn't have a fulltime tech stores guy, so we were on our own.

Getting ready for an exercise was a juggle between - corraling ungrounded vehicles, enough guys and enough working radios. As soon as we discovered that the coax cable to the AMU and 10' antenna also connected to the 77 and the handset mike also worked on the RT524, we were in business back and forth. The 10' antenna fits the gooseneck base (I think) and it would point back towards the CP without radiating to the enemy or grounding on the vehicle.

The 5/4 CP might have had 2 radios but most nets had the one frequency for all squadron business. The other reality was frequencies were allocated per unit, and we had maybe 5 or 6 to use. Undisciplined use of the spectrum was hammered into us because no one wanted to miss a radio check. There was no reason to get complicated - and what would a second net accomplish without a mast or ground plane antenna to talk backwards? We never had either.