Korean War AN/PRC-6 man-portable transceiver used in the TV series M*A*S*H
This memorable scene is from the MASH TV series, and is remarkable because of the use of an actual AN/PRC-6 man-portable military transceiver that is correct for the era. The scene comes from season 4, episode 6, titled "The Bus". The team gets stuck in the middle of nowhere because their rag-tag bus breaks down. In an attempt to reach out for help, Frank Burns is calling out on an AN/PRC-6 radio. To no avail; they are 20 miles away from camp, and as Colonel Potter correctly informs him of: "It reaches out only half a mile even if it does work".
This statement from Potter is actually pretty amazing as he is 100% correct: The AN/PRC-6 had a reach of about half a mile in wooded terrain, although it would have been more if the remote base station would have had a directional Yagi antenna on a high mast, something we have never seen in the actual MASH camp.
So this MASH scene was actually a very accurate reflection of the radio technology of the time; the AN/PRC-6 was used extensively during the Korean War, and Colonel Potter knows his radios well - half a mile range is about what can be expected from one PRC-6 to another in wooded terrain.
One thing that Burns was right about though, is to use every means possible to make contact, even when the chances for success are slim. So in that respect, the rest of the team is way too negative on Burns. For example, everyone ridicules Burns when he tries to contact the overflying fighter jet. But in fact, this was not so crazy as it seemed. The jet would have been equipped with an AN/ARC-44 transceiver, a so called "liaison radio" in the same frequency range as the PRC-6, and as such, very capable of talking to troops on the ground. And it is likely that this fighter-jet liaison radio would have been tuned into the same channel as Frank's radio, as almost all AN/PRC-6 radios would have been equipped with the same channel frequency. Major Frank might have been a bumbling fool in almost every other MASH scene during the 11 year run of the show, but he was very right in this one...
