[MRCA] Dayton day two

[Ray Fantini]

We did not have the excellent weather that we had yesterday. Their were
several short duration showers today with a couple with heavy downpours.
Despite this their were plenty of opportunities for buying and selling
between the rain. I did not notice any new sellers today who were not
their yesterday, and all that were their yesterday returned today,
although with less items that they had yesterday morning. Friday is the
day to be at Dayton. I have always felt that one of the greatest
benefits of attending is the opportunity to use field radio equipment in
the environment it was built for, and the 3885 AM Net and the 51.0 Cold
War FM net are great examples where you can bring out a radio and net
with others of the same type. A lifetime of study cannot reproduce the
understanding one obtains from real world operations. Additionally you
gain the opportunity to see and hear radios you may not encounter
locally. The 3885 net had two different “pogo stick” radios in operation
including Joes, W4VAG as net control, a large group of BC-611 handy
talkies, two GRC-9 systems with one being powered by a hand crank
generator, at least three Racal’s and operators from every call area and
two additional Canadians, Total number of check ins for the 3885 net
were twenty two stations. The 51.0 Cold Wars net had over thirty
military radio check ins. Radios ranged from two BC-1000, at least four
PRC-6 transceivers, numerous PRC-68, PRC-25, PRC-77 and Marti’s new
Chinese field transceiver, myself  I used my Russian R-107 being that
that radio qualifies as a cold war radio, just not from our side. So
please excuse me for going on about this but I do feel that the
opportunity to see fellow collectors from across the country, have
opportunities like be the first to buy Marks second volume from him
directly and see thing you don’t normally encounter make the trip worth
it. After all I saw the proper battery box installed on a TRC-77, and
that’s not something a lot of us can say. Well that enough of that
nonsense, here some commercial stuff. The surplus dealer selling stuff
for $1 per pound sold almost half the contents of his trailer, about
half the PSM-37 were gone this morning but their was still a good couple
thousand pounds of stuff left, maybe $0.50 a pound tomorrow. Saw a
SCR-187 sell for $750.00, it was priced at $1,000.00 yesterday and also
noticed the price for the fiberglass poles has dropped a little with
kits selling for $20 per bag, think they were $35.00 per bag yesterday.
Their must have been over one hundred of the $20 bags sold by the end of
the day.
Ray Fantini KA3EKH