***Re: Interesting Find

At 09:45 AM 11/30/03 -0700, you wrote: I don't think I've ever seen a complete unit. I may have seen a chassis but not recognized it without the plug in panels. Usually I just find the panels by themselves or maybe with jumpers. There's a scrap/surplus test equipment company by the name of Avitar in Sanford that HAS had them in the past. There's also a couple of places in Melbourne. I know there's none in Melbourne now but I haven't been to Avitar in a while so I don't know about them. The last BIG stash of them that I saw was at the Charlie Bell auction a couple of years ago. Here's a bit more about that auction. " They came from an auction down near Kennedy Space Center. The auction was a HUGE collection of stuff from an engineer named Charlie Bell that worked at KSC. Charlie worked at KSC almost from the day that KSC opened. In fact, when KSC was first built, NASA hired a steel company to built many of the gantries, block houses etc. The company built a large (20,000 ft2?) fabrication building JUST outside the south gate of KSC to prefab many of the parts and structures. After they were done Charlie bought the building and used it to house a lot of his relics. This guy collected EVERYTHING. For example, he had John Glenn's original space suit. In the yard were two complete Altas rockets! He went to all of the surplus and scrap auctions years ago and his family started selling off stuff. They had two day auctions every weekend for several months! And that was just one of the THREE sites where Charlie had stuff stored! A lot of the stuff was just trash or junk but there was lots of interesting stuff too. A friend of mine bought a big box of stuff pretty much sight unseen, when he got it home they found a hatch from one of the Apollo command modules in it! (He's already turned down $50,000 for it.) These manuals where in one of the big box of stuff that he bought. The auctions brought museum people and collectors from all over the world. You just had to see the amount and variety of stuff to believe it. Search the net for "Charlie Bell" and you'll probably find more information about it." Joe