[Milsurplus] Re: [ARC5] Re: History of ham mods; opinions?

[Hue Miller]

Lloyd-  if you were around Puget Sound in the  1950s ( i was not - til a decade later )
do you recall:

-The Lynnwood WA tool rental place out on Hwy 99 that had a surplus single engine 
trainer plane up on the roof as an attention getter? I think it was finally sold off to some
collector in the 1970s. When i was in high school, the owner's son brought in to our 
electronics class a Command Set receiver from the plane, to try to figure out how to
fire it up.

-That surplus place over in West Seattle run by Bill Zinn?  He passed away in the
1970s sometime. In the early 1980s i and another ham or 2 would get periodic invitations
over to the widow's home, these visits mediated by an old family friend ham, to dig out
things to buy, from his leftover stock. Wm. Zinn had been a super packrat too, bless his
soul, and thus i have some rare manuals from his marine radio work days, such as spark
equipment manuals and instructions for some uncommon receivers. Unfortunately, the visits
all had to fit into a 10:00 to 15:00 time frame, every several months, which altho we harvested
TONS and TONS of goodies, when her ham friend who mediated the visits passed on, the
visit invitations ended. A couple years ago i spoke with a local fellow there who had been in
on the final-final estate sale there, and there was still mucho stuff there. He told me about
a couple SW-3's i had not had time to find. One SW-3 he said was unused in box. 
I remember seeing a modulator for the TA-12, crates of NIB MN-26's, and TONS of trans-
formers and god knows what else. 
We got stuff at a reasonable price but you know what, by my knowledge of the early 
equipment and what to look for, i am carrying on the chain of preservation of material
that otherwise might well have perished.

One friend got a Japanese walkie talkie there, this was a Nippon knock off of a BC-611
in package style but they were only able to fit a one-tube walkie talkie circuit in it.
This is about the rarest of any Japanese radio. You can reckon its value.  The fellow
who got it, my friend, all i've been able to figure out from sketchy hints, is that when he
brought it into his home, his wife started having bad dreams of  Japanese soldiers screaming.
I offered him some super trades for it. My suspicion is that it ended up being thrown into a 
lake in the north of Everett WA area. 

-I wonder if you're thinking of "Aircraft  Equipment and Salvage", i think the name was?
Strange incident: in the late 1970s i bought a Japanese one-tube walkie-talkie, type 94-6,
from a guy who told me he'd literally picked it up off the ground, one step ahead of a
bulldozer, at that firm's yard. Explain that! I can't!

-Western Surplus, across from Radar Electric? I worked there for a time. Heard lots of
interesting tales, like the guy who got an aircraft radio ARC-whatever from a crashed
USAF plane out on the Olympic Peninsula forests?

-Pacific Surplus on First Avenue ( "skid road", then )?

-Nuclear Surplus? I never was there myself. Heard lots of stories - like the owner 
staggering around outside, drunk...

-"Black and Tan" surplus (that's not the real name, but what it was called, based on the
owners.

Regards- Hue  ( don't start me talkin' )