[Milsurplus] Maybe the Good Old Days Weren't

[mstangelo at comcast.net]

I first visited G&G radio radios in the late 1960's. I was a novice looking for equipment to use on the air and the pictures in the catalog looked tempting. Once I saw it in person it showed it's age and even to my inexperienced eyes it did not look suitable for operation without extensive mods. I would pick up a couple of command set receivers which I did use.

Fast forward 15-20 years later. I was working in downtown Manhattan and decided to see it G&G was still in business. The storefront was replaced with a shop that sold all types of tapes (this was the age of VHS, Beta and Cassette tapes). I noticed there was a mailbox slot for G&G, which was now located on the second floor.

I went up to the second floor on creaky steps and entered a large room. There was equipment piled all over the floor. Except for being on the second floor the decor hadn't changed since I last saw it in my teenage years. The owner was there as well as a ham who worked for the owner.

I had some questions about the identity of some tuning units and the owner gave the same response that he gave when i first met him, something to the effect of "Kid - I don't know what the stuff does, I just sell it".

I did have a nice chat with the worker who was an old Ham who lived in Brooklyn. His name and call escapes me. One interesting project he worked on was installing the Collins transmitters on ABE Nathan's radio ship "The Voice of Peace". I remember him asking me if I knew what a combiner was.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Peace>

Going back to the 1960's. I visited the surplus shops in downtown Manhattan, such as G&G and Leed's and ended up in Barry Electronics on my way to Penn station.

Barry asked me what I had bought and what I paid for it? I told him the price. He said I overpaid and he had it cheaper. I replied "Fine, I'll take one" but he never had it in stock. I never bought surplus form Barry but he did have a nice stock of new Millen components.

Those were the days

Mike N2MS


  


----- Original Message -----
From: Hubert Miller <kargo_cult at msn.com>
To: milsurplus <milsurplus at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Tue, 19 Jan 2016 05:34:04 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Maybe the Good Old Days Weren't

Some of the old catalogs and ads, and probably i'm mostly thinking about 
G&G as the perfect example, were loaded with
stuff that just wasn't very usable, like the RAY-3 and BC-645 and who 
knows what, and when you scale up the prices to
today's, you see that they were flogging their large stock of 
not-very-desirable stuff for not bargain prices. Well, maybe
a bargain in relation to what Sam paid for it, but only. Some of the ads 
weren't real informative either, like the ads for a
whole RU-GF system. The price seems like almost a deal, but not a steal, 
but nowhere in the ad was any word that the
receiver was a TRF and no, you probably wouldn't greatly enjoy using it 
on the hambands.
-Hue Miller