[Milsurplus] AN/USM-26

[Ray Fantini]

All this talk about the ARR-2 has me thinking about useless technology and being that I am more inclined to working on things then operating them often tend to think about test equipment. Anyone besides me remember the AN/USM-26 or FR-38U series frequency counters? I recall seeing them in use back in the seventies and people who were issued them thru MARS and the like were the big deal back then. There is also the HP-524 that's the civilian equal of that frequency counter. From what I remember they were huge, heavy and for stability always had to be plugged in. Imagine that when the first generation of digital counters started hitting the market in the late sixties and early seventies it was all over for the huge vacuum tube base monsters and where today we see that there are still some who restore and collect things like the huge Tektronix scopes of that generation, and tons of people who are doing the radios a quick search of the web shows no one giving any love to the huge old frequency counters of the past. Can the AN/USM-26 be extinct?

Ray F/KA3EKH