[AMRadio] Any deep pockets out there?

[Donald Chester]

> Unfortunately, finding 211s at sane prices is just about impossible
> these days.   It comes down to wandering flea markets hoping to get
> lucky.  

One of my homebrew transmitters uses a 211 to drive a pair of HF-300s in the final.  I have a few spares that I literally dug out of the ground.  They had been stored in an old house, where termites undermined the floor, which then fell onto the ground and rotted.  The tubes  had been in their original cardboard boxes that had rotted along with the wood. Back in the mid 1980s the owner was in a nursing home and his wife called me and a friend and let us know we were welcome to come up and haul anything home we wanted, since her husband was terminal and the  local ham club yokels had advised her to haul all the stash of old radio components and tubes to the dump because "nobody would be interested in that ald stuff any more", but fortunately she called us first because she wanted to see it go to a good home, not the landfill.  While searching through the rubble in the old house, I happened to discover a buried tube, and kept digging and found a half dozen 211s and some other tubes under the rotted wood that had turned to dirt. The tube bases and pins were heavily corroded, but cleaned up easily.  I tested them and all but one checked good as new.  I now periodically rotate them in the rig so they don't go soft on the shelf.

Like Rob, I found a box full of tubes at Dayton one year after sneaking into the flea market before the official opening time.  I think I paid the guy $10 for the box.  It was filled with vintage tubes, including some 203As, which are ever more rare than 211s.

In recent years I am seeing less and less of those treasures at hamfests and estate sales.  I think by now the owners are long gone and most of it has migrated either to ePay or to landfills.  Back in the mid 80s, hams from the 1920s and 30s were dropping like flies, like WWII vets to-day.  I just wish I had  had the wherewithal back then to have travelled over the country and  rescue a lot more of that stuff  from the garbage man.

Don k4kyv