You can see command sets in several WW II movies. I recently saw
12'o Clock High and there is a brief scene where they are shown in
a rack. Of course the movie was made in 1948/9 when there were
still a lot of flying B-17s as orignally equipped. After the war, a
lot of those got converted for ham use. In the Mid 1950's a buddy had
a command set receiver which he and I used as Novices in the
Sweepstakes contest.

Trying to do the Sweepstakes on crystal control in the Novice bands,
of course presented its own set of challenges. We did much better
the following year when we had a new Hammarlund and a transmitter
with VFO control.

Jon W3JT (but KN9CAH/K9CAH in those days. My buddy was K9DGE,
now W6BSF.)




On 19 Oct 2008 10:37:50 -0400, (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Frank Dresser wrote:

Sure, there are some Hallicrafters radios in the Hollywood A movies. But it
seems like one out of three of the cheesy low-budget sci-fi movies from the
50s had at least one. One of the journey to the center of the earth movies
had two, one modified with a piece of paper to serve as an indicator of the
mileage from the earth's surface.

Oh, the boatanchor tradition in films continues on and on. Even on TV,
too. Watch episodes of Alf where he uses a Heathkit product to contact
his home planet.

There's a 50s Dragnet episode which shows a s-38 stacked on top of a S-40.
At the time I saw it, I had my radios stacked the same way -- more than
fifty years later!

It's a good combination.... much nicer than that Heathkit.

Oh, and if you like military boatanchors, watch Mission to Burma. Lots of
different field radios on display, from the PRC-6 on up.
--scott