Sources for Military Technical Manuals

I have received a number of requests for information about various radios and radio accessories. This page describes where I get technical manuals for ex-military radios, vehicles, weapons, etc. There are other sources beyond the ones listed here, but these are the sources I have used.

In no particular order:

• Ham radio swap meets: I've bought many radio and electronics manuals at ham radio swap meets. Often, they'll be buried in a box of unrelated civilian documentation, so don't leave any stones unturned.

• The annual MRCG meeting: There are always lots of radio and electronics TMs available in the Saturday morning swap meet at the annual Military Radio Collectors Group meeting, which is held around the beginning of each May, either in San Luis Obispo, California at Camp San Luis Obispo, or in San Pedro, California at Fort MacArthur.

• Trading with other collectors: Always keep an eye on other collectors' trade lists. For example, you should go look at my trade list right now. :-)

• Fair Radio Sales: I've bought many radio and electronics manuals and manual photocopies from these guys. I prefer to have original manuals, but a photocopy is better than nothing. You can always trade the photocopy to a new collector once you eventually track down an original.

• NTIS: Buy TM's for late-model gear directly from the U.S. Government! The prices are exorbitantly high, and their service is very slow, but they have manuals which I have had trouble finding elsewhere. Go here to just see Army publications. Expect to wait a while for a complete order (they seem to like sending manuals one or two at a time over the span of a few weeks...), and expect to hear a sucking sound from your wallet. Most of the manuals they've sent me have been originals, but they have slipped in a few photocopies, too, and they don't give refunds... I'd consider NTIS a last resort after you have exhausted other sources.

• Electronic Technical Manuals Online: If you have a fast Internet connection and plenty of disk space, you can download the latest versions of a lot of technical manuals for free from the government. Note that most of these manuals look like they were scanned and then run through optical character recognition (OCR) software. I've seen a few OCR errors, so beware of typos. There's a scary warning on the first page, but it appears that the restricted stuff is protected by a login/password, while unrestricted stuff is openly available. Use at your own risk...

• Individual Training: United States Army Training Support Center (formerly the Army Doctrine and Training Digital Library): You can download a lot of Army Field Manuals here.

• Portrayal Press: They sell original and reprinted manuals for many military vehicles, and some radio gear. My first order from them was a mixture of originals and reprints, and I was very pleased with the quality of all of the manuals I got. The reprints looked just like originals, except for a couple unobtrusive stamps to indicate that they were reprinted.

• The Internet: Some schematic diagrams, and even some complete TMs, have been scanned and placed on the Internet. For example, I've scanned some complete installation manuals and placed them on my web page, and I have scanned schematics for the German SEM-25 radio and placed them on my SEM-25 page. See my links page for some more sources.

• Used Book Stores: Not a very reliable source, but some TMs show up from time to time.

• Army Surplus Stores: Another unreliable source, but some TMs show up from time to time. Most generic Army surplus stores wouldn't know a radio if it bit them on the BDU, but every now and then something interesting shows up.

• Daddy Warbooks: George Kastner doesn't usually have many radio manuals, but I've bought many vehicle TMs from him at gun shows. I haven't tried mail-ordering anything from him yet, and it has been several years since I bought anything from him, so I don't know if he's still in the manual business. Here's how to contact him:

  Daddy Warbooks
  P.O. Box 6397
  Los Osos, CA 93412

  805-528-1614

• Look Inside: It used to be common to tuck a schematic diagram inside various communications gear. The BC-221 frequency meter generally has a schematic diagram printed on a plastic card and fastened to the inside of the battery compartment. Older field phones often have a schematic glued to the inside of their case (though it often cracks a flakes away with age). Some of the 1950's vehicular gear had a schematic silk-screened onto a piece of rayon cloth and tucked into a holder inside the radio. These cloth schematics were attached to the radio by a strip of cloth so they would not be lost. These are often missing (few of my radios have them); the holder is generally a round or rectangular metal tube attached to the chassis, about the same size as a miniature tube shield. The schematics were wrapped in brown paper when new.

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