surplus stores ailments

[Opcom]

http://mockeletronics.samsbiz.com/
going out of business sale

wonder if this is still there? http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/mock/100_0453.jpg



http://www.surplussalespa.com/catalog/
almost nothing on website, store and site for sale.


http://www.blackholesurplus.com/
so is this still alive or not?


times are hard.

[KA0HCP]

I guess we finally ran out of WWII....

[W3RSW]

Yeah, stuff was rolling out of the factories for an eight year US war, two to four more in Japan after the actual end.  Imagine how much of it's at the bottom of the Pacific, rusting away on islands and tons of it now in our landfills.

But you can still get it. You just have to decannibalize, or "re-kit" what remains. 

There are Several sci-Fi stories of Dump Mining, all the EPA constraints and effete sensibilities of our present rich and blithely wasteful generations long forgotten.

You really don't want to use identical square blocks for your family plot tombstones. They'll likely as not end up in a house some day. Modern Alexandria was built from the limestone caps missing from all but the top of one of the great pyramids.  Modern Rome and St.Peters built from scarfing the ancient Roman Forum. 

But I digress.  Doesn't take much to turn on my "bore you to death" machine these days. 

My God, my mother used to darn socks! 

[N0WEK]

http://mockeletronics.samsbiz.com/
going out of business sale

wonder if this is still there? http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/mock/100_0453.jpg



http://www.surplussalespa.com/catalog/
almost nothing on website, store and site for sale.


http://www.blackholesurplus.com/
so is this still alive or not?


times are hard.

I'll be flying out of Roswell, NM the 2nd and 3rd weeks of Feb and going up to visit friends in Santa Fe on the weekend in between. I'll go on up there and see what's left! From the website it looks like their still in sell off mode!

[flintstone mop]

That's what I thought...Area 51 stuff for sale

[KC4ALF]

Sigh!

[N0WEK]

That's what I thought...Area 51 stuff for sale

Of course, Area 51 is in Nevada!

[N0WEK]

The Black Hole is pretty well dead and in the final stages of being scrapped!

I went up to Las Alamos today and it was closed but the manager was there supervising a couple of loads of scrap steel and old computers being hauled away and kindly let me check out the building.

Whats left is pretty much trash and junk plus lots of steel shelving (for sale). I did find a NOS septar socket, about 20 lbs of huge power resistors, half a dozen paper/oil 600 v chassis mount caps, a bunch of male and female chassis mount 120 vac sockets and an female octal cable end that I needed. $35 for the pile. Even the Black Hole sign got sold off...









It was a gorgeous drive up here though. I'll take the scenic route to Albuquerque tomorrow and then the scenic route past the Trinity sight on the way back to Roswell on Monday.

[K1JJ]

From what I've been told, much of military surplus electronics these days is scrapped  - and not sold after being "demiled."    They are afraid of losing proprietary info.

Is this true?


Years ago there were Vietnam Collins rigs and all kinds of surplus.  Back in 1990 I bought some military shelters that became antenna dog houses.  But all the gear inside was stripped before I got them. There was a big base in MD a few friends used to frequent for auctions, but heard the military stopped the practice years ago, at least for high technology-sensitive gear.

So, I wonder, is it the source drying up or is the demand dying?

T  

[W1RKW]

surplussing material doesn't happen as far as I know where I work. It's scrapped then recycled by a recycling agent and the company gets $ for the recycled material. The 'man' says yes or no.

[Steve - K4HX]

Most DoD stuff goes to DRMO. What happens to it after that is variable.

[Opcom]

Mr Haney told me (best I recall) that during the Clinton presidency there was a decision to demil all the military radios. It was frequently done with a torch in the most convenient way on RT524's and RT246's, which would get the torch through the RF PA, and the oscillator or synth module removed. So, there is a policy of extreme government waste of taxpayer funds in place. The RT524 is a 30-75MHz FM set, has no inbuilt encryption, good for 6M. The army was using PRC-150's, an HF set, but those will likely all be crushed due to the policy.

Hey what about Mendelson's? It's in Dayton, Ohio.

http://www.meci.com/

looks like still there.

[W8VG]

I think the policy definitely has changed.  I've been out of it for while but one of my buds, Tom W0EBI--retired Sig Corps Sgt Maj who retired over there--told me sad story about shutting down Campbell Bcks (old US Army Europe HQ).  Apparently the wreckers ball was used on everything to include lots of re-usable gear and was all hauled away for scrap--they didn't save much of anything out of it--just scrapped it and hauled it all away.

But mil electronics have all changed--everything's embedded now--crypto modules, sensitive/proprietary chips, etc.  Suspect it's easier to just demil it all rather than hire army of folks to sort it all out.  I was PM for military GPS receivers years ago and every one had to be de-milled due to some sensitive embedded modules.  When I worked in Pentagon overseeing mil GPS, we used to watch Ebay and occasionally would find somebody selling one--reporting them to authorities.  One Saturday night about 15 years ago, a very astute USAF CAPT knocked at my door and handed-over one he'd bought at a gun show earlier in the day <ugh!>. 

A real change from old days for sure.  As a youngster at Monmouth about 35 years ago, I got commendation once for figuring out how to buy back surplus and put it in code A stock at Tobyhanna--earned me title "Junk Man" in a few circles <hihi>........we'd been trying to support this old spy shelter in Korea called a MLQ-24--without much luck--which used ancient postwar radar warning receiver components (part of old AN/APR-9B family).  Was being used to type East Bloc radars, etc.  There were no drawings--all gone years ago--and the brass considered awarding a contract to reverse engineer some of it (real Govt waste for sure) when we synopsized our needs in The Commerce Business Daily and got lots of responses from surplus houses in addition to the usual folks.  The USN and USAF had dumped them a few years before--some NIB!

The greybeards up there said "you can't buy surplus" buy you actually could--wasn't easy navigating all the new-equipment bureaucracy though. The DCAS inspectors looked it over and told us it was some of the cleanest they'd seen--all stashed away neatly on pallets.   Also went to the bone-yard at Monmouth and found some of it sitting over there--we didn't even know we had <hihi>.  It was that experience that taught me to never complain about not having enough to do! 

Those were the days--probably gone I'm afraid.

73's
Geo W8VG