Remember them? I've got one eyeballing me from a book shelf in the shack, saying "Pigmeat...Pigmeat... let's go play in the woods." Every time I broadcast I got reports from a nut in Italy named Giovanni who claimed he heard me based on reports from the ACE and the FRN. I wonder what happened to him?
They were all built in runs by Boomer when he had the salvaged parts to do it. They had built in compressor/limiter circuits, you literally couldn't screw it up. There were less than thirty of them made, mostly for shortwave. I think the last bonafide Boomer built "Grenade" was in '97 before he got interested in computers.
Mines output was around 14 watts. Boomer said they ran at 80% efficiency, which would've have put it at spitting distance of the claimed 10 watts. I did the pee-pee dance around my truck when the Grenade fired up and didn't blow up.
I had a lot of fun with that little brick sized transmitter. All you needed was a gel-cel battery, an audio source, a patch cord to get the audio in the thing and an antenna and you had a radio station in a backpack. Double check that antenna, there's nothing worse than driving 50 plus miles and finding out you didn't bring it. Extra fuses are a plus,too.
If you'll excuse me I've got a transmitter to talk to.