"Roger Basford" Roger at new-gate dot co dot uk wrote in
message
et...
"Richard Knoppow" wrote in
message
m...
I looked at the film again and see what you mean by
the dollies, etc. I didn't realize the first time how
much hand work was done. I didn't see a single power tool
of any sort, the closest was a "Yankee" screwdriver.
Undoubtedly there were power tools elsewhere but they
didn't seem to be used for assembly.
BTW, the ham radio scene near the opening is one of
the few representations of ham radio on film that is not
laughable. I did notice the absense of a clock, the
fellow checks the time on his watch. Perhaps deliberately
so that there would be no problems with the clock jumping
around between shots.
Jam Handy Films, who made this epic, was based in
Detroit and produced a lot of industrials for General
Motors, particularly the Chevrolet division, some of
which are on this site.
They did all right, except when they tried to emulate
Hollywood, as in the montage at the end of this film.
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL
Hi Richard,
I did try to ID the W9WZE operator in the clip - it's not
Bill Halligan - any ideas? One suggestion I had was that
he was one of the senior engineers working for the
company. I didn't notice any date on the captions, so if
that is a post-1941 film then the operating session would
have surely been staged, as Ham Radio had shut down, so
maybe it was done by using recordings of the other
stations?
Yes, no power tools then, but I did like the fact that all
the ladies working on the line had their own named tray of
tools. I wonder how many of them are still alive? They
produced nearly 15000 SCR-299, 399 and 499 variants during
WWII and I'd bet there are a fair percentage of those
still around across the world.
73
Roger Basford - G3VKM - Norfolk, England.
The ham radio session was almost certainly staged. Old
call books would identify the station. I wonder if any
library has a collection of them, perhaps the ARRL does.
Bill Halligan is the fellow behind the desk in the scene
where the modifications to the HT-4 are being discussed.
I was wondering how many of these rigs were made, where
did you get the statistics?
--
--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL