[Milsurplus] W.J.Ford's Going out of business

[Ralph Cameron]

One of the heart rendering jobs was attempting to do an on line auction for about 1100 test instruments Ford had for sale before he closed his doors. 

The auctioneer had no idea how many pieces of gear you could stack in a 100,000 sq ft and the first auction was a zoo with many good working scopes and generators etc going for 5 bucks because no body would bid on them. Many descriptions were mangled due to the inexperience of the tabulators. In the end their patience ran out and further auctions were cancelled. 

I recall seeing 25 wooden crates of 25 subscriber line telephones , all militarized made for the Can. Navy. I don't think they had that many ships in the fleet at the time. They were all brand new and gathered dust. Same for many, many ART-13 antenna tuning units - they were stacked to the ceiling, some with broken switches. There were boxes of brand new aircraft interphone sets that got "dumpstered" along with several tens of Tek scope chassis, Fairchild and the old Dumonts. 

Together with tow other hams we went to Ford's every saturday for about five weeks and loaded a van to the gunnels with everything imagineable from waveguide termination sets to high end mil calibrators and many canvas backpacks ended in the dumpster with " no interest".  

One thing I'm glad of taking some pictures there and showing my wife and telling her how lucky she was that our basement was so small. 

He even had a "museum" in the back room- off limits to most, where he collected antique electrical gear. It rivalled the local museum and i think he did manage to sell most of that. 

Bill had been a former Dept. of Transport radio op in Goose bya Labrador before getting his engrg degree and moving to Radar Engrg in Ottawa. 

He got into the business ( so he told me ) by radnom bidding on government surplus and when some of his friends found what treasures he scored, was asked to get things for them. One thing led to another and he ended up getting container loads from some of the European and Australian and New Zealand disposal depots. 

What fun !


Ralph
VE3BBM
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