[Milsurplus] Re: Conelrad

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

On 12/2/05, Mike Morrow <kk5f at earthlink.net> wrote:

> >... where are all those CONELRAD alarm receivers that HAMS had?
>
> The point of my earlier posting is that, AFAIK, very very few hams actually
> installed Conelrad equipment of any type.  None of the hams I knew before
> 1963 when Conelrad was still in effect bothered with the requirement, and
> I'm betting that outlook was almost universal among U.S. hams of the era.
> There'd be a bunch of such items at hamfest flea markets over the past 40
> years if many hams had actually built the Heathkit CA-1 or any of the
> Conelrad devices that show up in pre-1963 ARRL Handbooks.
>
> That may explain why the occasional ham or commercial station Conelrad unit
> on ebay draws a fair amount of interest.
>
> So how about it, those of you operating in the US before 1963.  Did you have
> a Conelrad alert system as part of your station?

I was still a bit young to be on the air then (two years old in '63),
so I missed out. But I do have a few Conelrad units from local hams
who used them. One is the Heathkit unit (CA-1, I think?), one is the
little Morrow CM-1, and another is a small, hammertone gray receiver
used by most all of the local municipal offices, made by Moradco I
think. Looks a lot like the little Morrow but no meter, just a larger,
clear plastic dial on front. One of the Morrow units just sold on ebay
for a pretty stiff price, if anyone cares to see what it looks like.
Item # 6581210162 . Very nice condition.

So, while they may not have been used by all hams, they were used by
some. The Heathkit unit is like new, the Morrow is really ratty and
well-used. Has an extra relay kludged on as well (I rescued this one,
along with a big Wilcox xmtr, from W1AIM's former home where he was
building a pile to send to the dump back in 1991). The Moradco units
were just simple little receivers that could be left tuned to a
specific frequency for monitoring, instead of a typical table radio,
for example.

The others that I see fairly often are the commercial broadcast units
made by Kaar (Conalert & II) and also one by Motorola. These were used
by broadcasters to monitor and could be set up for up to 4 different
frequencies with respect to the Kaar Conalert II. Even has an 'Alarm'
light on the front that was no doubt activated by the carrier on/off
routine. I picked up one of these for my girlfriend who is a Cold War
buff, it was used in the midwest and has NORAD listed on the front
channel card. Works fine as an AM broadcast receiver, albeit with thin
audio.

de Todd/'Boomer'  KA1KAQ