[Milsurplus] "Professionally Converted Radios"

[Hue Miller]

The 2 BC-348 I mentioned actually only seemed to have added-in ACPS and a nameplate addendum;

I saw no other mods!

A couple years back I was using a laundromat in Newport and got to talking with an elderly gent there.

( You know coin-op laundromats: the next 2 customers after an immigrant don't have to put any soap in

the washer. ) Anyway he said he was 90 years of age and he and his helper had put in their 2-person

boat at Newport for supplies. ( We need to work to make sure we are as mobile and active at 90. ) I 

asked him about radios, natch, and he mentioned a war-surplus radio that he had installed many years

ago, probably in the 1950s. He said someone "fixed it up for him"; I assume meaning set up for 12 volt,

unless it was a BC-224 type. His description matched the BC-348. I was sorta tempted to ask what had

happened to it, he seemed to indicate he still had it around somewhere, but I decided it was just too

difficult, or pushy, at such a brief contact, to pursue it.  

I had a TRC-2 that I'm pretty sure was used on a small boat in the Seattle harbor area. The power 

connector had been directly soldered to: "non-professional", say the judges. If I had realized back

then how uncommon the TRC-2 is, I never never would have swapped it off for a useless BC-229.

-Hue Miller