[Milsurplus] MARS

[Hue Miller]

When I was working in a surplus store in Seattle, one day in late 1976,
Bill French pulled up outside with his flatbed truck. I have never known
anyone since whose usual everyday vehicle is a flatbed truck. I went
out to see what he was talking about. On the back of his truck was, as
I recall, something like a cardboard Gaylord container. When I looked 
down into it, I could see the whole new unused TCS kit. I don't recall
if there was any PS, certainly there was no ACPS. The Navy had these 
stashed at Sand Point NAS, Seattle, and when the end for HF A.M. was
near in sight, the Navy finally decided to clear these out. I talked to a
couple other fellows who had gotten TCS sets also. I was slightly 
disappointed to hear them talking about how eager they were to 
modify the transmitter for use on RTTY.  Not that TCS's were worth
big money back then; IIRC, the usual used price for a rec or trans 
was about $30 - 35 each. 

I bought a GRC-9 back then from the family of a young fellow who had
passed away. He had gotten it from Army MARS, I would assume from
Fort Lewis, Tacoma, WA. This was  when GRC-9s were leaking out by
ones and twos, before the big dump of GRC-9s a few years later.
So there was gear being given out by MARS even in the 1970s, altho
much less than in the 1960s heydays. Some people truly got tons of
goodies.
-Hue Miller