[Boatanchors] Replacing 866s with 3B28s

[N4ch at aol.com]

As far as mercury goes, I doubt it's quite as bad for U as the  government 
says it is........but I've been more and more careful with anything  known 
to contain mercury the last 20-30 years.   Beginning over 50  years ago, 
whenever I went to the dentist, he'd give me a few drops of the stuff  to play 
with.   I'd run it thru my fingers, coat pennies with it, and  figure out all 
kinds of neat electrical projects to use it in (and I have also  managed to 
save most of it over the past 50+ years.........I probably have a  pound or 
three of it in a bottle in the basement still).   We'd play  with it in 
school, after school, and nobody ever thought anything about  it.   Even a 
couple of my old toy chemistry sets had a couple of  mercury experiments.   
Whenever I got a skinned knee, it would be  treated with mercurichrome and a 
bandage.   I have quite a few teeth  with mercury and silver fillings.   My 
doctor STILL has an old  mercury column blood pressure measuring system in 
daily use in his  office........but of course if someone brought any of this 
stuff out in public  these days he'd probably be severely reprimanded.   By 
many  accounts, all this "exposure" should have made me SK years ago, but  I'm 
still here.   All my mercury switches have been moved to a "safer"  
location.   Ditto for my not-in-use 866A tubes.   I still  have a few BAs around 
here that use these old rectifiers, but I treat them with  more respect than I 
once did.   If it's something I use more than once  or twice a year, I 
replace them with 3B28s.
 
73, Herman, N4CH.