LINKS
If you like my pages, try some of these links found in my travels on the web (in no particular order. )
Remember that keeping a "links" page up to date is really hard, so on occasion some of the links won't work, because the sites have changed URL's or the owners have been arrested. I try to prune and update the list regularly. Send me links you think I should add!
Radiomarine (RCA): The world famous Radiomarine web page. Don't miss a visit to historic station KPH-KSM if you are ever in the San Francisco Bay area! CW forever...
Michigan State Police Retiree's Group: This site has a lot of history on the Michigan State Police radio system and the site intends to eventually have a centralized index of the history of state police radio systems in all fifty states.
Swedish Mobile Radios: Looks like life must be more fun in Sweden! Here's a Swedish amateur who has a nice collection of SRA, Motorola and Storno mobile radios as well as a personal helicopter in his back yard! Whatever happened to those girls from Abba, anyway... I wonder if they like radios...
New Zealand Police Radio: Here's an interesting site with the history of New Zealand's police radio. The only time I have ever seen a Command Set from a B-17 being used as a police car radio!
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~abrill/Exhibits/ARC5/ARC5.htm
British Mobile Radio Museum: Fellow surplus mobile radio enthusiasts in Great Britain have this massive website, where everything you ever wanted to know about British police radios is there (somewhere...)
History of German B-Netz mobile telephone system: This site is in German and covers the early German mobile telephone service. I am not crazy about the page font and the layout but the data is all there...
http://www.oebl.de/B-Netz/BNetz.html
Converting Johnson mobile radios to 900 MHz amateur frequencies: It appears that it's fairly easy to convert the dash mount Johnson 900 MHz radios to the ham band. On the other hand, it may be more satisfying to attack them with a hammer. You be the judge...
http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/900mhz/EFJohnson.txt
and
http://www.qsl.net/k0kn/efj.html
Urban Exploration Forums: Not a radio site, but here's a fascinating website about urban exploration, i.e. exploring the abandoned and crumbling industrial infrastructure of what was once a great country where people actually had good jobs, manufactured quality goods, lived in affordable, comfortable homes and where men looked like men and women looked like women (instead of a pile of tires in a warm-up suit)...oh...never mind, here's the link::
http://www.uer.ca/forum_showcats.asp?fid=1
History of Inland Marine Radio. Fascinating site about the history of inland marine radio on the Great Lakes:
http://www.imradioha.org/index.htm
Nick's navy radio pages. Photos and data of vintage naval radio stations and gear:
http://www.virhistory.com/navy/index.htm
Chinese military radio surplus sales. Interesting, but the English translation engine doesn't work (and never has) and the page typifies the Chinese fascination with doing things in web page design which infuriate everyone other than themselves. Such as floater boxes which follow your mouse, annoying pop-ups, back-traps, right-click lockouts and more. You'll see what I mean. In order to make the page display correctly, install simplified Chinese encoding in your browser. I don't know if the proprietor understands English. I am guessing not. Don't expect to be able to buy the stuff on the pages unless you are in China. Divide prices by about 7.2 to get US Dollars. The first price listed is the original production cost, which I can only conclude is simply a wild guess on his part: Really determined people in the USA have indeed bought from him, but the shipping cost was breathtaking, and if I was informed correctly, he raised the price as well...
Rebuilding Collins Mechanical Filters: This apparently works! For the R-390A receivers. Avoid paying a fortune for some old filter when you can fix your defective one. This page is hosted on the execrable Tripod free hosting service, so have your pop-up blocker turned on and be willing to click the garbage away to see the full page:
http://collinsfilter.tripod.com/
M-Squad Police Decals: Restoring a vintage California Highway Patrol car or just interested in getting arrested by Homeland Security? M-Squad has the finest duplicates of original police car graphics, as well as things like replacement decals and labels for light bars and that sort of thing. Take a look...
http://www.msquadvpd.com/5.html
Abandoned and Derelict Cold War Infrastructure: This page has interesting links and information about various communications facilities from the 1950's-60's, which for the most part are no longer with us. I particularly like the abandoned RCA facility in Tangier, Morocco:
http://coldwar-c4i.net/index.html
Retrobright Project: Have you ever been exasperated by finding that your once white telephone, computer monitor case, mobile phone, calculator, etc. has become yellowed or even brown with age? These guys figured out that it's caused by a photochemical reaction with the fire-retardant component of the plastic. They have also developed a chemical solution to return the plastic to (nearly?) its original color! Check it out. The formula is over on the left side of the page as a link. You may actually need to buy some Oxy-Clean from Billy Mayes!
http://retr0bright.wikispaces.com/Using+Retr0Bright
MOSCOW RKK RADIO MUSEUM: This is a massive project undertaken by friend Walt Gromov and associates in Moscow to document and display military radios from the 20th century, from a Russian perspective. Lots of rare equipment. Very frustrating to a Californian who will never be able to acquire examples of that Russian radio gear for his own collection...
http://www.rkk-museum.ru/index_eng.htm
LOS ANGELES POLICE RADIO: Friend Harry Marnell has created this website about Los Angeles' police radio system from start to today. Some cool audio clips and great photos! LAPD was still broadcasting on medium wave AM up until 1965!
http://harrymarnell.net/kma367.htm
MOTOROLA PROGRAMMING CABLE PINOUTS: Batlabs has all the schematics for Motorola programming cables in one place, which saves a lot of rummaging around.
http://www.batlabs.com/pinouts.html
Ver. 2/10/2010