[Milsurplus] Re: OT: Aerospace hardware collectors

[Peter Gottlieb]

My best sources are gone from this area.  Grumman, Honeywell, Hazeltine.  Now I 
am reduced to ePay and govliquidation and I plain don't have the kind of 
disposable income to afford paying top dollar for things.

Years ago I tried hard to get one of the LEMs from Grumman.  I was a teenager at 
the time and the requirement for 24/7 guards was a bit tough.  I had heard they 
were going to scrap a couple and wanted to restore one and get it into a museum 
but I guess I made enough noise to some congress-critters my parents knew and 
they ended up being all saved so I am happy (regardless if I helped in any way).

They did say I could have the FMES (Full Motion Engineering Simulator) but at 
more than two tractor-trailer loads I had no way to move it.  This was the table 
the LEM was bolted to and it tilted all sorts of ways based on control movements 
passed through a IBM 370 and other model I can't remember now.  That whole thing 
ended up being scrapped for metals content.  The computer was just like in the 
movies, dozens of vacuum column tape drives, uncountable cabinets and crate 
after crate of thick interconnecting cables and hydraulic hoses.

Amazing what could be found there.  I had all sorts of parts from that program 
plus tons of stuff from the F14 Tomcat program.  The actual space stuff was 
amazing compared to aircraft equipment.  Even toggle switches were hundreds of 
dollars each and works of art.  This was the pinnacle of engineering, clever and 
great engineers of all disciplines and unlimited budgets.  Now all the engineers 
sit in dark rooms running simulations on workstations.

Yeah, "guilty" on the comms stuff.  Hopefully someday I will be able to pick up 
a decent VHF-UHF receiver like the WJ-8618B but at this moment I am a bit shy of 
funds.  At least my HF stuff I make use of in CAP and MARS.  Too bad these 
groups gave up their DRMO access!  I am sensitive to selling stuff overseas, 
unless clearly it is readily available anywhere.  The bigger deal is arranging 
shipping and customs paperwork and I have had trouble with bad bidders from 
overseas costing me fees and time.

Peter


Don Davis wrote:
> True, not hopeless, but much of this stuff needs help from "inside" to
> identify.  I know that you are very familiar with most of this stuff and
> deal with lots of exotic comm stuff (you & I often bid on the same things),
> but I'm always a little circumspect when foreigners start looking for exotic
> US hardware.  Sets off my warning flags.  There was a guy a while back
> looking for ^&(*(#& boxes.  I forwarded all of the thread to the proper
> folks.
> 
> Some of the missile stuff is fairly common, being terrestrial in nature, and
> made in large quantities.  I gather that Rags is looking for true aerospace
> stuff used in the payload - much more rare, given that most spacecraft are
> onesie-twosie things.  There are some good sources for stuff here in South
> Bay of LA.  I pick through them weekly.  Even found 100 PWBs for some
> loadbanks I designed in the late 70s.  We were putting in an order at $200
> each, but cancelled it and bot the lot for $1.00 each!
> 
> 73,
> 
> Don  AD6PB


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