[TenTec] Ten Tec Year of Manufacture - Corsair II

[Don Rasmussen]

The Corsair II serial numbers are inconsistent as Barry suggests and cannot be decoded using the current algo.

What I have seen is that the earliest batch of Corsair II have only a string of digits. 

Then for some odd reason, the next later group of the serial number labels have that string of digits preceeded by "560-" which is the original Corsair model, yet there it is on the back of a Corsair II (561).

The latest Corsair II's have "Model 561" above the the serial number digits and this string of characters (almost) conforms to the current scheme - like my 90A10149. The "9" at the end suggests 1990 - good, but we have to ignore the two characters preceeding the "A" because there are not that many weeks in a year. Above that string is printed "Model 561".

The only way to really know when your unit was built is to look at the date codes on the Motorola IC's. YYMM example 8839 = 39th week of 1988.

The point is really moot however, because all of these years later the difference between the earliest one made (mid 1986?) and the newest (1990) does not mean much as compared to the number of hours on the specific unit. It's either 21 or 25 years old - approximately.    

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The serial numbering system for Ten-Tec rigs changed in the latter
part of the Corsair 2's production life.  Prior to that, all Ten-Tec
rigs were simply consecutively numbered (please correct me if I'm
wrong).  After that, they were date coded.

560-00255 is the old system and is not date coded.  It was probably
made within a few months of the start of production with a 255 serial
number - that's my (un)educated guess.

73, Barry N1EU