[R-390] Rolling your own R-390A

[Tim Shoppa]

> Thanks to the e place you guys are seeing what the auto
> salvage (junkyard) business has been doing for decades.
> Many cars are worth more dead than alive, the sum of
> the parts is more than the saleable price of the whole.

It's not quite the same.  Fair Radio (and other surplus businesses)
do a pretty good job of buying a pallets full of military surplus
and getting it out both as whole units and as individual parts
to us little guys.  They are like a junkyard, they deal at both
the wholesale (in) and retail (out) levels, and they are gonna be
there with most (but maybe not all) the parts you need for some
extended period of time.  That is truly a valuable service,
most of us wouldn't know what to do with a semi trailer filled
with mil surplus.

The E-place guys who split up working radios are more like
a toddler smashing a toy into pieces and getting paid to do
so.  (OK, maybe not paid much, the guy who took apart the
HW-101 probably spent 20 hours doing so to make a hundred
or two hundred more bucks, that's less than minimum wage.
But maybe he's more efficient than
me, cutting wire harnesses instead of desoldering, etc.,  since
he never intends on putting the thing back together.)
Come to think of it, he probably did just use wire cutters, etc.,
maybe he only spent two hours doing so, at $50-$100 an hour
that's not so shabby.

Admittedly the E-place blurs the line between established
businesses and little guys with stuff in their closet, and that's
not all bad.  And maybe the rigs would've been smelted down
instead of offered up as parts otherwise.  I dunno.

Tim.