[Milsurplus] SCR 269 ADF (radiocompass) marine freq conversion query

[Boeing377]

See below. Any updated info appreciated.

af6im:
			I grew up in commercial fishing, my Dad's trade. In the early 1960s I saw a few very slick conversions of the SCR 269  radio compass system for use on boats. These were on the West Coast and rumored to originate from Southern CA, possible Morro Bay. What was so impressive is that the person making these printed his own plastic dials for the control head that had the 2-3 MHz marine band on band 3. It looked just like a stock dial, but different freqs. The inside of the BC 433 rcvr often had one can on the upper chassis painted red, the one holding the modified osc coil for band 3. Thanks to the generosity of Jack Antonio, I now have one of these rare modified control heads and still wonder who made these?

The BC 433 worked great on marine band AM direction finding, better than any commercial gear available at the time. One reason was the ingenious loop compensator inside the LP 21 football which allowed correction for bearing distortion caused by aircraft or boat structure. Properly adjusted, you could get bearing accuracy of plus a minus a couple of degrees on strong signals. 
 	
af6im:
			Thought I'd ping again. I am determined to find out who made these surplus SCR 269 ADF conversions. Sooner or later some old timer will come up with the answer.

73,
AF6IM
Mark	

Haven't been able to confirm that Ralph William (mentioned below) was the maker of these modified SCR 269 systems.
 
KG6UTS:
			Mark,
Ralph Williams of the 'Williams Radio Company' in San Diego built transmitters, DFs, etc for the fishing fleet back in the '50s and '60s. He used a lot if Mil-surplus parts and conversions. When he became SK I hauled away lots of xfmrs, chokes, and manuals from his shop the day before it all went to the dumpster. Somebody had cherry picked the tubes etc but left the iron and paper goods. There was an SCR-269 manual in the heap..so..he might have modded them for the Tuna Fleet. 

73!
Ed Zeranski