[David] picked up a Motorola Micom radio from eBay. These are US State Department surplus, but apparently the 125 Watt HF units are top-of-the-line at a tenth of the sticker price. The one hangup is that they’re headless; you can’t control them without additional hardware. But the Internets are often kind to the hobbyists, and this is no exception. You can get software to run the radio from a PC thanks to the Micom Yahoo Group. [David] took that software as an example and built his own stand-alone interface. [Cached version of the page]

Found this post at Hackaday.

Linkage

Very interesting: I currently have no HF capability, and this sounded like a great opportunity, but can't seem to find these radios for under $1,000 anymore after this article hit in June. Anybody know where to get them at less than $200 still?