My God bender is Evil, I mean Bender is Eviler!

Idly surfing the web turns up the odd boat anchor now and then. Any ham worth his salt will have owned one of these monsters at some early point in their career (I started with an R1155 and still chuckle when they turn up on eBay). Of course most of us learned the lesson and moved on, and of course there are the stupid ones who stuck with them (Probably didn't have a YL or XYL to draw the line!).

This is all well and good. Ultimately we need to preserve some of these anchors for prosperity, there’s a museum waiting for some of them... somewhere?

Have you noticed that the old car you once owned had a feature or gizmo that modern cars lack? My rusty old MK1 Consul had a brilliant bench seat and three speed column shift (Great for dates!). The rest of it was a total nail and so I was glad to get rid, but I can’t buy a car with bench seats or column shift anymore.

Probably some Euro-dork (The same idiot who banned lead in solder) outlawed them as they couldn’t count the exact seating capacity! What is it with car makers, they throw away perfectly good ideas?

This doesn’t seem to be the case with transceivers. Okay I’m sure there were some features that have been lost (Drift, magic eye, heat, weight, hollow state technology and lethal HT voltages) but on the whole if there is a good feature its been retained.

But I digress, boat anchors by their nature are on the weighty side but you can see that early on the basic layout made them pleasing to the eye, but they do whisper "just don’t try to move me and we will be best chums okay!"

But there are some exceptions to this rule…
They say function follows form or is that form follows function? Whatever, I can only surmise from the form of the following devices that they were built for some evil function?

They are often mounted on something like a toolbox or crate. I wonder if their owners think this will make them look more appealing or portable? Of course they all seem to be "Buyer collects", I wonder why?

Vote on them if you wish at -

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They may be getting on and prone to testing the truss but I still love my FT-107Ms...

At least they come with a handle on the side :o)