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Posted by D. Sherman on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 20:54:18 :
In Reply to: Military phones posted by Bill on Friday, January 18, 2008 at 19:46:13 :
There seem to be lots of European field telephones for sale lately. Sportsman's Guide lists Swedish, Czech, and German ones. The Swedish are the newest and the cheapest ($25/pair). All the old field telephones are compatible with each other. They run on 3 volts, usually supplied by 2 D cells in each phone and connect with a pair of wires, or a single wire and a solid ground. The different models have different extra features added to them. I have a pair at my cabin to talk between the cabin and the camper/cook-shack, mostly just for fun because they're within shouting distance. I plan to run some longer wires to other places in the future. I read somewhere that all these military field phones, starting with the German ones from the 1930s were copied from the US Forest Service phones that connected all the fire lookouts and guard stations in the old days. I'd like to get a pair of the Forest Service ones, but I suspect they're pretty valuable these days. The expensive part, these days, is the wire. Surplus field telephone wire isn't cheap, nor is any kind of new wire you might buy, given the price of copper. If you're going to string it between trees or poles, it has to be strong enough not to get broken buy ice and wind. That's why the Forest Service used heavy bare iron wire (#8, as I recall) run through insulators rather than trying to use fragile insulated copper cable.