Sunday, February 09, 2020

Saturday Hamfest

     Got out on the road yesterday, with my usual reluctance to travel, and made my way to Danville, Indiana, for the Hendricks County Hamfest.

     There were a few things of interest there, and a few old friends.  I saw an interesting little Simpson product, an upscale version of a combination power/SWR/modulation meter, and got the price down to something I didn't mind paying.

     Then this showed up:
Owned by a little old lady, who only put it on the air on holidays and never at full power.
     It's a Globe Scout, made sometime in the 1950s by World Radio Laboratories, a medium-power transmitter in the low range of "medium," 65 Watts for Morse code and 50 Watts AM.  The power cord was pretty crunchy, with a couple of breaks clean across, the kind that promise fireworks if you plug it in.  The seller had a different idea: "I had that on earlier."

      I gave him the old raised eyebrow. "You did?"

      "Yep. I was picking stations up, too."

      That rated both eyebrows. "That's kind of unusual. " (The Globe Scout is a transmitter.  It has no receive function.)

      He hemmed and hawed a little as it dawned on him what he'd said.

      I came back later and bought the thing. The price was right, and what a great story to go with it!

3 comments:

RandyGC said...

Cool!

Hopefully won't need much more than a new power cord to get operational. (Hey, if you weren't an optimist, you wouldn't be buying boat anchors at Hamfests! ;-) )

I've got a few around the shack (including my first rig, a Heathkit HW-16).

Have a hankering for an SX-99. It was the first receiver I ever used (borrowed from my boss at the local radio station while I was studying for my Novice), and it looks like a radio should to my mind.

However, lack of funds and space have won out over desire to date. Although a friend of mine has one and if he ever drops his asking price...

pigpen51 said...

RandyGC,
I had an HW 16,that I built. I had an HW 7, that I bought assembled, and used that for a long time. I ended up selling the HW 7, and giving the HW 16, along with a bunch of other assorted gear, to a missionary couple who were heading back to Togo in Africa.
He was a pilot, and she was a nurse. He was studying to get his Tech license, back in around 1985 or so. I am a General class, but worked my way up, through Novice, then Tech plus, and then General. While I understand that Morse code is not necessary for much of ham radio, it is a good thing to have, for a number of reasons and conditions.
And Roberta, that Globe Chief looks like a lot of the gear I used during my early years. It is just that the sellers now seem to think that they are made of gold or something.

Roberta X said...

The seller was asking $50. I talked him down to $30 as the hamfest was winding down, so that wasn't too bad.