Fair Radio On the Ropes?

[Robert Stone]

Dave,
        I certainly hope that Fair Radio, Mike Murphy and other smaller
surplus dealers such as myself will be able to continue. I have a small
surplus business that funds my military boatanchor and VSS collecting. I
spent today at the Tobyhanna Army Depot picking up a truck load of
successful bids and inspecting the next items coming up. I can say the
pickings are kind of slim. When the DRMS has to demil equipment such as the
RT-524 and PRC-77, reducing it to junk, it says a lot about the current
mindset against selling this equipment surplus. Terrorist usage is what is
claimed is the rational for taking the sledge hammer to this equipment. But
looking at what they are destroying makes you wonder who makes these
decisions. As most of today's commercial grade HF and VHF equipment is far
more sophisticated than what the military is retiring, it is a waste of
taxpayers money to pay a worker $30,000.00 per year to smash items that
could be sold at a profit. Twice actually, first by the DRMS as it does not
profit by smashing these things, it costs and second by a small business man
such as myself, Fair Radio or Mike Murphy. And the collector and hobbyist
can get a inexpensive piece of equipment to use or experiment with.

        As for the terrorists the government thinks lurk behind every tree I
doubt they are relying on a supply of AN/GRC-106's, AN/GRC-215's or PRC-68's
to keep them operating. If so they had better shoot their logistics
officers. Who needs a heavy, hard to repair and source parts for radio when
ICOM, YEASU, RACAL, HARRIS and MOTOROLA will gladly sell them anything in
the inventory with support on call. And frequency hoping and SS boards are
available from several sources for these radios so they are more
sophisticated than what they could get from uncle sam anyhow.

        What I looked at today is pure boatanchor as the military is
cleaning out the closets and only the older equipment actually makes it to
sale in recognizable pieces. More AN/TRC-117's and some of these units are
brand new. They have AN/GRC-50 radios in them which are all tube, 468 LB,
1300 - 1800 Mhz wide band point to point boatanchors with VSS digital
multiplex equipment. Kind makes you wonder why the kept band new tube units
into the end of the 1990's.

        One last travesty I witnessed is when I visited the Tobyhanna scrap
yard and they were crushing thousands of brand new Bird 1KW dummy loads.
They can't sell them as they were marked with the system they were parts of
and it was secret! Write you're representative and tell him what you think
of these money wasting policies. I won't even tell you what they did to
about 40 Tektronix 492 spectrum analyzers, but it involved a bulldozer and a
dumpster.


                    Bob




At 04:56 PM 12/7/98 -0600, you wrote:
>I just got the new Fair Radio catalog today.
>Sixteen pages--  I thought it was just a supplement!
>
>I was sad witness to the Clinton appointees'
>destruction and burial of public property
>at NTS- property that should have found its way
>into the "surplus" houses.
>I knew they were commiting the same disgusting
>criminalities all over the globe, but this kinda
>brings it home to me again.
>
>What's your opinion-- will Fair Radio go the way
>of Canal Street?  Will the "peace in our time"
>fools put them out of business?
>
>--
>73 DE David Stinson AB5S
>arc5 at ix.netcom.com
>
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