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After visiting the School of Signals Radio Museum in Blandford and seeing lots of green radio equipments I decided to look out for one and soon spotted this GRC-9 transceiver for sale. It's not too modern and uses valves and was used during the Korean war, reports of which I can remember seeing on TV. I can also remember a local factory that used to recondition stuff from the Korean war. For many months we used to see tanks, lorries and field guns moving along local roads to Milners Safe Company in Edwards Lane in the Liverpool suburbs. A schoolfriend's father was the head gardener at the place and I used to visit their house which backed onto the factory grounds. We could wander round to the main gates and see all sorts of stuff being worked on. In the grounds were parked lots of 4-wheel guns and it was our practice to sit on these (there were two bucket seats, one for elevation and one for rotation) and direct the gun at passing aircraft landing at Speke Airport. I often wondered if any of the pilots saw us. It must have been around 1952. Speke Airport also handled F-86 Sabre jets because another local firm reconditioned those also. Once or twice one would crash so they probably used salvaged parts for spares. Below is a view of the front of my new GRC-9 which I bought from a local family who found it in their loft after moving in. It has the matching dynamotor power supply shown further down the page. |
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