Clansman military radios

Clansman was the name given to a Combat Radio System used by the UK armed forces from the late '70s to around 2009, when it was replaced by the current Bowman system. It comprised a range of man portable and vehicle mounted radios in the HF (2 - 30MHz), VHF (30 - 76MHz) and UHF (225 - 400MHz) frequency bands.

The HF and VHF versions are of interest to radio amateurs for the HF, 6M and 4M bands and are becoming very collectable. The UHF kit is AM only, and has no real amateur radio application. Disposals by the Ministry of Defence have now ceased and inevitably the price of available kit has begun to rise significantly. 

I acquired my first Clansman radio, a PRC320 HF man-pack, around a year ago. It's an excellent piece of kit, although it is heavy and somewhat basic compared to commercial and amateur transceivers. It is however extremely rugged and can be thrown around, used in the pouring rain or have beer spilled on it without suffering any damage.

A PRC320 similar to mine, with whip antenna connected.

The PRC320 was primarily designed as a man portable radio but it could also be installed into vehicles. The original military uses were to provide ground wave communications over short distances using either the whip antenna or an end-fed vertical, or sky wave communications over greater distances using a dipole.

The built in Antenna Tuning Unit is somewhat limited and will only work with the whip or end fed wire antenna. Dipole antennas are assumed to be resonant on the frequency in use; these are connected directly to the transceiver, bypassing the built in ATU.

My 320 in fixed-station use during a recent camping trip

For amateur radio an external ATU (in my case an MFJ-949e) is useful and will allow a wide range of antennas to be used with the PRC320. The maximum RF output is 30W, on CW, AM or USB.  One of the most common modifications is to add LSB; there are various was of doing this, most of which apparently work very well.

As with any form of electronic equipment, older examples may need a bit of work to restore reliability; some Clansman radios are 30 years old, and even military grade components can degrade in this time! To a fan of radio restoration, this is part of the fun in owning kit like this.

There are a number of excellent websites and user forums covering repair, modification and use of Clansman radios, so I won't add to them here. I have come up with a couple of modification ideas of my own, so these will get blogged later.

Keep listening！