The BC 603 I owned was a WW2 era tank radio that predates modern police/fire scanners. If you wanted to listen to police and fire calls converting one of these was one way.
You would buy one of those behemoths from a surplus outfit in Ohio, build a power supply for it because the military had it's own electrical system for Sherman tanks. A loaf pan would generally act as a chassis for the power supply, converting 110 house current to the proper voltages.
Then you would open the radio itself up, go into it and cut a turn or two out of the coils and retune the rig and you would be good to go. You could now monitor fire or police calls. Today such a rig would be called a boat anchor.
Normally we'd monitor police calls but the instant I heard the fire whistle I would push the button and switch to the fire frequency and monitor the fire department.
In 1965ish I paid about $35 for a BC 603 delivered to my door .
Nowadays the $35 in '63 was worth $290 today.
I saw one for sale for $165 delivered. $165 today was $20 back then.
Today a modern 500 channel scanner can be had for about $35. That's what $4.30 was worth back in '65.
I wuz robbed.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this:
http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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