[Milsurplus] Pan Am radio equipment

[Hue Miller]

A friend sent me this comment:

In the early 1990's a seller at the old Foothill College Electronics  Flea 
Market had a set of the Pan Am receiver and transmitter and a few other 
pieces.  I don't know which series it was but they are quite small.  There 
is a set of very crisp Clipper radio position photos out on the web 
somewhere and those radios were identical to what the guy had. The set was $ 
350 and I didn't have that much cash on me so I don't know whatever happened 
to it.  I think they never sold.  Seller told me he had been a company 
employee and the sets had been spares which were dumpstered after the war. 
There was a Clipper facility in the San Francisco Bay area, either Oakland 
area or SF, where he had been.
[ Alameda, most likely ]

He mentioned that every time the Clipper landed, crews would swarm over it 
with fresh water hoses washing everything and every nook and cranny down.

I vaguely recall an article about the Clipper radio installations.  Maybe in 
AWA or Antique Radio Classified about 10 years ago."

Now my comment:

For CW, the simple regenerative receiver can achieve as good sensitivity as 
a superhet, and this with only 3 tubes or so.
The receiver didn't have to contend with crowds of other high power stations 
nearby, as Pan Am had its own frequencies.
That makes for a receiver that's easier to troubleshoot with a less equipped 
work area, and fewer spare tubes to stock.
The appearance is not 1929; that's a bit too early for this type; it looks 
more squarely right in the middle of the 1930s.
Except for the external accouterments, the nameplate and finish, it looks 
quite like a lot of 1930s regens offered in the
pages of Short Wave Craft magazine.

The USN did same wash-down procedure with their big seaplanes. -Hue Miller