The U.S.S.S. engraving has been scraped off but the decal with a return-address guarenteed is still present (I think it’s the old USSS address and phone number).
Secret Service Model
Near the end of the HT220’s reign at the White House, the Secret Service ordered from Motorola some custom thickness front covers, with a stock factory speaker, for use with an agency-developed circuit board. The color and surface grain pattern is identical to a stock front, but no Motorola logo was included.
This expanded Slimline radio was used with the first version of a White House secure communications system involving multiple encryption codes used on transmit and receive, both simplex and through agency repeaters. After some prototype testing of a few radios around Washington, the agency eventually expanded the system nationwide.
The inside front cover does not have much as the circuit board only contains a fuse and a couple of passive components. Most likely, this board would be replaced with an encryption board by the Secret Service rather than the factory or a service center. There is plenty of room for add-ons. A group of these radios came from a air force base auction as scrap metal in a lot of 4000 lbs of tanks, engine covers, engines, wire, etc. etc. Motorola may have had something planned to have added on the expanded front as if they never finished them.
The U.S.S.S. engraving has been scraped off but the decal with a return-address guarenteed is still present (I think it’s the old USSS address and phone number).
The rptr-code switch doesn’t seem to rotate that much, maybe it’s a temporary switch of sorts. On my radio, the fuse keeps blowing due to an internal short someplace so I don’t know if this dark square is a small display. The bottom has no battery contacts but the radio uses the slimline battery which has to be removed to charge it. The plug on the side seems to tie in the mic and speaker, the wiring is not RF type.
Here we see the radio open. There are several small ferrites around the wires near the speaker. The front component board has the fuse and some passive components. There is a lot more room for additional stuff. First two channels of crystals are on the main board just like the normal stock slimline HT-220. The additional crystals for next two channels are on a small board located where the PL board would be located on a PL type HT-220. This radio is a regular carrier squelch type.
The crystals have been crushed making them useless. The IF and the crystal filters are still intact. This model covers the bandsplit from 162 to 174 MHz, the federal frequencies, so this radio is useless on the lower business or amateur radio bands. But it’s still a cool radio for my collection! Yes, those are the old frequencies listed on the side but they are old and I’ve heard nothing on my scanner.
Now if you are carrying one of these around and think other people would assume you are with the Secret Service, but actually they will assume you are a 20th century yuppie and will most likely say, “Wow, that’s a big cellphone!”
For more, see the HT-220 Special Models section here.