One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that you can really tell something about the economy by what turns up at hamfests and what the prices are.
During better times, more stuff shows up at higher prices, obviously. More vendors are travelling because they know they can sell stuff at shows for a good price. Things like the Hallicrafters S-38 series show up in volume and at high prices because they can sell them. Those of us that know about the stuff want to see it first, and if we can poke at it we’re often willing to give a bit more if it’s what we want. We also get the experience of talking to the vendor who might be the one that actually owned the unit and can tell us about it.
During leaner years, less shows up but it’s cheaper, and you get more sold online because they can usually get wider exposure and a price closer to what a show would have offered during good times. Things like the Hallicrafters S-38 series don’t show up (yes, those are a good indicator because there were so many of them made) or if they do they cost next to nothing.
2020-2024 was the lean times, but stuff was cheap and if you were willing to go to a lot of shows, you could get some good stuff for literally a few dollars. That’s where I picked up most of the equipment I’m working with now. In 2025, prices started to rise - but they fell back pretty quickly and it started to be more like the lean years.
These last shows? They’ve been miserable. Fewer vendors, less new stuff (I assume companies are less willing to travel to smaller shows because there’s no crowd) and there’s a lot more not worth the money asked items. The big piles of junk vendors don’t show up. The tube guys don’t show up. The size of the shows have been shrinking drastically. People with certain items are asking more than a new comparable device would cost you because they bought them during good years and need to recover money.
The biggest tell for me this last show that said the economy is really in the toilet and is just a thin coat of varnish over rot is the guys that buy up everything else before all the rest of us can get there. For example, there’s one guy that I see at a lot of shows. He goes around before general opening and will buy up a lot of cherry items for his own table. Maybe do a little cleanup to them, but often just sit them on the table at a higher price. This guy had nothing other than just some normal hamfest tat and maybe one piece of oddball stuff. I’ve never seen his table that thin…there’s simply no cherries on the crap sundae right now, even for the insiders. The fact that this guy that goes to every local show, buys up things beforehand, and then resells them had nothing - that’s probably the biggest red flag I’ve seen.
The markets may be good, but the people in the trenches are dead. You all knew that already, however…
I went to the Findlay hamfest this past weekend instead of the Clearfield hamfest - I wanted to go to the latter, but something got in the way and I went local instead.
Unfortunately, Findlay has shrank substantially over the years. Last year was probably 1/3 of the year before, and this year maybe 1/2 of last year. I’m sad to see that happen, and it makes me wonder if it’s because the club is aging out, because there are more shows, or simply the changing fortunes of time. Probably a some of each, but it was quite small this year with a lot of open space. We used to shut the show down at 1PM, but headed out at about 9:30 for this one.
There was a bit to look at, but I had to struggle to find interesting things to photograph. Here’s a few things for you, some of these I know have showed up in the past.
Keeping the ground from blowing away.
A nice old Schauer battery charger.
These are getting rarer
An interesting VTVM.
Meters. All kinds.
Piles of junk. Hamfest gold.
I see these here quite often.
All the bearcats you need.
Next show is Cleveland, which has been pretty good so far, after that the Early Television Museum’s swap meet and I’ll probably close the year out with MARC @ MAPS and the antique show at the fairgrounds. Stay tuned!
I picked this guy up from an online sales site for next to nothing - I assume because it’s not a desirable Heathkit unit and people don’t seem to care much for these late-model EICO devices. Everyone wants the stuff with eye tubes…but I was just looking at another siggen because you can’t ever have enough of those.
This guy was probably made in 1968, because of the late ‘67 date on the meter.
The underside is decently laid out, but there’s some chaos here.
Of note is the mix of old and new carbon resistors, and the old and new style electrolytics. Those old brown carbons probably need to go, but we’ll check them in a later post.
Here’s the money shot:
I don’t necessarily like lamp being lit like that…but it’s not flickering. Usually when these go bad, you’ll get that circuit trying to balance itself and it will go up and down as the lamp gains resistance from heating up and then falls back when the resistance gets too high. However, the output is rock solid…so maybe this one is supposed to operate like this? Others of this type I have do not do this. It could be a symptom of wildly out of tolerance resistors, so…back to checking those in a later post!
And finally, here is the output. Nice clean signal.
It looks like this won’t need a whole lot, other than some of the potential failures being replaced before they fail. Being 60 instead of 80 years old probably helps there.
Stay tuned for the next part of this series. We’ll dig into the components and see what’s what!
I’m starting to think the only thing this device needs is a good cleaning and calibration. However, there are some electrolytics in this device, as well as one of those 1600VDC blocking capacitors. While those don’t appear to be bad, I’m going to replace them regardless just so this thing is ready for the ages.
As I don’t have a whole lot of low-voltage equipment, I had to order some of the larger part. I also had to order some of the 1600VDC part, since I only buy those as needed. Those are on the way, and we’ll get to those later.
The first part we’re going to replace is the little 10μF 16VDC part that’s in the zero circuit. Surprisingly, it’s not actually bad - it’s just way off of course, like all old electrolytics are. >20μF at about 11Ω - that’s about normal for this small of a part.
But here’s the new one anyway:
I did a bit of tweaking on the calibration adjustments, and I can say I was pleased by what I saw. I believe that was more the cleaning than the capacitor.
As soon as I get the other parts, Ill replace those as well. Stay tuned!
Some time ago, an EICO 242 VTOM came across the bench. While I wasn’t going to do anything with it, I decided to see if I could bring it back to life.
Here’s the issue:
The DVM is measuring 20VDC, the EICO 242 is measuring the same voltage, but reporting only ~17VDC. Something is wrong here.
It’s probably one or more of the following:
Out of calibration
Resistors out of tolerance
Switches are very dirty
Some unseen damage
There’s not a whole lot in this device. Let’s check a few resistors:
The first one is supposed to be 90Ω, the second 1.227MΩ. They’re actually pretty good.
I did about half a dozen, and all were like this - quite well in tolerance. Hmm…
The switches are really blackened from age, so I’m going to give them a cleaning and then do a calibration. We’ll see what that does for us. If it gets the meter “good enough!” I may leave it at that…but I’d still like to go through the resistors just to see what’s what, and there are a few small electrolytics in there that certainly need replaced. Stay tuned!
