[Milsurplus] inquiry about commercially converted surplus marine radio gear

[BOEING377@aol.com]

My dad was a commercial fisherman and I grew up spending summers at sea with 
him. I took an early interest in electronics and started messing with surplus 
Loran A (APN 4 and APN 9) ADFs (BC 433 and ARN 7) and various radios 
including TCS. On a number of tuna boats I saw what appeared to be 
commercially converted surplus gear including BC 375s running xtal controlled 
and painted gray hammertone, BC 433 ADFs with a very professionaly re-done 
control head dial showing the 2-3 Mc marine band on band 3 which originally 
just went to 1750 Kc. I saw an ART 13 running xtal controlled and also some 
Collins 10 channel xtal HF AM sets, ex airline (some had United stickers on 
them), which I think were 18S2 or something close. I also saw airborne radar 
pods mounted on pedestals.  They only swept a partial arc looking forward, 
but were cheap and reportedly could paint mountain peaks at very long 
distances. These radars were power hogs and required a lot of 110 VAC at 400 
cps power. Back then you could get huge new inverters dirt cheap.  It wasn't 
even worth the hassle changing brushes or cleaning commutators, just put on a 
brand new unit and toss the old one.

I talked my dad into allowing APN 9 and ARN 7 gear on his boat but he refused 
to let me fool with surplus radar.  He thought it was dangerous and that I 
didn't know enough about it to justify the gamble on buying it. I was lusting 
after cheap new ASB 7 (or was it ASB 5?) gear that Fair Radio had, but I knew 
very little about radar and whether such a set would even be useful in 
detecting surface targets. Does anyone here know whether this gear would have 
worked?

There were also some surplus autopilots on boats but they didnt work out well 
as the mechanical directional gyros drifted over time and had to constantly 
be reset with reference to a mag compass. Never saw any surplus ones that 
worked off fluxgates or magnetically slaved gyros.

I never found out what person or company was doing all the conversion work.  
It was rumored to be someone in San Diego or Morro Bay CA.  It was kept quiet 
as the FCC didn't like non type accepted transmitters and did quite a bit of 
enforcement work around the marine community back then.

I am especially interested in who did the most professional looking 
conversion which was the BC 433 (SCR 269) Radio Compass ADF set. There was 
probably a good profit in doing these conversions as commercial Loran, radar 
and ADF sets were VERY expensive in the 50s and 60s. You could buy a good APN 
9 for $20-$100 yet a Raytheon commercial Loran cost close to $1000. 

BTW, the term boatanchor was a literal one at Fisherman's Wharf in SF. Most 
boats there are moored to pilings with lines running through a pulley and 
attached to counterweights underwater so the boats can rise and fall with the 
tide.  When Loran C came on the scene several APN 9 and APN 4 Loran A rcvrs 
and their heavy rotary inverters became counterweights as did other outdated 
AM gear as SSB became mandated.

Any leads on who did the BC 433 ADF or other conversions would be 
appreciated.

Mark


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---