[Milsurplus] WWII Navy RU- Receiver Coils.

[Hubert Miller]

Dave, I have looked thru a LOT of radio mags, and while there are a few that escaped me, I feel pretty sure saying "There were no 
ham conversion articles for the RU receiver", or even any kind of RU use article. Hams stayed away in droves from that receiver. 
( Oh, I recall, there is one fellow on the Glowbugs group who actually used an RU as his first 'ham receiver'. I call that a real outlier. )
The TRF circuit dissuaded everyone. 
I recall seeing an RU around, uh, mid 1970s, I think, in a Seattle surplus store of some kind, down near Lake Union, priced at $2.95 .
Of course that was more money then. 
As I mentioned before, I have stored away a homebrew 80 meter receiver someone built, no documentation of course. The odd thing
is the builder used an RU receiver of some flavor inside the thing, with one 80M coil in the RU, and the original RU tuning control 
somehow linked to the front panel. ( Have not looked at it in years. ) I have been thinking lately again that this thing has been needing
to disappear for a very long time. I need to fetch it out and harvest what I can. Apparently the RU became somehow the front end,
because there are other IF cans and such in the rest of the chassis. I don't seem to recall the thing looked all that appealing that I was
even tempted to let it live. I'll have to judge that again. But at about 19 inches wide and 40 lbs. that is kind of pushing my limits for a
single band receiver. I recall that I posted here that it had one 80M coil in the RU in this "Jonah's Whale" and that the coil had a some
what different freq range than the later RU coils. I don't recall that I was able to see what flavor the RU itself was or whether the rec
itself was irredeemably hacked. Will advise.
-H