[Milsurplus] Aviation Radios ( Vol 125 Iss 17 9-26-2014 )

[Hue Miller]

So Bruce, is it HF radios, RDF, VHF, or all?I tend to like the HF ones. I only have one, a smallish one from maybe late 1950s.Some years back, Brad Whiting gave me about a pallet load of large, black,heavy 1950s VHF gear from Collins and Bendix. Lacking manuals and - of course - any control box whatsoever - i scrapped them out - assiduously savingtubes and mod transformers for Glowbugs list group members into building829 based transmitters. I still have around 10 of these beasts to process andthat will probably have to wait til retirement - i had the main bulk of the radiosstashed, for lack of time and storage, in the back of my employer-issued pickup truck, so the pressure was kinda on me to make them disappear ASAP. Truth to tell, i thought it might be kind of fun to get a VHF receiver going, BUT - i was justnot up for a wide ranging Easter egg hunt for manuals or heavens, the ultimatein rarity, a civil aviation radio control box! My limited experience with sellers ofcivil aviation radio manuals is that they're often ex- repair center figures whoreckon they have information of value comparable, say, to scrolls from the cavesat Qumran. I'd also thought it might be cute to have a working pair going, i meanas a 2-meter AM pair, but that level of effort is not actually something i care tochannel my precious life hours into.Dave Stinson also likes the HF 3-MHz sets. I like his idea of using a converter toconvert 80M down to the receiver's LF range, making a low power AM rig. That'swhat i want to do with my HF set. I don't remember the maker right now, but-altho i have no manual - get this: the manufacturer actually glued a schematicinside the cover - apparently not with the times and not realizing they could save $.10 of manufacturing costs by dumping this outworn tradition. I also have one little set i think is really cute - one of those tiny Motorola battery powered QRP voice radios - a silly little thing about the size of a paperbackbook.Sometimes i wonder where those radios went. I say "all" but in fact i supposenot that many were built. I have a couple non-aviation radios built by Brelonix,Seattle, in the 1960s, and i saw in an aviation magazine article, a shopper's guide,back in the day ( remember "magazines" ? ), where it listed a Brelonix SSB HFaircraft radio. I got the impression somehow that those were mostly for an export market. I think with all my moves around the country i kind of missed out any opportunity to research the history of Brelonix. So it goes. I also have justthe front panel of a little RDF receiver by Northern Radio, of Seattle. Their Heavy Metal AM radios and later SSB radios regularly turn up, but their aviation products are super, super obscure. It astonishes me how fast technical informationand history disappears. Hopefully the online dissemination of information will mark some kind of dividing line in history, so the data can get out there and preserved by finding multiple repositories ( not just the Qumran caves. )-Hue Miller 
> > As a collector of older aircraft radios, I have had aweful luck with
> > avionics shops.  They are often so full of themselves their noses are so
> > high in the air as to be a hazard to navigation. I hope and trust there
> > are also good decent ones around that might help you. I tend to resort
> > to EPAY.  One caution- aircraft radio manuals are often broken into two
> > or more very compartmentalized manuals.  Ask the seller  about EXACTLY
> > what is in the manual you are about to buy. I have bought manuals,
> > waited for them, and when they arrived, found the diagram or schematic I
> > desperately needed was not included.  The seller gushed with apologies
> > and assured me they would be glad to provide  supplement XKZX-7492, for
> > a "nominal" fee, of course!   Buyer, be hyper aware!
> >
> >       Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY