[Boatanchors] And The Caisons keep Rolling along

[Philip Atchley]

Hi All,

Today I received the expected Hammarlund SP-600 shipment from the East 
coast.  What I didn't expect to see was the UPS man rolling it end over end 
(on it's sides) across my lawn and then up the porch steps to my mobile home 
(the truck occupies the entire driveway/carport space).  All four 'sides' 
had very large "Fragile" notices taped to them.  Actually, I use the term 
"sides" generically, the thing looked more like a huge "ball" with all 
corners flattened, or I should say "rounded".

Luckily the box the shipper used was 'HUGE', even by SP-600 standards, but 
apparently not very sturdy.  It was obvious that the box wasn't going to be 
reusable to ship the radio back to the owner (it's here for service).  So 
rather than fight it, I took a box knife and cut the top off.  All the 
Styrofoam sheets the shipper had used were busted up into iddy biddy pieces, 
more suitable for packing a handy talky than a 70 pound radio.  So I removed 
enough of them to reveal the inner box and carefully extricated it from the 
outer box and it's packing.

This one was in 'slightly' better condition than the outer one, but still 
looked more like a ball than a box.  By this time I was getting worried, but 
bravely continued on.  Sure enough, the inner Styrofoam sheets were also 
broken up, but not nearly so badly as the others had been.

So, continuing on, I removed the SP-600 (wrapped in a plastic garbage bag) 
from the inner box, fearing the worst!  Imagine my  wonderful surprise when 
it revealed one of the nicer looking SP-600's that I've seen, and apparently 
with no shipping damage at all!  No I haven't plugged it in yet, that won't 
happen until it has been fully recapped and serviced.

The only thing "wrong" I see about the set is the non-standard meter used 
for the S and AF level functions.  It reportedly doesn't work and may not be 
"right" electrically for the task.  We'll see after the unit is fired up.

FINAL NOTE:  Probably the ONLY thing that saved this radio from total 
disaster was the extremely HUGE box that it was shipped in, it certainly 
wasn't because of the usual UPS 'careful handling' (sic).


73 de Phil,  KO6BB
DX begins at the noise floor!

THE BEACONEER'S LAIR:   http://www.geocities.com/ko6bb/
MY RADIO-LOGS:       http://www.geocities.com/ko6bb/Logs/
QSL GALLERY: http://photobucket.com/albums/f306/KO6BB/
Merced, Central California,    37.3N  120.48W  CM97sh