Found a manpack harness at Apex Gun Parts Gun Parts & Accessories (apexgunparts.com) who seem to have a wide selection of various parts. The WWII era belt was from Overlooked Surplus in Leavenworth, KS Overlooked Military Surplus (wwiigimilitarysurplus.com). Overlooked Surplus has a very interesting selection, and I will definitely be stopping by there more as the budget allows. They have an old field desk of particular interest to me.
The painting was done with stencils I made on a Cricut machine, which did ok but difficult to work with the tiny lettering needed. I got it, but it took a couple attempts. The ORG | CH table above the dataplate I assume was for operators to jot down frequencies of units they worked with. Small space to write, however, no idea how practical this was in the field. The other marking was “Pointer Adjust” and the nearby dial does move the frequency dial needle. I assume they found a known stable frequency and adjusted the needle to match that. These radios were continuously tuned, as opposed to later PRC-25/77s or modern SINCGARS where turning the tuning dial stepped a set amount of kilohertz.
Pretty happy with the final result and it is now ready to go in the truck when it gets back from service. I still have to work out the antenna and mount, since the installed antenna wont work well with 2m radio and the flex antenna stuck on the radio isn’t hooked to anything – it also is tuned for MIL frequency range. The flex antenna does look nice though. For the vehicle antenna, which will connect to the BNC Aux antenna connector, I am looking at a Firestick 2m type which should look similar or at least not too out of place. It comes in black and the conductor is spiraled over the fiberglass whip, but hopefully is fine after paint.
