[Milsurplus] RAL-7

[Hue Miller]

You have to assume that each was produced in the same numbers, i believe, since
they were installed as a set. As Ed says, postwar selection by surplus hounds
thinned out the ranks of the RAKs - as they became increasingly less useful.
( think of  it like natural selection - two mutant varieties produced - with slightly
different traits - their environment selects out one with the traits most contributing
to survival. ) ( Except in Kansas. )
Somewhere in the '70s i heard about a place that i was told "had stacks of TCS's".
This was some ship conversion place on Lake Union in Seattle. They converted
Navy surplus vessels ( freighters? ) to become floating fish processing plants for
the Alaska business. ( Like the lost  Spanish  of the Superstition Mountains, you
can still look for this, but it's surely long since gone and covered over. ) Anyway,
also like the story of the Seven Cities of Gold that brought the Spanish to the
Southwest, this lead was more glamor than reality. The "stacks" were more like
"stack" and the number of TCS's was very small. However, he did have a number
of RBMs,  RBS's, and ancillary units,  which a friend and i split. I remember leaving
an RAK knowing the next stop for it would be the iron smelter.  ( Of course, the
RBM's worked right off the bat, when connected up to the PS and plugged in. )
There were stacks of  other stuff i now am
sure would be interesting but then, how much can you get in your vehicle and 
then store, on short notice? I also remember seeing an RAK on the floor
in a dark underlit room in Pacific Surplus ( First Avenue, Seattle) that went unsold,
i think, i think, til. the business disappeared. So gradually they were thinned out.
Due to the straight regen design, i suppose one could replace the LF coils with
not too much trouble - if the RAK had been surplused in Europe, say in 1947,
that surely would have been done by hams - but there was too much other good
stuff here.  -Hue Miller