Alan's Silent Key Collection

This week I had the responsibility of managing a Silent Key collection for the first time. Most hams will know that SKs are radio amateurs who have passed away. My wife’s uncle Alan passed away in 2017 almost 3 years ago, but I learned over Thanksgiving that he had an amateur license (ex-N0JAU), as did his father-in-law Dick (ex-W7CRZ) who passed in 2006. Their family still had all of the radio equipment and didn’t really have a way to distribute it, and were looking to free up the space. I knew that there are hamfests every couple of months in the Denver area and offered to help sell it off. Alan’s widow offered that I should keep anything I found useful, which is a very gracious gift, and send back proceeds from only sales.

Over the weekend of Feb. 8th, I drove down to New Mexico where Alan and Dick’s family still lives. We loaded up several moving boxes of various transceivers, test equipment, and cables. We also took down a 25’ antenna, which was tricky with no guy system to leverage.

Over the next week, I went about sorting, cleaning, cataloging and pricing the gear. There was nothing cutting-edge between Dick and Alan’s stuff which was to be expected, but there were a few gems. Dick had two complete sets of the Kenwood TS-430S including matching tuners, power supplies and desk mics, as well as several 1960’s Heathkit assembled kits. Dick also had an Icom IC-718 which I plan to adopt as my first serious HF radio, and not one but two AEA packet modems which should aid my Winlink experimentation. Alan only held a Tech license and had several VHF mobile radios; I probably won’t use those for permanent mobile use because I prefer having at least dual-band capability, but they could be very useful for setting up something like a TARPN node. The collection also included many ham shack staples like dummy loads and RF cable adapters.

Being a vendor at a hamfest is very much like being a vendor at the craft sales that my wife and mother-in-law often do, so they were a lot of help in preparing. On the day of the sale, my mother-in-law offered to come help me. It was definitely welcome company! We didn’t move much equipment, but I got feedback that most of my prices were in line with current market values, and that a lot of it was fondly remembered by those who had used them. I heard a lot of people especially comment about the Kenwood TS-430S, “That’s a good radio! I got a lot of use out of one of those!”

Now that the sale’s over, I just have to figure out what to do with the rest of it. I don’t plan to store it all forever, so I’ll need to find homes for the things I’m not keeping.