[Milsurplus] How I Use an LM

[Ray Fantini]

Like I said "The only use I can imagine for a BC-221 is with other period radios or older sets as an external reference." I used a LM for setting the frequency on a 1939 HRO RAS for years. the HRO printed charts are useless except to get you close. ARC-5, TBW, TBX any of the transmitters built before the sixties needed an external source to set the frequency correctly and if you want a period test instrument heterodyne frequency meters are great, but to the modern or any Ham who is using anything built after nineteen seventy the LM is pointless when compared to a digital frequency counter or a calibrated signal generator.
But that's not what I want to talk about; I want to talk about history. The history of any item is not just the history of what occurred at just one point of time in an items existence, history is everything that occurs over the entire period of time from beginning to today. The only exception to this are items that are entered directly into a museum's collection where change stops or items that had somehow enter into a state where they were not used from that point in history until today. Much of what still exist today only exist because it was seen as useful in the ham radio community, perhaps a smaller amount exist due to the SWL and electronics community and a very small part due to conversion for commercial operation but Ham radio is primary reason that most BC-221 exist today. In the forties, fifties and sixties until the development of cheap frequency counters Hams were the primary users for the BC-221 and most were purchased and used by Hams.  Lampkin manufactured heterodyne frequency meters for the commercial and land mobile market and by the early sixties no one outside of Ham radio would have considered using some old BC-221 or LM for anything except maybe the old AM HF marine radio work so many of the BC-221 and LM sets that are out there were purchased by Hams for Ham use. If that never occurred how many would exist today?  I can think of at least four or five times I have read articles in past issues of QST dealing with the BC-221, articles on how to build power supplies, use them for a external VFO and how to convert them to all FET and run from a nine volt battery and finally what may be the last mention on how to gut it and use its case, and this is not including CQ magazine and the CQ Surplus conversion guides that have a section on both the BC-211 and the LM series frequency meters. This has all happened and now is a historical fact.
Everyone is free to do and think what they want, but for me to ignore the fact that these frequency meters had a longer period of time in "Ham"  service and were adapted and used in way the original designers never imagined is to ignore everything that happened after 1945.
My own views on this subject may be contrary to many but much of my opinion is based on what's happening with some of the museum ships. Many of the projects that are occurring today are centered on restoring a ship to its 1944 or so appearance when that vessel may have served well into the seventies. I have been told that everyone wants to see the world war two versions but once you remove everything that was installed afterwards you are in fact revising and changing the history of the vessel? Is it ok to say that only the history before that point matters? What about the service during Korea, the cold war or Vietnam? Once you start making things historically correct are you not in effect trying to erasing other history? Or is it more important to return something to what is was at an exact point in time?
Ray F