At 08:19 AM 07/28/10, you wrote:
GE PR36, shudder!
A brick with wires that easily broke when the case was opened or shut.
Not a nice radio to have on the bench.
I ran a Portamobile 1 on 52.525 about 10 years ago, guess I'll have
to dig it out of the storage and see what shape it's in these days.
Moving slightly off topic, I recently came across a Motorola mobile
mic with the cast metal housing. A real favorite of the cops back
in the day; it had many uses, only one of which had anything to do
with communicating via voice. Other uses had to do with
communicating, but were more non-verbal in nature and directed at
the jerk in the back seat of the cruiser.
Milt
N3LTQ
On alternate means of communication...
Ten to fifteen years ago there was a gentleman that
used to be seen at every last-saturday-of-the-month
electronics / ham radio swap meet...
Always wore the same baseball cap, and always was
looking for only one thing.
All he'd buy were the old cast metal-case microphones,
and he'd buy them in any condition, as long as the case
was intact and undented.
One day I commented on him to one of the guys that
ran the swap meet .. and was told that it had taken
a year or so to figure the guy out. It seemed that he
wouldn't tell anybody why he was buying just microphones,
but finally he was seen selling at another swap meet, in a
hispanic part of town on one saturday and an oriental part
of town another saturday.
Apparently the gentleman in question bought the mics for
a dollar or two, he'd take them home, strip them and
bead-blast the cases, then chrome most of them and
powder coat the rest of them.
They'd get new mic elements, PTT switches, and cords. The
guy would sell the "new" mics to taxicab drivers - apparently
the hispanic drivers loved the chrome and the oriental drivers
loved the powder coat... He was selling the chromed ones
outright, with your choice of GE or Moto connectors, and
taking orders with up-front deposits for your choice of color
powder coat and connector type.
It seems that a metal case mic is NOT considered an offensive
weapon by police investigators... but makes a dandy defensive
one when swung at the end of a few inches of mic cord...
it would quiet down any unruly customer.
Mike WA6ILQ
