Welcome
to all! Here you will find photos of my vintage radio collection.
I have spent many hours in
my shop repairing and restoring Most were real basket cases
before restoration. I live just west of Atlanta, Georgia. There
are very few radios in my part of the country available for
restoration. Therefore, I have bought mostly inexpensive radios
from Ebay auctions. According to the US
Census Bureau radios were owned by only five percent of the
population of Georgia in 1930. Most folks around here were lucky
to have food, shelter and clothing much less a radio until after
WWII.
Click on the individual links to view a sampling of
my collection with additional comments or click on the Radio
Slideshow link to view a slideshow of my favorites. Enjoy
your stay! Site UNDER CONSTRUCTION so yall come back often!
My
radio collecting started in 2001 after my daughter
left an old Philco 38-60 here for storage. I restored it for her as a
sentimental gift. Her grandfather had given it to her and she had
stored it in a warehouse for years.
It was a challenging restoration for the uninitiated. I
discovered the rar+p newsgroup and many other resources on the
web. Without the web the restoration would have been much more
difficult. Maybe I can give a little back to newcomers through
this website.
I built my hobby shop originally as a
woodworking shop but my interest in vintage radios has caused it
to be a dual-purpose workshop.
Along about the age of twelve I became
interested in all things electronic. I built amplifiers, a flea
power radio transmitter, and an oscilloscope from a Knight Kit
and was the neighborhood TV hacker/fixer.
After high school, I went to a two-year tech school and came away
with an Associates Degree in Electrical Engineering Technology.
IBM hired me as a Field Engineer in 1963 and I spent
thirty years fixing broken computers , attending customer
meetings and commuting to Atlanta. I officially retired from IBM
in 1993 after thirty years and two weeks service. IBM called me
back two weeks after retirement and I worked eight more years as
a contractor and supplemental employee. So my real retirement was
not until 2002.
One of my coworkers was
asked what he was going to do after he retired. He responded, “I
am going to sit on the front porch in my rocker.” Asked
what he was going to do after that he replied, “ Well after
about a month I am going to slowly start rocking.” I
am not one to sit on the front porch and rock and besides I don’t
have a front porch. However, I have discovered that a person can
only do so much yard work, 'honey do' projects, play so
many golf rounds, bowl only so many frames and surf only so much
internet.
The radio restoration hobby has become a fascinating and
enjoyable way to spend some of my retirement time.
I
decided to attempt to make every radio I have work. I have failed
on only a few that had parts made of unobtainium, would have cost
much more than feasible to restore or were just plain junk when
manufactured. I do not just collect radios and put them on a
shelf. I want them to work and work properly.
