What to use for Comm if SHTF?

[Eddie]

Mystery

Maybe one of you guys can answer this question.

The guy that lived in my home before I did was an "uber prepper". The stuff he did makes me feel completely unprepared by comparision. He had underground food storage, a greenhouse, a fallout shelter, bars on the windows, everything. One the things that I saw before I moved in has made me wonder.

One of the outbuildings was an old chicken coop. He had a small "telephone pole" about 8' high with power lines running from his home to the chicken coop. An old television aerial was beside the coop. Inside, there were cartons of old vinyl records and boxes and boxes of these little flat pieces of wood, about 1"X8"x8". Each piece of wood had wiring on it with a light bulb, a switch and an old vacuum tube. There were also some cartons of loose vacuum tubes.

Now, the guy was a veteran, a radioman in WWII. He had a radio repair shop in the garage with an oscilliscope and everything.

What was the purpose of the little blocks of wood, each with a single vacuum tube?

 

[gmviso]

Maybe one of you guys can answer this question.

What was the purpose of the little blocks of wood, each with a single vacuum tube?

You're pulling our legs, right?

 

[Eddie]

Not even scratching the surface

I'm not even scratching the surface. For example, the guy owned twelve of everything. Twelve screwdrivers, twelve shovels, twelve axes, twelve bowsaws. He would have one in use, like on a tool rack or something and the other eleven in storage, ready in case he needed them.

We had hidden safes, hidden microphones, a secret room; he even had the garage door wired to run current through the locking bar.

[BTW, I told my wife you think I'm kidding and she is laughing.]

I posted some pics of the fallout shelter in my album. I will try to dig out my pics of the house when I moved it to show you.

I am dead serious. what would a little piece of wood with a light bulb, a radio tube, a switch and some wires do?

 

[Farmritch]

Eddie,
Back in the day thats how they built projects... on a board
with point to point wiring
In some cases you could get a tube but the socket cost money so you improvised, adaped and overcame
It's hard to tell what project he was building
Yes you can have a 1 tube reciever and or a 1 tube transmitter
Hard to say without actually studing the circuits

 

[Farmritch]

You also have to remember back in the day the vacuum tube was the micro chip of today.
The Transistor is now old news and the transistor replaced the tube for the most part
There were amplifier tubes, diode tubes. detector tubes, etc. etc
So you say a tube........ a tube is not just a tube

 

[Eddie]

About a hundred

There were about a hundred of the little things. We made an album of pictures of the place when we moved in. I will try to find it and post an album.

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Sounds like he was better prepared than any of us!

One of my dads neighbors died a few years ago. He was an old retired railroader about 100 years old. We got dynamite from him a couple of times to blast beaver dams and he always acted like it was his last stick left over from when you could get it at the hardware store......When they were going through the property (it was a several hundred acre farm with small buildings all over it) They found an 18'x18' shed stuffed FULL of cases of the stuff!!! They hauled it off truck load after truck load. I cried for months

 

[Eddie]

Tubes

You also have to remember back in the day the vacuum tube was the micro chip of today.
The Transistor is now old news and the transistor replaced the tube for the most part
There were amplifier tubes, diode tubes. detector tubes, etc. etc
So you say a tube........ a tube is not just a tube

My dad bought the place before we decided to move. He held an estate auction. I remember that some outfit from out west came and bought up all of the vacuume tubes. The guy that was bidding for them said that they restored old Crossley radios.