[Boatanchors] Hamfest Finds

[Richard Post]

Hi Jeff,

This is the same McMurdo Silver (and his company) who started making 
radios in the mid 1920's, first as kit parts and then as 
Silver-Marshall and continued through the 1930's under his own name 
with some very high-end, expensive radios that were in the same 
league as Scott and are highly collectable.  In the late 1940's, 
after WWII, he came out with a line of test equipment.  I have the 
904 resistance capacitance bridge and the 906 signal generator.  He 
also made a couple of not very successful ham receivers in that era. 
You can find some of his articles covering the test equipment in 
Radio News and RadioCraft magazines of the late 1940's. He also had a 
VTVM called a "Vomax", a signal tracer and a TV sweep generator, all 
of which have the same form factor and gray case as the 904 and 906. 
The test equipment line was no where near the quality of his prewar 
radios.  I consider them about on a par with or slightly better made 
than Heathkits.

73,
Rich

http://www.qsl.net/kb8tad


At 10:18 PM -0400 8/19/05, n2lxm at juno.com wrote:
>Greetings All,
>
>
>  Well some more Hamfest finds have followed me home. The first is a
>McMurdo Silver Company  Wave Meter. Model 903 (tuning Unit) and model
>903A (indicator unit). This little gem tunes from 1.8 Mcs to 500 Mcs in
>seven bands (supplied by seven plug in coils). I could not really find
>anything it doing a web Search, but from looking at old ARRL Handbooks it
>seems this company was around right after WWII.
>
>  The second gem appears to be a prototype SSB adapter. It looks like it
>could have been built in the R & D labs at Fort Monmouth. It has a
>Collins Radio PTO, type 70J-1, symbol type Z-502. I took some time with
>it today and ran it up on a Variable AC Supply. Of course all the Filter
>caps were bad, so I jumped in some new ones, and hooked it to the IF
>output from My R-390A/URR. The last thing to do was hook up an audio
>amplifier to the line output.  Well it may not be the best SSB detector I
>have seen, but it did work. After some fooling around, cleaning controls
>and such it settled down and worked O.K.
>
>  Can anyone help in finding any information on the wave meter and where
>can find information on the Collins PTO? And also what was the
>Nomenclature for the Militaries SSB Adapter used with the R-390
>Receivers. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
>                                          Jeff N2LXM
>                                           American
>                                             Patriot
>                                 Amateur Radio Operator
>                          Proud Father of Two U.S. Marines