Small Unit Communications

My Small Unit "Grab and Go Kit"

I have a fixed bias in favour of Motorola JEDI-series VHF handy-talkies. I love the Motorola HT1000, JT1000 and the MT2000 radios. They are proven by decades of use in the field by law-enforcement and emergency services. Since they cover 133-174 MHz they can be used for MURS, Business Band, 2-M Ham, and a host of public-safety frequences as well as receiving the National Weather Service broadcasts.

I have devised an emergency "grab and go" kit that is held in a 20mm ammo can.

Inside is:

(4) Motorola HT1000s VHF - 16 channel 5 watt radios with antennas, spare batteries, AC battery charger, DC battery charger, manuals (both operator, theory and repair), (1) Panasonic Toughbook CF-25 running Debian Linux and MS-DOS 7.10 (dual boot), AC laptop charger, DC laptop charger, Programming Software for HT1000s (RSS), Programming cable for HT1000s. I also have sma-bnc adapters in case I need to rig a field-expedient VHf antenna to extend the range while stationary though I'm still looking into antenna designs. I also include sufficient quantity of dessicant to deter moisture.

The logic behind keeping all of this in an ammo can is that in an EMP burst, we will hopefully have communcations capabilty when needed. The drawback of all this is I have to unpack it once every month and charge the laptop battery, the radio batteries, and function test everything. It's quite a pain.

Note that using these radios without a repeater means we're pretty much limited to a few miles depending on terrain but since it's a small unit there is very little likelihood that we would be very far from each other in a tactical environment.

You should also note these are not the primary radios each member of the team carries.

I'll have pictures of the kit up soon.