[Milsurplus] IL's

[Hue Miller]

I hate to admit it, but IL's are still around at the ILEC location I work 
at,
where they have copper cable records on them. There ARE alternate
means also; I mean, CDs and now, online. Possibly the IL's are still
around because they're easy and fast to grab and use, and also the
tendency to not throw anything out until its space is actually needed.
Which reminds me, there's an old PNB cellsite - dispatch radio site
with a large Motorola radio and PS I want to harvest, but I'll have to
wait until the monsoon season is over, say about June.  It was
"retired in place", =forgotten.

Now re the boat radios, unfortunately, for me, I happen to like them,
and when I see an orphan radio I no longer immediately think
"variable capacitors and airdux coil".  Some of those manufacturers
were quite small and local and their products are verging on
unknown and extinct. I particularly like the ones with a variable
tuning band on the receiver.

A story. When I first went surplus shopping, on First Avenue in
Seattle around 1961, when First Av was still Skid Road and not
gentrified, the store was Pacific Surplus. Was owned by the
owner of electronics parts store Pacific Electronics further
down the street, and was run by his son. I recall they had a few
partly completed small boat radios by "Pan American Radio",
"PAR". I didn't get one, but saw an ad in Pacific Fisherman
magazine from the KW era for the radio. It has something like
a 6V6 final. The receiver tuned 1000-3000 kc/s.  There was
no mic, you pushed the lever to "TRANSMIT" and then
spoke into the radio's speaker. Used was surplus parts in
its construction. A real bargain-basement radio, in other
words. Anyway, DECADES later I found on, worse for the
wear since then, but at least one survives, and I hope to
restore it. Is there a moral to this story? Probably not.
Oh, yeah, PAR had another couple models heavily using
Command Set parts; modulation xfmr, antenna current
meter, knobs from BC-375 TUs.  I was told PAR went
under because of "drinking problems" of owner.
-Hue