INFORMATION ON THE GERMAN-MADE
SEM52 TACTICAL RADIO:
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times since listed on Ebay..
The information below is related to a pair of SEM-52A radios that I
currently have for auction on Ebay:
Several months ago, I purchased a pair of the SEM52's from Fair
Radio Sales
<http://www.fairradio.com>,
and was quite impressed with the design.
These units are solid-state, small in size, and tend to come
up on the surplus market in clean condition and fairly
complete.
Mine appeared to have been re-inspected and re-packaged. My
units were complete with carry-case, whip antenna, extra
battery holder, and an really ugly-looking, over the ear
style, bone-conduction headset with
built-in earphone.
The two that I have for sale are crystalled-up on all
six channels, three of which are inside the 6-meter amateur band: :
Ch#1: 48.05
CH#2: 50.35
CH#3: 51.15
CH#4: 52.45
CH#5: 47.80 --> "RED
NET" (ROT)
CH#6: 55.50 --> "GREEN NET" (GRUN)
The view above is with the battery compartment removed. Note that
these radios use standard "AA" penlight cells, so are easy
to power up.
Below is a view of the controls that are on the side of the unit.
The three-position rotary switch is for "OFF",
"ON" and "Squelch".
Note that the units have a battery-saver circuit which is also active
in the squelch-mode.
The center knob is the volume control, and the third knob, having
the numbers 1 thru 6, is the channel select knob.
The small black item to the right of the channel selector is a
plug-in fuse-holder which uses a 6/10ths-amp fuse.
Below is the opposite side of the radio, showing the
manufacturer's data-plate:
The code-date inside the battery compartment, indicates that
these units had been re-inspected and re-packaged in
September 1992:
This pair of radios is offered also with an English translation of
the
original military manual. Note that the manual was privately
published
and are very difficult to find.
Alan Tasker, <atasker@ix.netcom.com>,
has put together quite
a bit of info on the SEM52's. His information can be found at: http://www.armyradio.co.uk/
, and is located in the
"Your Articles" area of that site.
Alan indicates in his write up that the SEM-52's tend to have poor
quality plastic for the headset cable jacketing. I can agree with
this as one of the units has some breaks in the headset cable jacket,
however the individual wires inside are undamaged, as can be seen in
this photo:
Another excellent write-up of this radio was done by
William Howard, and can be found at:
<http://www.armyradio.com/publish/Articles/William_Howard_Desert_Storm/German.htm>
The SEM52 is a 6-channel unit and seems to always come with
channel
5 and 6 pre-installed, and channels 1 through 4 empty. The data-plate
on the sets even refers to Channel 5 as "Red Net" (ROT),
and Channel
6 as the "Green Net" (grun)
As for channels 1 through 4, the data sheets that come packed with
the radios indicate that there are 6 groups of 4-channels each that
can be added to these radios. Channels are added by simply removing
one of the side covers of the set and snapping in a
crystal-oscillator element
board which has the channel crystal, and specific resistors and
capacitors
to allow the crystal to operate the radio without any additional
tuning.
NOTE: Channel "E" always seems to be 47.8 MHz
(Rot)
Channel "F" always seems to be 55.5 MHz (Grun)
Packs of crystals are packaged in sets as indicated below.
For example, I received two sets of the "2" packs, and the
element boards are labeled as "A2", "B2",
"C2", and "D2". It is only slightly confusing as
the crystal elements are packed in groups that are numbered, while
the individual channels within the group are lettered A through D,
yet when you look at the radio, the channel selector does not follow
the same convention of using A through F, instead it is channel
numbers 1 through 6.
GROUP "1" CHANNELS:
A1
B1
C1 D1
47.95
48.95
54.95 55.15 MHz
GROUP "2" CHANNELS:
A2
B2
C2 D2
47.65
48.05
54.05 54.85 MHz
GROUP "3" CHANNELS:
A3
B3
C3 D3
50.35
51.15 55.35 55.70 MHz
GROUP "4" CHANNELS:
A4
B4
C4 D4
49.65
50.85
55.25 55.45 MHz
GROUP "5" CHANNELS:
A5
B5
C5 D5
52.75
53.15
56.10 56.70 MHz
GROUP "6" CHANNELS:
A6
B6
C6 D6
52.45
53.85
56.05 56.85 MHz
SOURCES FOR CRYSTAL BOARD UNITS:
Source #1: "BM
electronics", in Japan, and the person's name is
Fumio. Fumio is at bm@sanynet.ne.jp
Source #2: A Mr. Buscher, who has a
website,
www.buescher-elektronik.de
.
His email address is <info@flugversand.de>
He has the following channels available (among others):
1373= 55.150 Mhz
1379= 51.150 Mhz
1390= 52.450 Mhz
1391= 53.850 Mhz
1378= 50.350 Mhz
Price: $5 each plus shipping, and, from what I've heard,
he can accept credit card orders
