[R-390] eBay NOS R-390A

[glwebb at gundluth.org]

Roger,

  Do you know for sure the  Long Beach unit has no interesting history?

I used R-390A's in the Navy when I was on Guam 1967-68 where we did a lot
of
intercept of a lot of different kinds of traffic including some from
underwater sources.
There were around 10 spy ships in service during those years.  The USS
Pueblo
and the USS Liberty had some pretty interesting events.  Of course their
receivers
did not end up in the public domain.  But that leaves  8 other ships with a
lot of R390A's
that "heard" a lot of interesting and significant  traffic. Yours may be
one of them.

 In Panama 1968-1970. We had two to four Army ASA guys per  watch doing
intercept for their own interests.
We had a  R-390A   which  was monitoring the  NASA frequency  during the
Apollo 11 mission. I had the good fortune to be on watch during the landing
itself.    Now I have no evidence that my Navy Motorola R390A  was the one
that
I tuned and listened to 41 years ago.  But I can imagine it is.  And if
nothing else
is true, it can and does, remind me of some pretty interesting and
historically important
times and doings that centered around these wonderful receivers. Whether
they ended
up at the St. Julian's massacre or the Long Beach Naval Yard.

Gary L Webb NI9V


"
Tisha,

Picking up one of these radios I am filled with a sense of history. These
were on the front lines of the cold war, listening for the Russians,
Chinese
and Vietnamese. I do not think that there would be the same sense of
history
in a NOS radio that was stored in a warehouse since it rolled off the
factory line.

There is a real point I had not though on long enough. I have a Blue
striper we know came out of an ASA sight some where and one that was used
in the
Long Beach California ship yard prior to about 1980. The Long Beach one
looks
better but it sure does not have the history of my blue striper.

Thanks for fixing my point of view."

Roger Ruszkowski 33C4H</HTML>