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

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

I can only hope that someone recorded that banquet talk. Of course most
of Shepherd's stuff was that entertaining. That voice we hearing
narrating "A Christmas Story" is his.

Also the sequel, "Olly Hopnoodle's Haven Of Bliss". James B. Sikking
(best know for Hill Street Blues) plays Dad and Shep makes a cameo
appearance.

A nice bit of nostalgia! Most of the catalog houses had at least some
ham gear. It is interesting to note that famed industrial designer
Raymond Loewy designed the S-40 cabinetry.

Note that Sears, Hallicrafters and Loewy were all based in Chicago.

Also Frank Lloyd Wright, for at least some of his career.

He is the fellow who brought
us the '47 Studebaker Starlight Coupe and '53 Starliner Coupe, the '61
Avanti,
the S-1 steam locomotive (Pennsylvania RR), that sharp-looking fifties
Coca-Cola dispenser that we'd see in diners and drug stores, and all
sorts of products from pencil sharpeners to refrigerators.

Whew. You hit some more buttons with this one. I like the T1 better
than the S1. But the K4 is the ultimate classic PRR power.

http://prrsteam.pennsyrr.com/prrt1.html

As K2ASP sez, the GG-1 is the top of that pyramid.

For streamlined steam engines, the special J-3 Hudsons used on the New
York Central's Twentieth Century Limited are the most impressive.

Raymond Loewy, Dad and me . . .

Dad . . at sixtysomething he decided he'd had enough "family cars" and
announced that he was gonna buy a Corvette. Only over Mom's dead body
he was gonna buy a Corvette. Back to the drawing board. "OK, I'll buy
a Studebaker GT Hawk". 1963. Mom didn't bark as much at that one so he
ordered the Hawk. But with a twist. He also bought a monster Packard
V8 engine with two four-barrel pots. The Hawk and the engine arrived
at the Stude dealer and Dad delivered 'em to the Three Js speed shop
in Wilmington DE. Mom being unaware of what was going on of course.
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.

bwaahaahaa...

Loewy was one of my idols when I was a kid. I had some talent along
those lines and was bound and determined to go to the Chicago School
of Design and study under him. Going into 9th grade Dad told me I had
to decide what I was going to do with my life and tossed the Sunday
Inquirer help wanted classified ads section at me. No ads for artists.
No ads for industrial designers. No ads for illustrators. Four pages
of ads for engineers. End of.

Yup. All my dad did was take us to work with him in the company
business. All his kids have at least a bachelor's degree....

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.

"Scientists dream of doing great things. Engineers do them"

And the gene lives on. I have a young niece who recently graduated
from the Pratt Institute industrial design program. She's
unbelievable. Two weeks into her first summer student internship she
came up with a compartment latch for some Volkswagen bus which her
employer's ID group had been wrestling with for months. They faxed her
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.

Ayup.

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.

The design is still
stunning.

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.

The insides of the S-40 were only slightly changed to make the
S-85/SX-99 and finally the SX-122.

The Loewy cabinet, with variations, showed up in the S-40, SX-42,
SX-43 and S-76. There may be others, too.

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.

I'll bet!

K8CFT, who administered my Novice exam, had a Globe King 500-C in his
shack. I've always wanted one but they are bloody expensive these days.

I'd rather have an EFJ 500 or some such. Nothing quite like having a
big Johnson.

Boat anchors are going for insane prices. N2EY recently told me about
an unbuilt still-in-the-box Heath AT-1 which sold for $5,100 for God's
sake. Ya can buy a complete pristine meatball S-Line including a 30L1
amp with $5,100 and have a *pile* of change left over. Or an Orion and
most of a Centurion amp.

Yup. There was also an SX-88 at $7,151 that beat the previous one at
$6000.

And a recent auction sold an *unbuilt* Heath SB-303 for about $1300.
Adjusted for inflation, that's about what they cost new. But the '303
isn't much of a receiver - not even up to the level of the earlier
SB-301, and defintitely not in the same class as the Drake R4 family
or any Collins, A or S.

I've noted Globe King 500-C's going for $3,000+.

I saw an ad for someone *making* new Globe Kings...

I was amazed to get
$775 for a 51J-4 the year before last. 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.

And information, most of all.

A few years back I sold a Kenyon T-656 plate transformer to a ham in
Ohio. But it turned out he was just helping out a friend in one of the
Scandinavian countries who was restoring a rare old prewar Harvey
Wells rig. My old transformer is now running the old Harvey Wells, and
I got a nice thankyou on the website. (search on "Kenyon T-656")..

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.

50? Try 20! Some older transceiver models are falling prey to the fact
that certain custom components are failing and there are no
replacements except
from junkers. If you can find a junker that has the part still good,
that is.

Cass is Hugh Cassidy WA6AUD. His "West Coast DX Bulletin" was tops.
Cass had a flair for writing and brought us the Old Timer living on top
of the hill; the local QRPer, full of questions (often rhetorical) for
the Old Timer; Red-Eyed Louie, always doing the dawn patrol looking for
rare DX and the Palos Verdes Sundancers. There are numerous other
characters. When Cass retired, his mailing list went to the fellows at
Madison Electronics in Texas. Bill Kennamer K5FUV edited their "QRZ DX"
for a number of years before going to the DXCC desk in Newington to
replace Don Search.

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

Road trip!

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

"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."

For those who understand, no explanation is necessary. For those who
don't...

These days there's no point to publications like DX bulletins, it's
all out on the web in almost real time. But the websites are no where
near as much fun to read.

They could easily be...but they aren't.

Writing is easy, writing well isn't.
]
I don't support the ARRL's "gimme" for tens of thousands.

Hundreds of thousands, Dave. See "ARS License Numbers". Add up the
Techs,Tech Pluses and Advanceds and it's over 400,000.

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

Len who?

73 de Jim, N2EY