[Milsurplus] SWL Heroes

[Hue Miller]

I am glad I posted this item; I'm a bit leery of posting historical 
nontechnical items, so thank you to those who commented.

The author of the book responded to my email:

"
Hello Mr. Miller, 
Thank you for your email. I appreciate you going to my site and then
following up with an email to me. 
I'll be publishing the 2nd edition of the book by Memorial Day, if not
before. (Not to deter your purchase, but we'll have more content in the 2nd
edition.)
I have heard mention of such unscrupulous characters but not enough to
understand it or think more about it. So, they did it for money? Shameful.
Ruby Yant, the organizer of Short Wave Amateur Monitors (SWAM), mentioned a
couple in her newsletter. Now it makes more sense to me.  "

Re Mike's comment, something about audibility: even with the best 
equipment available at the time, there were gaps in reception. I have
seen typed, maybe you have too, with like this:  

text....text......text .....[unintelligible]......text.......text.....

William Zinn, may eternal light be upon him, who had a surplus store in
Seattle, before my time, saved among all his other wonderful savings, 
a Hallicrafters manual for the SSR-1. This was a BIG assembly of a 
desk type thing, metal, with an SX-28 mounted above a McLoughlin
sideband selector (demodulator).  Jim Barrows K7BCT (SK) verified that
he had seen them at the FCC/FBIAS monitor stations and that the 
setup, for whatever strange reason, was classified-secret. I don't
know how it was applied; maybe to difficult circuits? Because only a
few were apparently made, whereas the standard SX-28s were installed
by the wallful.  
I believe he mentioned that the people asking for money wanted
something like a few bucks for the POW information. 
Barrows also told me about, I believe early in the war, cruising down
the Oregon coast in one of those cars fitted out with a receiver
( SX-28 ? ) and DF loop; supposedly they were to listen for Japanese
submarine ( "I-boat" ) communications.  A very unproductive mission,
I'm sure.
-Hue Miller