[R-390] Sad Story

[2002tii]

Guido wrote:

>Someone recently said that there was not much activity here. Well, 
>here's a story for your entertainment. Since 1979 there was always 
>at least one R390A in my shack. In fact, the first one came from 
>Fair with original maintenance manual and twinax connector. From 
>then on I amassed no less than 7 of these receivers, 3 R390URRs and 
>4 R390As with one R392 and one R388. Even a 75A4 landed here for free.

Times change.  My first few dozen boatanchors (390s, 390As, SP-600s, 
75A4s, 183Ds, etc.) were all acquired free from the late '70s through 
the '80s.  At the time, you could only get $25 or so for any of them, 
and lots of guys left them behind after hamfests and just drove 
away.  Oddly enough, I picked up several radios for free that I had 
offered the sellers $35-$40 for earlier in the day.  They held out 
for more (often asking $75-$125), then finally left them in the 
parking lot when they didn't sell.  Some sellers smashed their 
leave-behinds so nobody would want them.  The radios I and others 
like me didn't pick up, the organizers would scrap.  They generally 
had to pay to have them removed.

Over a ten-year period, I hauled away maybe 30 radios and saw 
probably 450 radios scrapped -- and I only went to 2-3 hamfests a 
year.  Imagine a clapped-out 1967 VW driving away with four 390s in 
the back seat and a 390A in the passenger seat.  Hilarious then, 
almost beyond belief now.

The radios I took, I checked out and repaired as necessary (I was 
pretty selective, and none of them needed serious work).  I kept 4 
and gave most of the rest away to friends.  A few I scrapped, along 
with a several tons of other electronic stuff, when I moved in '91 
and couldn't find anybody who wanted any of it.

Let's see, at $600 each, those free radios would be worth around 
$18,000 now (but I would also have paid to move them 5 or 6 times, 
and would have had to store them for 35 years).

Times change.  Now that I have computerized radios that work better 
and are so much easier to use, I almost never use the boatanchors -- 
really, just often enough to make sure they work.  It's probably time 
to move the last four along, though maybe I'll keep the 390.

Best regards,

Don