Saturday, Sept. 3, 2011 — There have been some interesting things selling on eBay this week; unfortunately I didn’t quite have enough money to buy some of the more interesting ones.
I must be getting rusty … I lost several snipes today, though frankly the issue wasn’t my timing, but the amount I was willing to go. Today I was looking for a bargain; there weren’t many to be found.
TNX QSL OM! One of the items I was watching on eBay a week and a half ago included this Hallicrafters QSL card show at right.
The card was for a contact with the station at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, Ill., in 1966. The station was apparently being operated at a booth setup by the American Red Cross.
The gear lineup sounded pretty sweet — the card indicates they were using the Hallicrafters SX-117/HT-44 receiver/transmitter combination, along with the Hallicrafters HT-45 amplifier. The QSO was on 80 CW. One of the interesting things is that the seller’s photos he used in the auction listing were not photos of the card I received! The cards are identical, and the QSOs were with the same ham, W9QLW. The QSO on the card pictured took place on Aug. 20, 1966; the one I received was for a QSO that happened on Aug. 17, 1966. Both QSOs were on the same frequency — 3649 kHz.
I liked the QSL card mostly because it depicts the main Hallicrafters manufacturing plant located on the corner of 5th and Kostner Avenues. The building today looks fairly decayed and uninviting. It doesn’t look like it hold offices of any active business; the front doors are chained and padlocked pretty tightly.
There’s a portico and what appears to be a former entrance on the “left” side of the card and photographs. While there are no signs or names on the building, the trademark Hallicrafters “h” remains in place in the middle of each portico. If you look closely, you can see the mounts for some of the letters that once spelled out “The Hallicrafters Company.”
The building may be completely abandoned; it covers most of a city block, and if you look at the side along Kostner Ave., you’ll see many, many broken panes. The broken glass isn’t an attempt to break into the building, but simply appears to be vandalism.
The building was built at the end of World War II. The company had a plant on Indiana Avenue in Chicago that was their main point of production during the war. The company wanted a newer, modern plant, and so the 5th & Kostner plant was built.
In its early years, the building had large, open windows along its northern side. Over the years, nearly all of these were changed; some were completely bricked up, but most were modified for use with smaller windows.
The 5th & Kostner building backs up to a railroad, and the gate that limited access to the lot between the building and the railroad was standing open; I would love to explore the area (in daylight) and see what the building is used for (if anything).
Looking at this area of Chicago, it really is sad. This was once a thriving industrial area with many manufacturing plants. Some have been demolished, but many — like the Hallicrafters building — still stand.
The 5th & Kostner building was home to Hallicrafters until the company was sold to Northrop in — ironically — 1966, the same year as the QSL card pictured above. Northrop moved the company to Rolling Meadows, a community just north of Schaumburg in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago.
BUGS? DID SOMEONE SAY BUGS? There were some prime bugs up for auction today that I did not get. There was an E.F. Johnson Speed-X 114-501 key that I chased to $135. For some reason, the E.F. Johnson Speed-X 501 keys are very hot items. At one point, E.F. Johnson removed the “ears” from the t-bar pivot frame that was the mark of the Speed-X bugs for so many years. The EFJ 501 featured a completely redesigned pivot frame, which apparently makes it rare.
I did pick up two keys today, both apparently are homebrew keys, and not apparently desirable to collectors (which explains how I got them so cheap). Likewise, an early Les Logan Speed-X 501 key sold for $41 early today — it was the deluxe one that was all chrome, and looked great! *sigh!*
A couple of surprises came with two auctions for Hallicrafters gear. An SX-117 receiver in unknown conditions sold for $330, while the matching HT-44 transmitter and power supply brought $238.50 — pretty impressive prices considering that neither was checked nor guaranteed to function!
I have some photos coming of some recent additions, so stay tuned.
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