German WW2 Radio Project

[Sgt_Smith]

Hi everyone!
I'm not sure if I'm on the right place or on the right tracks so to speak so forgive if I'm not!
My Father in Law is and has been for a number of years (since 1969 in fact) a keen WW2 re-enactor. Now he's not one for the standing about re-enacting, no he likes to go with a bang so to speak! As you can imagine in the interest of safety and co-ordination being able to communicate is a must. The difficulty here is the nature of his hobbie means he needs to appear authentic, so as you can imagine a German Panzer Grenadier from WW2 would look odd with a 21st century walkie talkie! So as a result he's roped me into trying to modfiy some old FM based two way radios to fit into authentic looking cases (Photo's will follow when I get some). It seems feasible but my question is this: Are they any kit's for building a working two way radio from scratch? As it maybe just as easy to do that and custom make the internals to fit the cases available, space is deffinately not an issue! As I said above is there any kit's or could you point me in the right direction with this. I'm more than happy to get my hands dirty as it were, (If you knew my father in law like I do you don't have much choice!lol)
so am more than prepared to wield a soldering iron!

[5B4AJB]

It wouldn't be hard to wire the original microphone through the front panel to a (connector) with a new handheld inside, take the antenna connection to the old antenna connector (and use the old, original whip, wouldn't make much difference what frequency the whip is tuned to if it's only very local contcts).

I wouldn't go as far as building new transceivers when you can buy a pair of short range handhelds for about $40 - just make up some connectors from the original antenna, mic & speaker and plug them into the antenna, mic & speaker jacks on the handhelds.

Sounds like a nice little project...

[Sgt_Smith]

Hi thanks for your reply! The cases will be fabricated from scratch so as such there won't be an excisting aerial. We shall fabricate an aerial to fit that looks the part as well as doing the job. We do have some genuine German throat mics from the war but we're not sure if we would be able to make them work with newer radio systems available today. Should we go down the build route wheres the best place to look/go? Is there any kits of sort?

[5B4AJB]

You could always gut the mic and fit it with "modern" kit if you don't mind cannibalising.

Might even be worth finding the impedance of the mic (probably 300 Ohm) and using a small audio transformer (or amplifier), convert it to 1300 Ohms (again, probably, what the modern radio uses).

I would use a non working / seriously damaged WW2 radio and just fit new stuff inside, not build new - that's a lot of work for the same effect, probably cost more money as well as time too...