Just a bit of green manpack operating over the lunch hour from a nearby hill/mountaintop. PRC-174 was working well, made coast to coast QSO's on 17m and 10m and managed a check in to the maritime net on 20m. Not bad for 20W SSB and a 10 foot whip.

way cool.

Excellent set-up.

Its a bit heavy with the big batt-pack I have in it but still lugable.

It looks to be in great shape.  They still have purchasable battery packs for those rigs?



 

No, not really, you might get lucky and find an old nicd pack, but they are largely unobtanioum. Most milpack guys just roll their own. I've got a 21Dcell Nimh pack in that, pretty straightforward to make, maybe an hour or two of work with the soldering iron. Its about 2-2.5x more capacity compared to the old factory NiCd packs for about the same weight.

Very cool.

One day ....


What's the details on the whip?

Whip is a bog standard at-271 whip ~10 ft long or so. With a prc25 flex base. And the nearly unobtanium ab10 swivel mount for the whip (I really like the swivel base). I sometimes use the old prc74 whip with the center loading coil, but my 174's tuner is kinda a picky bitch when it comes to tuning it above 20m.

Saw that a military surplus place had a completely refurbished (electronically) one for $950.  As a milsurp rifle collector, I am tempted.



 

FWIW the collectability of military radios seems to have gone through the roof compared to the the heydays of military surplus (1946-1970-ish)


A LOT of hams back in the day pretty much HAD to go the surplus route because civvie stuff was either unavailable of just plain damned expensive.

Surplus radios were plentiful and cheap.

There were a lot of ham shacks that looked like B-17 radio rooms

When I was a kid, there were Army-Navy surplus store everywhere. ALL kinds of surplus WWII and Korea stuff (before Vietnam got going).

When we played Army, we were outfitted in the correct stuff!



 

Yeah, there are few places where the PRC174's are still available, there is a bit of debate if they are actually Israeli surplus units or from south america. Ask the dealer if its just the bare transceiver though. Most of them do not come with a battery box, though there was a gent who had some functional aftermarket boxes made up. They also will likely not come with a side antenna mount, again there are aftermarket versions available (they work fine, they just don't swivel like the unobtanium factory unit). Also it will likely not come with a whip, but those along with american audio accessories are still reasonable to find.  And you will have to figure out a way to provide 24V to the set, most guys use either D cell or C cell NiCd packs or Nimh packs for portable use. I'm personally looking into getting into some lithium packs for mine in the future.

And you still can! The vast majority of milsurp radios are from 60's and 70's. There is very little modern stuff out there, and the modern radios are absurdly expensive for what they are. The vast majority of my collection are 1960's and 1970's units with a very few 80's era radios. The vast majority of HF radios guys are schelpping around are 70's vintage designs (i.e. PRC 104,174, 515, 320, etc). Pretty much anything newer than the 70's (and even alot of those radios) are being sent to be shredded instead of surplussed, as a result IMO most HF manpacks are absurdly overpriced for what they are these days, especially the US built ones since there are so few around.

That's an awesome setup.  How does one go about getting into radios like that? I searched fleabay but nothing but an antenna adapter came up.  Where do you find the radios?  

How much coin do I need to earmark for a comparable rig?

174s run from like 700 and up on fleabay. I think a dealer has on for ~1k for a tested one. Currently the 174s are probably the best deal going. You will likely need to source a battery box, and whip adapter. Also build a battery pack to get one going. Generally mil packs are not turn key affairs. Most working 70s mil packs are usually 1k and up.  80s are 1500-2500 if you can find one. Semi modern stuff is like 5k if you can find it.

ETA I totally don't recommend mil packs for ham novices. You will likely be your own repairman, and parts are generally hard or impossible to find. Also be real wary of stuff on ebay. Be sure you do your homework with regard to ancillaries like antennas, hand sets etc. depending on the radio they are either easy to find or nearly impossible.

^^This!^^

Way cool Harlikwin.

Thanks, its fun playing radio outside with minimal power.