PHILCO DRIVERS

     Today was a Road Trip Day, up to the North Central Indiana Hamfest, a small but very nice event.  I bought up a few things there -- a 50 Mc/S transceiver (Seller: "What'll it take for me to sell you this rig?  It works!"  Me: [names utterly ridiculous price] Seller: "Sold!"  And so it goes), a coax feed-through and hardware for it, some switches and a meter.

     On the way back, we stopped at several large antique shops and at one, I picked up a funny-looking box.  Seemed heavy but not too heavy -- a deluxe sewing kit? poker chips?  Backgammon?

     Then I noticed the word on the lid: "PHILCO."

     I had to open it.

    It's a nice little nutdriver set, sort of a long and short, with multiple sockets!  All 5/16" hex drive, nonstandard but a reasonable tradeoff between size and strength for the long one.

     The very smallest socket (3/16") is broken and there's an empty, added-extra-lish hole, but it's got 1/4", 5/16", 3/8" and 7/16" sockets, which covers most of the common fastener sizes for radio work.  (I've got my doubts about the 3/16" driver being original, based on spacing and the look of the hole for it.  On the other hand, that is the right size for a lot of 4-40 and 4-36 hardware.)  Nice-looking drivers, though the box is a bit beat up, and priced to move at $14.00.  There was a little rust on the long driver, easily removed with light oil and a brass scraper (a/k/a a spent .45 ACP casing; think of it as beating a sword into a plowshare).

     I bought a few other things as well, some of which I'll write about in subsequent days.  The entire road trip was about 140 miles, including one hamfest, one military aviation museum, one flea market, two antique malls and one of the best barbeque places in central Indiana.