Walk Back Through Radio Time In North Carolina

I visited them this past summer. I had to telephone one of the people in charge to find out when it was open and to get directions to find it. It is located in a small room on one of the upper floors of the science building at a technical university (whose exact name I forget), located on the south side of Asheville.

When I arrived, the curator and another person in charge were very friendly and helpful. The place reminded me of the junk room of many of the shacks of old time hams, although things were in fairly neat order. I thought that their documentation on some of the items was lacking, and I was able to answer some questions that they had about some of the stuff. The equipment and some early 1930's editions of R-9 Magazine (that merged with Radio in 1936), which I had never seen, were displayed on the shelves.

I looked over all the equipment on display, and talked with them for a while. As I recall, all the guys there were licensed hams. None of them were AM'ers, but the museum or one of its members subscribed to Electric Radio and they had several years of copies on hand. They ended up giving me a couple of very nice precision laboratory-grade DC meters and a resistance bridge, complete with carrying cases, that they didn't have room for and didn't want to discard because they knew it would just be thrown away by the university.

I would highly recommend a visit to the museum if you ever are in the Asheville area. Asheville is a very nice town, with refreshingly cool mountain weather in the summer that gives much appreciated relief from the hot, nasty, muggy conditions that usually prevail in the southeast during summer months. There are a lot of cultural things to see, since Asheville has always been a university town and somewhat of a mountain tourist resort from its very beginning.

While in Asheville, a visit to the Biltmore Estate is a must. And while there, it's very worthwhile to pay $15 extra for the additional "behind the scenes" tour, where you can see a lot of 1890's era electrical, HVAC and mechanical infrastructure, some of which is still in use.

I just worked Harry Mills, K4HU two nights ago on 75m. Athough he was using SSB, we had a very enjoyable conversation. I have talked with him over the years, and our conversations usually end up on the topic of vertical antennas and radial ground systems. I wish I had known that he was the one who built the spark transmitter; we would have undoubtedly talked about the museum and Asheville.

Just east of Asheville is Mount Mitchell, the highest mountain peak east of the Mississippi. It exceeds the height of the Mt. Washington, NH summit by about 400 ft.