[GreenKeys] Sorta Off Topic

[Jim Haynes]

Attached is a picture of what is obviously a work-in-progress but not
in much progress.  This is a console from an FAA flight service station
circa 1960.  It was made by one of the rack cabinet companies, perhaps
Premier Metal.  (see their catalog on the web)  The one I have was special
for the FAA, in that below the rack panel sloped space there is a space
of 4" x 5" and 4" x 2 1/2" rails because they had various little control 
units that fit in such spaces.

Such stuff is expensive new, but if you are in or near a big city you
might find a surplus dealer that has a lot of that kind of stuff.
About the time I got mine through a government surplus auction one of
my friends got something similar (but vertical, not sloping front)
from a surplus dealer in the SF Bay Area.

The late Jack Hart had a beautiful console that he got because he
happened to be at the right place at the right time when a city or
county replaced its radio system and the old console was up for grabs.
I don't know if it went back to NY with him when he left Kansas City.

BTW this same discussion is going on right now on a Collins list, but
with respect to cabinetmaker cabinets of wood customized to mount
Collins or other amateur radio products.  So there it's not 19" rack
space but shelves and cutouts  for the equipment items.
https://steampoweredradio.com/pdf/collins/1964%20amateur%20radio%20equipme
nt%20catalog.pdf

Now the Old Man philosopher has something to say.  Since I was a youngster
with a love of aviation, radio and Teletypes the flight service station
circa 1960 has been my model for what I wanted my ham station to be.
Everything neatly racked up and cabled up and I could sit there and
operate Teletypes or voice radio and also listen to airplanes talking
with ground stations.  Right opposite the console is a row of Model 28
sets.  Over a long period of time I was able to acquire a whole bunch
of FAA equipment, through government surplus sales as flight service
stations were modernized or decommissioned.  So I have been engaged
in building a combination of ham station and flight service station
museum.

Quite recently, nearing the end of a long life, I have come to realize
this was not such a good idea.  It might be a good idea for the kind of
ham who is primarily interested in operating - you sit there at a neat
looking station making contacts.  But for me, mostly an experimenter,
it gets in the way of being able to experiment and play with all the
gear.  And the museum is no doubt a noble undertaking for someone but
for me it has been or would be far too much time-consuming work to
complete, and there are other things I would rather be doing.  What
I really needed all along is more of an engineer's work bench, with
the complement of equipment constantly changing.  And then there is
so little machine RTTY any more that even if I had a staff of technicians
to put it all together there wouldn't be much opportunity to use the
Teletype gear just in making contacts.

 	---

 	"Ya can argue all ya wanna, but it's dif'rent than it was."
 	"No it ain't! No it ain't!  But ya gotta know the territory."
 		Meredith Willson, The Music Man
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