Rick wrote:

...
I asked him to call me if he hadn't sold the radio by the end of the
hamfest and I haven't heard from him, so maybe it's moot and he managed to
convince someone to give him his price for it.


Check ebay, maybe the old coot went ahead and put 'er up 'fer bid! :-$

JS

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:52:49 -0800, John Smith I wrote:

Check ebay, maybe the old coot went ahead and put 'er up 'fer bid! :-$

Oh, I have, and do, regularly. I check ebay at least twice a week.

As I write this I have a web browser up on ebay's "Completed Sales" page
for "Hammarlund 180". I see three of them as having sold in the last
(however long it is that those listings stay on "Completed Sales"... 30
days I think). One went for $300, one went for $500, and one went for
$610. The $500 one was the "A" model and the other two were straight 180's.

On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:52:49 -0800, John Smith I wrote:

Check ebay, maybe the old coot went ahead and put 'er up 'fer bid! :-$

I'll be darned! He really did put it up on ebay, item number
150103567136, with a starting bid of $475 (no bids yet) and a "Buy It Now"
price of $750.

The guy at the hamfest said he was from Ashburnham, MA, so I'm certain
that's the one I saw at the hamfest.

This is going to be interesting. :-)

Rick wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:52:49 -0800, John Smith I wrote:


Check ebay, maybe the old coot went ahead and put 'er up 'fer bid! :-$


I'll be darned! He really did put it up on ebay, item number
150103567136, with a starting bid of $475 (no bids yet) and a "Buy It Now"
price of $750.

The guy at the hamfest said he was from Ashburnham, MA, so I'm certain
that's the one I saw at the hamfest.

This is going to be interesting. :-)


I saw that on eBay. I was going to post the reference for you.

Nice to know it is 'TESTED' though.

BTW: I've been watching for a Johnson Ranger. One is listed with a buy it now
price of [are you ready?] $1000.00 !!! for a 30 watt AM radio!!!

YIPES!!

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:19:17 -0400, Dave wrote:

Rick wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:52:49 -0800, John Smith I wrote:


Check ebay, maybe the old coot went ahead and put 'er up 'fer bid! :-$


I'll be darned! He really did put it up on ebay, item number
150103567136, with a starting bid of $475 (no bids yet) and a "Buy It Now"
price of $750.

The guy at the hamfest said he was from Ashburnham, MA, so I'm certain
that's the one I saw at the hamfest.

This is going to be interesting. :-)


I saw that on eBay. I was going to post the reference for you.

Nice to know it is 'TESTED' though.

BTW: I've been watching for a Johnson Ranger. One is listed with a buy it now
price of [are you ready?] $1000.00 !!! for a 30 watt AM radio!!!


Wait till he tries to find a replacement for the temperature
compensating capacitor in the Ranger VFO. It was the failure of that
part and my inability to find a replacement for it 35 years ago that
caused me to sell my Ranger. The Ranger was a nice rig, but $1000?

Of course the Ranger was advertised as a 75 watt radio, but virtually
every transmitter was rated by input back then (plate voltage times
plate current, key down.) Slightly under 50% efficiency was pretty
good. I think my first transmitter, a Heath AT-1, rated at 30 watts
(or was it 25) only put out about 7 watts. We didn't even have a QRP
hobby then. I guess I was ahead of my time in 1956 as a 13 year old
Novice. Its amazing what I actually worked with that rig...and a
Hallifcrafters S-38D for a receiver. I think the bandwidth on that
was the entire Novice Band. No wonder I had very good pitch
discrimination to sort out CW signals. I couldn't do that today.
Mercifully, I got a better receiver the next Christmas...a Hammarlund
HQ-100 (The HQ 180 was a couple year away, and I couldn't afford one
as a teen anyway.)

I think I got $50 or $75 for the Ranger when I sold it back then. The
person who bought it, a lady EE, said she could fix it and when she
couldn't, wanted me to take it back. Sheeesh. If I could have stored
it for 35 years, I probably should have at those prices. I didn't.

Jon, W3JT



YIPES!!

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:35:28 -0400, Rick wrote:

By now pretty much everybody knows about ebay and they know they can get
hundreds more than the true worth of something, which of course then only
serves to raise the "true worth of something" if you define "worth" as
"whatever someone will pay for it".

eBay's a pretty true arbiter of popularity and true market value. It doesn't,
for example, inflate the price of pieces of art at all -- in fact, there are
many true bargains to be had. The same is generally true of cars and
motorcycles.

Just because some idiots are willing to pay more than full retail for brand new,
commonly-available items is not an indictment of eBay, but of the ignorance of
those buyers.

The same is true for ham radio items -- there's a comparatively tiny population
of interested parties, and no sophisticated network providing an accurate
compilation of recent equipment sales prices. Vintage items are truly worth
whatever someone is willing to pay.

-- Larry

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 08:19:17 -0400, Dave wrote:

I saw that on eBay. I was going to post the reference for you.

Nice to know it is 'TESTED' though.

I think it may be mostly because of me that it is "tested" at all (if in
fact this is the same radio).

When I spoke to the owner at the hamfest, he said he hadn't ever plugged
it in or turned it on since he bought it (from which I interpreted that
he probably hadn't had it for very long). I told him I wouldn't
necessarily be unwilling to go his $450 asking price IF I could go to his
house (about a 1.5-hour drive from my house) and test it with a wire
antenna or signal generator, and I asked him to call me if he didn't sell
it at the hamfest.

It sounds like he probably took it home that night and plugged it in and
tested it, and (I assume) found that it worked.

I suppose I should have just taken my chances and given him the $450... :-\

(I am kind of holding out for an "A" model, though...)

It'll be interesting to see how the auction progresses. If there is no
shilling involved (big "if", I know, but I'm willing to give the guy the
benefit of the doubt at least for now), either the radio won't sell, in
which case I'll probably call the guy up and make him an offer, or else
it'll tell me what the real market is for these things and I'll have to
decide whether I really want to hold out for one or settle for something
else like a Hallicrafters.

Jon Teske wrote:

SNIPPED

Of course the Ranger was advertised as a 75 watt radio, but virtually
every transmitter was rated by input back then (plate voltage times
plate current, key down.) Slightly under 50% efficiency was pretty
good. I think my first transmitter, a Heath AT-1, rated at 30 watts
(or was it 25) only put out about 7 watts. We didn't even have a QRP
hobby then. I guess I was ahead of my time in 1956 as a 13 year old
Novice. Its amazing what I actually worked with that rig...and a
Hallifcrafters S-38D for a receiver. ...

SNIPPED
My first transmitter was also a Heath AT-1. I had 8 watts output on 10 meters.
Worked WAS on 10 meters with that radio and it was crystal controlled on ~28.8
Mc [AKA MHz]. That was when WAS only required 48 states :-)

I was a little older than you when I got my license. Memory is foggy, but I was
about 15 years old. My receiver was the National SW-54 [National's poor version
of the S-38D].

Ah! The olden days ... today, IC-756P3, IC-746, AL-80B, IC-706 MKIIg, multiple
antennas, retired [plenty of time], and rebuilding a 'nostalgia station', ca
1958-1960.

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:55:21 -0400, Dave wrote:

Jon Teske wrote:

SNIPPED

Of course the Ranger was advertised as a 75 watt radio, but virtually
every transmitter was rated by input back then (plate voltage times
plate current, key down.) Slightly under 50% efficiency was pretty
good. I think my first transmitter, a Heath AT-1, rated at 30 watts
(or was it 25) only put out about 7 watts. We didn't even have a QRP
hobby then. I guess I was ahead of my time in 1956 as a 13 year old
Novice. Its amazing what I actually worked with that rig...and a
Hallifcrafters S-38D for a receiver. ...

SNIPPED
My first transmitter was also a Heath AT-1. I had 8 watts output on 10 meters.
Worked WAS on 10 meters with that radio and it was crystal controlled on ~28.8
Mc [AKA MHz]. That was when WAS only required 48 states :-)

If you lived in W1-land back then, getting WAS on 10 would be a real
challenge...for the close-in states. From here in MD, getting Delaware
on the higher bands is a real challenge, even with short skip. I'm a
bit far for ground wave. For me a 10 meter WAS would have been easier
as a kid for all the adjacent states to Wisconsin (I lived right on
Lake Michigan) had areas far enough removed that I could get them on
short skip or sporadic E.

I was a little older than you when I got my license. Memory is foggy, but I was
about 15 years old. My receiver was the National SW-54 [National's poor version
of the S-38D].

I don't think I ever saw an SW-54, but it was indeed their version of
the S-38 line. On ten meters the challenge woud be which of the image
frequencies you were actually on. I think the IF was at 455Kc
(Remember Kcs ???) My FCC tests were all in Kcs until I went for
Advanced and Extra about 15 years after I got the Novice and General.
I was just 14 by a few days when I took the General test and in those
days you didn't get Algebra until 9th grade. I had just finished 8th
grade when I took the test. You had to calculate a whole bunch of
formulas. I remember my 8th grade shop teacher who was my "Elmer" then
trying to tutor me in enough formula manipulation to do the test. He
must have done well for I did pass it on the first try. You also had
to memorize some schematics and draw them out by hand. The code test
was in a big echoey Civil Service exam room in the Milwaukee Federal
Court House...you could hear each character twice. I froze during the
first part of the five minute code test, then finally settled down
enough to perhaps get one clean minute. To this day I believe that a
kind-hearted FCC examiner passed me because he didn't want to see a
kid crying in the room. I was the youngest one there by a long shot. I
think he knew I really could do the required 13 WPM. Fifteen years
later, now living outside Washington DC, I went to FCC HQ there for
the test with headphones for the CW exam. I went to take the Advanced
exam, but the examiner had to give an Extra CW test first. He asked me
if I could do 20 WPM (I had an ARRL certificate for 30wpm) and I said
sure. So he told me to take the CW test, and if I passed it and the
Advance test he would give me the Extra test (for which I had not
studied at all...didn't even look in that part of the License Manual).
I passed the CW and the Advanced with no problem so I took the Extra
test cold turkey and missed it by one question. After the test was
graded, I took my license manual into the corridor of the building and
underlined the parts of the test I remembered. Thirty days later, I
got a perfect score on the Extra exam. No crying that time.

Ah! The olden days ... today, IC-756P3, IC-746, AL-80B, IC-706 MKIIg, multiple
antennas, retired [plenty of time], and rebuilding a 'nostalgia station', ca
1958-1960.

I've thought about that. I do have a Hammarlund HQ-145 here in good
physical condition, but with a likely bad tube. I did get it working
once but the power supply capactors started smoking. I've put some
new ones in. If I ever saw a decent Johnson Adventurer at the right
price, it was my 2nd transmitter as a kid, I'd get it.

Today, still rather spartan here. An IC-751A to a Butternut vertical
in the backyard and a couple of VHF handhelds and a base station.
I only use the handhelds when I go back to my Wisconsin hometown
and talk with the guys still there who were my teen ham buddies. They
were all a bit older than me. When I was licensed, I was supposedly
the youngest ham in Wisconsin. That distinction was soon eclipsed by
a nine-year old in my town who 15 years later became my brother-in-law
(we married sisters.) I mostly operate CW and have 160 DXCC
countries with this modest setup.

Jon Teske, W3JT (ex K9CAH, W3DRV and I also hold KG4TJ from
Gitmo Bay, Cuba where I operated in 1995.

Also keep in mind that eBay is an international marketplace. With
potentially thousands of eyes looking at your item, there's a bigger chance
that one or two people might decide that they just can't live without it. As
opposed to a hamfest or swap meet, where it may be seen by a few hundred
people at most, and perhaps none of them happens to be interested on that
day.

Phil Nelson