[Milsurplus] W.J.Ford surplus

[Ralph Cameron]

Yes, Bill Ford went out of business last year and Eastern Ontario lost the one remaining place to spend a saturday morning browsing throgh his 100,000 sq ft of space which in earlier times was a cheese factory. he even stored the local fire truck there for the town of Smith Falls. 

I personally took on consignment over 100 transistor radios which Bill collected in the hope of striking it rich. It never came to pass although acutioned at the local Vintage club fetched over $300. Many went for a dollar. I bought half a dozen and gave them to any grand kids or neighbours' kids that wanted a real AM radio. The young ones thought they had died and gone to heaven but the over 1o crowd just sneered. 

Bill had all sorts of PRC -47 parts in fact 8 large boxes ended up in the U.S. He had SCR-522s and APX transponders he couldn't give away. He personally gave me some 205 tubes and other Vintage tubes for which he had no use. 

He had more whip antennas than the Canadian Forces and many ended up at the signals museum in Kingston. By the way if any of you fellow south of the border ever get to Kingston, they have all the old WWII radio gear you'll ever want to see. 

Bill had an ART-13 still in the crate and a case of dummy hand grenades, just the thing for your carry on. He had over 100,00 tubes and 10,000 original manuals, many for tube test equipment. 

German, Italian and Russian as welll as U.S. and British radio gear.  

I even bid on a couple of STU III  secure telephones for use in EMI work and you can imagine the stir caused when the security folks learned they were still on the restricted list and owned by someone with "no need to know". . They retrieved same and and are now part of the contents of some scrap dealer's bin, courtesy government policy. Incidentally, they worked no better in the presence of RFI , the purpose for whih they were obtained. 

Bill had been in the business for 30 years and while he had bargains, you paid for good quality. I recall selecting a Racal RA-17 receiver from a pile of ten and it worked until sold.

He had one room full of brand new Hammond transformers that he sold for $100 rather than see them go to the scrap heap-  but a lot (LOT) of stuff did. 

Like the days of the Kerry Dancing, "Gone alas like my love , too soon." 

73 
Ralph
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