----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Foley" <redmenaced@yahoo.com>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 3:28 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Military Radios?
>
> --- Ryan M Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> > What do folks generally do with their military
> > radios that they have
> > working? Is it a bad idea to use them for real in
> > events when talking
> > to other folks in parades or convoys in events? Is
> > it a bad idea to
> > use them at all?
> ++++++
> Ah!
>
> That first question that leads to an Amateur Radio
> license!!
>
> Why, YES! We use military surplus radio equipment
> quite often!
>
> My 400 watt T-368 is great for talking to anyone in
> the country on AM or CW, that's Morse Code.
>
> As a matter of fact Mark Blair, Richard Notton, and
> Nolan Lee are good candidates for answering questions
> about military radios.
>
I appreciate the vote of confidence but I have to say the UK is very different
from the US. The biggest problem here is size and the authorities have a huge
job trying to find allocations for commercial services.
Many people do have appropriate radios in their MVs but most are inoperative,
the possession of a working (capable) but unlicensed transmitter is regarded as
a serious offence and the authorities are starting to take an interest in MV
shows where this equipment is on sale and often people are fooling around with
pack-sets on whatever channel they seem to talk to each other on.
Intruding on a coveted ham band will get a report to the authorities instantly
owing to the vast number of ears monitoring for just this eventuality.
Ad hoc convoys usually use the cess-pit zoo of CB here, lower than the US and
10KHz spaced FM or the low power, hand-portable only, 8 channel UHF allocation
available to a common spec and licence free throughout the EU, known as EURO 446
(it is 446MHz).
For my part, our entourage uses commercial UHF units on commercial channels
since I hold the company licence and thus avoiding all the other troubles,
owning a two way radio comms company I would wouldn't I. :-)
Richard
Southampton - England
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