[R-1051] Military Surplus Sales Primer

[Geoff Fors]

Jim added a few things I forgot to mention.

I didn't mean to imply the DRMO went to privatization in the early 1990's,
only that the decisions to do so started to be made about 1994.  The actual
transition occurred, if I recall correctly, in 1998.

Yes, many classes of surplus other than 5820 (radios) are in the demil
category, but since this is the R-1051 reflector, that's the only one I
mentioned.

The level of demilling which is applied to R-1051's seems to depend totally
on the depot.  A few years ago I acquired a quantity which were mixed with
about
10,000 pounds of scrap metal and which hadn't been demilled at all.  Those
were from a California demil facility serving the now closed McClellan AFB.
The only thing was that about 12 of them were totally full of water !
Evidently they had been in a huge container which filled with rainwater, and
it got into them through the phone jacks.

To the best of my knowledge, the People's Republic of China isn't interested
in radio gear from US government surplus sources, only late model aircraft
parts and intelligence related equipment, which as Jim mentions, they have
been quietly buying at our surplus sales for years.  I live in China part of
the year and do business there so I speak with some knowledge of the
subject.  I have
never seen an R-390 or an R-1051 in use at any facility in China or for sale
there as surplus.  I did find a quantity of new Harris 590's which, they
said, were
manufactured in China by a Harris facility.  The price was about what we
would pay here.  They were also selling surplus Rockwell 2050's which had
been originally purchased directly from Collins Canada through normal
channels.   China is also buying new radio gear from Tadiran (Israel) and
Motorola, and what
they are using is up-to-date and generally equivalent to that of other
nations.  They don't have a local surplus market per se, as it's technically
illegal to own a shortwave receiver without a license and there are only
2000 hams in the whole country.


Geoff Fors