[Milsurplus] Ham ads DL - CQ 1949

[Hubert Miller]

Yes. Interesting comments.
I read that in Europe, once the front had passed, and immediate great danger had receded, civilians turned out in force to strip vehicles of whatever they could remove.
With all the junk, like disabled vehicles lying around, "dumpster diving" was probably pretty easy. But as you say, how to get it home ? And the lower your rank, the more
difficult.
I have also been interested in how equipment found its way to the civilian market. 
Some of it was "leakage"; stuff somehow "leaked out" from the military; somehow "written off" or "expended in use". Sometimes this was all for the good, as when maybe
for example, some manuals were kept by an administrator for his own collection rather than being destroyed when obsoleted.
I recall about a decade ago on Ebay was a GRC-9 set; the seller said something like, his brother had gotten it from the National Guard. No, not "bid on" or "MARS program".
I also back during the "gas emergency" of around 1976, I heard talk of National Guard gasoline ending up in Guard members' own cars.
I do NOT mean by this to deprecate our fine military, which in many ways is the pillar of American values, just to mention some problems. 
-Hue 

>Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] Ham ads DL - CQ 1949

HI

To whatever extent surplus radio gear showed up here in the US, it also showed up 
a *lot* in places like Europe. It was already over there lying around :)  The cost of 
packing it back up and hauling it home ….. yikes ….. Even more so when “new in the
box” equivalents were sitting in warehouses “back home”. 

Just how any of it went from “government property” to “in my basement” always is an 
interesting sort of question. One would guess that dumpster diving was one of many 
ways it happened …. 

Bob