More Toys For The Collection

On arrival at work this morning, as I passed through reception I spied a box on the counter perporting to have at some time past contained spare parts for Landrovers. I needed not to look at the address label, as I knew immediately it was for me!

I knew this as I was expecting a parcel from Dom at LRseries Landrover Spares near York. The fact the box was there when I got there meant it arrived yesterday - next day delivery!

Now the photo above is of more than just this delivery from Dom, as around lunchtime I received an email from reception stating there was another parcel for me. The contents of that one have been added. Im not going to talk about that second box yet.

Doms box contained three items. One is just a spare handset clip. One of my handsets is missing a clip that would be rather useful to add to it. Another item in the box is actually several items - the Elevated Ground Spike Antenna kit, all complete and in good order, including the satchel. And the last item is the PRC-350 below

Including a battery cassette, which needs fourteen C cells, this is the 2W VHF radio. As you can see its pretty battered, and was supplied on a very much 'what you see is what you get' basis. Now, had this been an Icom or a Yaesu amateur set, i'd have given it a wide berth! But, I know something of the mentality of the average Tom - the fact that this is battered tells me that it spent a lot of time in use, not stuck gathering dust at the back of the sigs cupboard! That hints that the squaddies considered it a reliable set.

I am of course prepared for the fact it is likely to have issues. The battle antenna socket for a start is very loose and worn, but I have some spares of those. So far, the most I have done is to croc clip a 15V supply to it, and do some basic checks. In * mode, I get noise from the handset. With the antenna on, in L and W modes on Tx, I get sidetone. It seems to work. Tomorrow, if I have time, i'll put it on the test set and give it a proper going over.