[Qcwa] MARS in the 50s

[Bob Wilder]

Those were the day when equipment was available to any MARS member
who wanted it.  I remember an instance at Memphis Municipal Airport
where an entire hanger was stacked full of electronic equipment which
was about to be sold for a penny a pound to a local Ham/Surplus outlet.
A check at the outlet showed a 10MFD filter capacitor being sold for $5
where the owner at bought it for 3 cents.  At the time I was the operator
of the base MARS station, AF4FEU/K4FEU.  I went to the base MARS
Director and asked if there was something we could do and as he was
the Director of Operations and a Lt Col he had the pull to allow me to
sign for the whole hanger full for MARS purposes.  We went into the
hanger and he signed for the whole lot, removed a handful of 6-32 screws
and then signed it all back to me as "Electronic Residue"  I put out
the word on the MARS frequencies that the following three saturdays would
be open to all base MARS programs to draw equipment.  On the First
saturday there were four C-47 and three C-45 aircraft parked on the apron
ready to load gear.  It took a month to clear that hanger and MARS programs
from Maine to Florida and as far west as St Louis had gear.  To give you all
an idea on how much there was, one room some 40 feet long and 20 feet wide
had boxes of crystal with 200 to 500 of the same frequecy stacked all the
]way around the room.....Now day they just run over the stuff with a cat and
destroy most of the gear...what a waste.



At 04:15 PM 03/02/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Chuck Gauder, W8XG, was MARS Director at Wright Patterson AFB. Ohio in the 
>late 50s. Here is a "tidbit" of his very interesting write up (from 1998 on 
>the Web) of "K8AIR":
>

73
Bob Wilder, AF2HD / AFA2HD(USAF MARS)
TSgt, USAF (Retired)
6032 Idlemoore Court
Theodore, Alabama 36582-4036
(251)653-5274
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