MILAIR, 12.5kHz splits, VHF (138-150mHz)....AM

So, the military has RUINED MY LIFE! well. hmmmmm. perhaps that's a bit of an over reaction.

I just am just curious if anyone has first-hand (you/trusted friend, heard/monitored it yourself) experience with military of any branch utilizing 12.5kHz splits, in AM. Not FM. Not NFM, I also know who the Civil Air Patrol is, so let's not bring them up, k?

Now I personally cannot remember having ever run across anything other than suggestions that its obviously possible that it could/would/should be in use (and maybe reports of air show demo-teams?). The manufacturers of mil-spec radios often advertise as much and with SDR the sky is the limit.

I, until very recently, have cursed all designers that have made scanners that do not allow anything other than a default 12.5 search range for MilAir frequency ranges of the most commonly used bands of 138-144 and 148-150.xxxx, as well as the 225-400 range, though in my mind it has been somewhat justified with the 225-400 range.

I am fairly certain I am eating crow now. I am wondering though is this something that has been reported but I overlooked, or something relatively new. I promise I will sheepishly fade into the background and never mention it again if it turns out I just was the last one to figure this out.

Details will follow if there is any interest, comments.

The extended range com band from 118 to 151.975 MHz using 25 KHz channel spacings in AM is utilized extensively by US and foreign Mil aircraft.

Here is one radio that i was involved in designing starting back in 1998 while working for Wulfsberg Radio, now unfortunately a division of Cobham avionics of the UK, who says we don't sell our assets to foreign Govt's?.

This radio is used by instructors and students at Luke Air Force base west of Phoenix around the Baghdad Airizona region for training purposes.

I hear frequent comms from my Prescott (pronounced PRESKITT) Az home in the 145 to 151.975 AM band, yes they can be heard in the 2 meter ham band at times using AM.


We sold many of the extended range comms to the Spanish Air Force to use in their trainers, the Spanish instructors were well versed in how to defeat the 60 second timeout timer to keep radios in almost continuous transmit for the students to hear them during training missions and as a result I had to redesign the transmitters MRF174 output amp and SD2900 driver stages for 100% duty cycle at 25 watts carrier/100 watts PEP operation into a 3:1 VSWR.

https://www.wulfsberg.com/PDFs/ProductPagePDFs/VCS_40.pdf

Had a friend from college that worked at Wolfsburg and lived in Prescott; my parents had a small house there for vacations and such. Sounded like a good company to work for. My friend worked there in the early to mid 90's.

-Mike