Military radio receivers, which were often also used in commercial operations, or commercial sets that were adapted for military use, can be found in the Military Receivers section.
Here you will find description of some sets from my collection, which in respect to sets from foreign countries is far from beeing complete.
For a better overview of military communication technology that was used in the Swiss Army, I recommend my sibling website armyradio.wiki. Here I will only present the classic receivers used by the Swiss Army which have been made by Swiss manufacturers; the Swiss Armed Forces used also a lot of equipment from foreign production.
Military equipment
Nation | ||
---|---|---|
German military equipment | The sets of the German Reichswehr and, in the years of the Second World War, of the German Wehrmacht were made by the most important German manufacturers of communications equipment and usually bear abbreviations corresponding to their intended use. After the end of the Second World War, with the integration of the Federal Republic of Germany into NATO, NATO equipment was also used by the Bundeswehr. In some cases, American surplus equipment with a German front panel was also used by government agencies. | |
Equipment of the French Armed Forces | Equipment of the French Armed Forces, Forces armées françaises, was mainly of French origin and, in the years after the Second World War, also from Allied surplus. Some of the sets were produced in France under a U.S. licence. | |
Equipment of the Armed Forces of Italy | The Italian Armed Forces used equipment of Italian origin and, in the years after the Second World War, also from Allied surplus. | |
Equipment of the British Armed Forces | In the early years, the radios of the British Armed Forces were designated as Wireless Set No.xx. | |
Swiss Army Equipment | With the new nomenclature of the Swiss Army, receivers were allocated a E-6xx designation, transceivers SE-xxx and direction finders P-7xx. All the details on my website armyradio.wiki | |
Equipment of the U.S. Armed Forces | The radio sets of the U.S. Armed Forces usually bear designations for the equipment itself and designations for complete systems consisting of various individual devices, such as complete radio stations. |
In the sixties to eighties, especially American military radios were often sold as Surplus, at a fraction of the original price and usually much cheaper than an equivalent radio from the amateur radio market.
Since the military devices were only suitable to a limited extent due to uncommon operating voltages and certain other parameters (different frequency ranges, only USB instead of switchable LSB/USB operation, headphone instead of loudspeaker operation), they were often modified. In many cases, this made the radios more useful for radio amateurs, but often, unfortunately, they were made worse, with cheap components, mains power supplies were installed instead of the dynamotor power supplies, holes were drilled in the front panel to add antenna sockets and often the circuitry was changed.
What was practical at the time when these modifications were done, today it seems like a sacrilege from the point of view of the historically interested collector. So nowadays, untouched sets in their original condition are traded at much higher prices than modified, „tinkered“ ones or those with over-painted cabinets.
A popular guide in Germany was the Surplus - Manual by Bernd Jacobi. It is provided here for historical interest, not to encourage hobbyists to tinker with their historical equipment (often the sale of an unmodified original unit fetches enough money to buy two nice amateur radios…), but to recognise and, at best, reverse the modifications that were commonly done at the time.
Literature
Das Surplus Handbuch, Band 1, Bernd Jacobi, Verlag für technische Literatur W. Conrad
Das Surplus Handbuch, Band 2, Bernd Jacobi, Verlag für technische Literatur W. Conrad