[Milsurplus] RAL-7

[Kenneth G. Gordon]

Hue Miller wrote:

> You have to assume that each was produced in the same numbers, I believe,
> since they were installed as a set.

Agreed.

> As Ed says, postwar selection by surplus hounds
> thinned out the ranks of the RAKs - as they became increasingly less       
> useful.

Makes sense to me.

> 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

That certainly would be possible, but there would have to have been some 
few other components changed too. Besides, the RAL has both an Audio 
Wide - Narrow switch, and a fine tuning control that the RAK doesn't have. 
Plus, the only place to get the required coils would be out of an RAL, so it 
would be an exercise in futility in any case.

> - 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.

Yup. What you said makes good sense. I had not thought about hams "high-
grading" the RAL out of the setup, especially since the Surplus Conversion 
Handbook calls it "...a hopeless antique...", and I had supposed that most 
hams would have taken that as gospel...unless they had tried one. 

I know that after I read the statement, I looked askance at my RAL-7, which I 
had been using for a few years before then. Finally, it occurred to me that 
whoever wrote that remark had obviously never used one.

Ken W7EKB