Hallicrafters HT-1E Village Radio

[DiGilio]

I saw this Hallicrafters HT-1E Village Radio on ebay. It ended but I noticed 2 odd things about it. First Ive never seen a HT-1E with a name plate and it has 2 channels. I have not seen many HT-1s but the ones I have seen did not have these features. Does anyone have more info on this? Im just curious about it.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=400032216017

 

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EDIT

 

Now that I look at it, it looks like it has FM1-B internals. Could this of been done for the antenna?

[Bob Hudson]

Interesting set and the link has quite a story.

 

 

A writer at http://www.militaryradio.com/spyradio/village.html says, "HT-1 units that have come into surplus channels recently are unmarked - earlier units have ID plates."

 

No one seems to address the two channel version, but solid state (i.e. "transistor") radios of that era had very simple circuits and it would have been very easy to modify one of these by adding a couple of new transmit and receive crystal sockets inside and the switch to select them. They already had a hole where the channel switch was located (wonder if that was where the self-destruct button was located?). After looking at a photo of the radio's insides, I'd think one of these could - if so desired - be converted in the field with a soldering iron and a couple of simple tools. The channel switch looks like it is mounted in a piece of metal designed to cover the former large hole. The channel switch markings could have easily been added using the equipment labeling transfers common in those days.

 

 

 

[DiGilio]

It could be modified but I was thinking it just has FM-1 insides because the channel switch and the front is the exact same as on the FM-1 (http://www.kpjung.de/b_village.htm). The HT-1 and FM-1 had different insides so if you took it apart you would be able to tell.

[Bob Hudson]

It could be modified but I was thinking it just has FM-1 insides because the channel switch and the front is the exact same as on the FM-1 (http://www.kpjung.de/b_village.htm). The HT-1 and FM-1 had different insides so if you took it apart you would be able to tell.

 

I see what you mean. My guess then would be that someone used the end cap (and maybe some crystal sockets too) from an FM1 to modify an HT1. If you put a whole FM1 chassis inside an HT1 then you'd need to modify the antenna too since the HF frequencies of the HT1 required a much longer antenna than the VHF band used by the FM-1 (the longer antenna would need to be cut to an optimized length compatible with the VHF frequencies).

 

I wonder how the HT-1's worked in actual practice? They were based on Citizens Band (CB) radios and my experience is that this was always a hit and miss method of communications, with more miss than hits when using handheld units: the 30mHz band is still in what is considered the "shortwave" radio spectrum and on some days you could communicate with someone a hundred miles away but not with some five miles away! Connecting these radios to an external antenna would have made a big difference.

[DiGilio]

Heres a few pictures of village radios in action.