Dave Heil wrote in message ...
Brian Kelly wrote:

He and Jack Fulmer W4HAV (later W4YF) opened a Volkswagen dealership way
too soon after the war.

Yeah,Yanks were nowhere near accepting sub-compacts in that timeframe.
Nor were they very anxious to do biz with the Huns.

Jean and Jack were SURE that they'd stumbled on a good thing. If they'd
only waited five or six years...

How many times has this scenario been played out? Little guy sticks
his neck out, goes bust, big guys come along later and feast on it.

number of times on biz in Cincinnati and in KY. Where is WLW vs. the
airport?

The studios are downtown. The transmitter is up north of the city near
Mason, Ohio in the same general area as the VOA relay station was
located.

Dunno where I got the notion it was on the Kentucky side of the crick.

They did some engine, exhaust system and suspension mods then
shoehorned the engine into the Hawk. "The rest is history . . " The
thing ate Corvettes for breakfast . . It still exists in a barn near
Coatesville.

Neat story. We were at the other end of the automotive spectrum. Dad
owned a '51 Pontiac and one day, one of the plugs unscrewed itself and
put a pretty good dent in the hood. Pop traded it for a decidedly
unglamorous '60 AMC wagon.

Hey I been there. Had a '64 Rambler American followed by a '72 AMC
Hornet Sportabout wagon. Then I bought my first Honda in '81. New
ballgame.

No ads for industrial designers. No ads for illustrators. Four pages
of ads for engineers. End of.

Engineers are generally the guys who make things work. Designers are
those who make them nice to look at. We all know of the exceptions.

Amen. I followed the niece's coursework thru Pratt. The artsy-fartsy
side is the least of it. Either ya already have it or ya don't and if
ya don't ya don't go to Pratt period. What she did get is piles of
courses in materials science, math thru Calculus, a good dose of
applied mecahanics (basic stress & deflection analysis),
manufaucturing engineering, etc. As she put it "Now I can at least
speak your langauge Uncle Brian." And she can too. In the meanwhile
she's up to her ears in computer graphics I can't even start to get
into.

I keep wondering how she'd "restyle" N2EY's Southgate 7 contraption .
..

sketch to VW, a VW functionary called back immediately and told 'em
"Yeah, that's it, run with it!" They slapped patent papers on it and
put it into production.

It does sound as if it runs in the family.

Seems like. A cousin made a bloody fortune with his advertsing agency,
"retired" into being the Art Director for the Franklin Mint, was
elected a Fellow in the American Water Color Society and at 86 he
still has one-man shows in NYC twice a month. He's also a train nut, a
Pennsy fan. I have one of his train watercolors, one of his few
whimsical blasts from the past. One of these days I'll cobble together
a website and post it.

I bought an S-40A from W7LR a few years back.

Still have it?

Oh yes, fully restored and sitting on a shelf to my right.

Uh-huh . . . Hmmm . .

I'm not sure if I was ever aware of Loewy's role in the S-40 or not.
But I am now. It's definitely a "coherent" design. That was his trick,
integrate form and function. Not much of a rcvr though.

No, not at all. Hallicrafters (and many other firms) were still building
the same basic receivers in a variety of cabinets through the decades
with few innovations or variations.

AMC Honda. Hallicrafters Kenwood.


W4JBP willed me his 1937 Hallicrafters Sky Challenger years back.

. . . there's a gooder . . . get it yet?

Sure do. It sits next to the S-40A. The engraved German silver dial is
super looking.

There's some trip bait . . I've always wanted to listen to one of
those '30s rcvrs but never had the oportunity.

So many of the ham radio dealers and parts houses have gone out of
business or have been bought by larger firms. West Virginia had
Chemcity Electronics back when I first got on the air. They had several
locations throughout the state and they sold amateur radio gear as well
as parts. This end of the state had a Cameradio shop.

Cincinnati had a number of places selling amateur gear. There was
Coston's. The "Saturday Night at Coston's" gathering of hams is the
stuff of legend. Queen City Electronics was run by John Dine WA8DFD.
R&L Electronics started in a garage in Hamilton, Ohio. In Dayton, there
was SREPCO. Cincinnati had a number of parts houses including Holub's,
Hughes-Peters, Mytronics, United Radio and the surplus house, Lapirow
Brothers.

Different times, different places. I guess there were exceptions but
in the '50s the Philly parts & radio distributors were clustered
downtown along Arch Street. A whole bunch of surplus joints and the
two big parts houses, Almo and Radio Electric Service Company, known
as RESCO. Both were family business single-location store front parts,
general electronics and ham gear distributors. Wanna a couple
resistors, no problem. A Collins rcvr and a "hi-fi" amp or a PA
system? Here ya go. Both still exist but in far different forms and
none of 'em have had anything to do with ham radio for decades. You
might enjoy this link.

http://www.almo.com/corporate/history.asp

Over the years there have been a few ham-only stores but they never
did very well and disappered. The parts stores still exist here and
there even today but they're few and far between so it's easier to
dial up Mouser and let the brown trucks do the running around. The HRO
store here has an armlock on hamdom in these parts today. I got stupid
and dropped into the store on a Saturday, unbelievable, there were
folks there from as far away as NYC and Baltimore, took two hours to
get to the cash register. No more "HRO Saturdays" for me!

In the end what matters is today and my view is that when it comes to
finding "good stuff" it's all out on the web in volumes the Almos and
RESCOS of days of yore never had.

I've noted Globe King 500-C's going for $3,000+. I was amazed to get
$775 for a 51J-4 the year before last.

NICE radio!

One of the big differences
between the modern marvels and the vintage gear is that one can still
obtain tubes and parts for the vintage rigs. I doubt that any of the
current stuff will be operational or repairable in fifty years. The
lack of a replacement switch, an LSI or an LCD display will doom them to
the scrap heap.

Tell me, I have a zonked TS-940SAT with all the options except the
voice card, it's been updated by the Kenwood factory shop to the final
production design and it's loaded with filters. I love the radio but
it's full of creaky old point-to-point wiring, weird switches,
unmarked ICs, etc. I found a local shop which specializes in 930/940s
and as soon as I get it fixed I'm gonna dump it and run with the money
while it's still worth a few bucks.

If/when I ever make it your place you'll have to let read some of 'em.

Once you start, there's no stopping. Allow me to whet your interest with
the following from 1977:

That's probably why I missed 'em. I was well into in my hiatus from
ham radio in '77.


"There were some local QRPers up the hill last week, the group including
one of those serious types. His beady eyes were everywhere, questioning
and checking. And the QRPers got to talking of Red Eye and the Palo
Verdes bunch, and Slim and the Hero of Mafeking. So we had to tell them
about the JA who in all seriousness had asked that alongside the obscure
jokes we place an explanation of what we meant. Perhaps we should have
kept the file sealed. 'Jokes?', says this serious one. 'Obscure jokes?
Where are they? Why, I've been reading the bulletin for some years now
and while there are things that sometimes I do not understand, I have
not noticed any jokes.' Son of a Gun!! What does one do in a situation
like that? The sky was blue, the day was warm and there had been a slow
joy in the group as they talked. But we realized that like a lot of
things, humor and DX and home cooking, that most things are relative and
sometimes more so. So we told the beady-eyed one that we would
underline them in his copy from now on, a service that perhaps others
might want and use. And for $14.00 a year, the enigmas of DX will
comeyour way in inscrutable prose, tangled, twisted and tortured...and
maybe stretched a bit. $18.00 will fling it at you by first-class mail
to the U.S./VE areas. $20.00 will fly it far down the moonpath to
Mexico and all the lands below the Tropic of Cancer and beyond the
meridians. Someday we may get the message...someday someone might get
the message to us."

Heh. Yeah, I gotta read some of 'em. We used to needle the clueless,
the innocnet and the gullible with our "secret communications" from
the "Bowling Team Captain's Committee".

I don't support the ARRL's "gimme" for tens of thousands.

Ham radio has bigger problems than this one.

Now Len can't
accuse us of not discussing amateur radio policy, his favorite topic for
some obscure reason.

A Putz is a Putz is a Putz, whatta bore.

SNORE

Dave K8MN

w3rv