Radio-Craft Cover Site

[W1GFH]

Great page of vintage station photos w/ highly personalized homebrew transmitters like W3IU's. Lightning-bolt callsign design. Chrome accents. And a dashboard clock. Cool.

More at...  http://uv201.com/framepage1.htm

[W3SLK]

Now that is a Buzzardly Kewl op!!! I[/img]

[k4kyv]

Great page of vintage station photos w/ highly personalized homebrew transmitters like W3IU's. Lightning-bolt callsign design. Chrome accents. And a dashboard clock. Cool.

More at...  http://uv201.com/framepage1.htm

Notice the ring-mounted D-104 microphone.

[W1GFH]

Rear of tx. Amazing buzzardly construction.

http://uv201.com/Photo%20Pages/Photo%20Images/w3iu_3.jpg

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Deja vu all over again, almost


N3DRB Circa 1939, err .. 1995.

[N3DRB The Derb]

I had it all.  

Wonder what happened to that Tx. Probably got chopped up to make a hi fi setup.  

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

And an amazingly clear photo. I don't think I could see it that well if I was standing in the room with the TX!

Rear of tx. Amazing buzzardly construction.

http://uv201.com/Photo%20Pages/Photo%20Images/w3iu_3.jpg

[W1GFH]

And an amazingly clear photo. I don't think I could see it that well if I was standing in the room with the TX!

Looks like shot by a pro. Probably taken with a large format camera. 5x8 negative was popular with portrait shooters at the time.

[W3RSW]

I'm intrigued with the electric picture behind the op. station in the pix shown before.  Hmmm, what does it do when turned on?  Does a little ham run up on the bridge, drink a bunch of '7's, then jump in the stream?

R. Stevenson Wilson

[Paul, K2ORC]

I'm intrigued with the electric picture behind the op. station in the pix shown before.  Hmmm, what does it do when turned on?  Does a little ham run up on the bridge, drink a bunch of '7's, then jump in the stream?

R. Stevenson Wilson

Rich, I think the wire going up to the frame is actually the antenna feed line.  Looking closely I think I see a dipole strung from one of the trees.

[k4kyv]

I'm intrigued with the electric picture behind the op.  Hmmm, what does it do when turned on?  

Also, look the TX.  There are no feeders attached to the insulators at the top of the rack... And where is the D-104 mic cord connected to the rig?

[N3DRB The Derb]

My bet is that the picture is hiding a window or the hole he drilled to feed the antenna through. I have no idea why there's no 600 ohm line on the TX though. Nobody used antenna relays in them days, they always used tuned transmit ants and random wires for the RX.

He probably disconnected it just for show in the pic. Or maybe not....

Anyone else has the impression that the photo has been airbrushed or retouched? The face of the reciever looks fake around the front knobs. I have seen a Breting 12 in person live and in color and I dont remember the trim rings around the knobs.

I do see the D-104 cord on the table behind the mike.

[W1UJR]

I'm intrigued with the electric picture behind the op. station in the pix shown before.  Hmmm, what does it do when turned on?  Does a little ham run up on the bridge, drink a bunch of '7's, then jump in the stream?

R. Stevenson Wilson

The cord was most likely for an electric light to illuminate the print.
Very common in older homes to have a small light which shined down on the artwork and in this case the operating desk.

I agree, the pix is so clean and well done it's almost staged.
No extra wires, boxes of parts, bottles of Rolling Rock, etc. about.

Did you notice the small clock on the 3rd rack panel from the top?
Looks like a Telechron.

I have corresponded with author of the website the photo was taken from.
Mike is a fine business fellow -not a ham - and really enjoys older radios and gear.
Most of the prints and such he has picked up at estate sales.

I was especially taken with the 8BNY prints, esp. the three young hams in the hamshack. Mike was kind enough to provide a link to a high resolution version of that photos, it’s a classic which I intend to print on photo paper and frame. Will look great on the wall.
Check the image for yourself, and tell me you can’t feel the magic… http://uv201.com/Photo%20Pages/Photo%20Images/threehams.jpg

I'll say it again; I was born 40 years too late...
I now know what Fred Hammond VE3HC intended when he told me that I had missed the "Golden Years" of radio.



...-.-

[w3jn]

I agree, the pix is so clean and well done it's almost staged.
No extra wires, boxes of parts, bottles of Rolling Rock, etc. about

Rather like your disturbingly neat shack, Bruce!

This is a great thread.  TNX to you, Bruce and Joe GFH, the Photochop master!

73 John

[W1GFH]

Re: the W3IU transmitter, there is a 1/4" phone jack on the back of the modulator, probably for the D-104. But I see no evidence of T/R anywhere. Hmmm.

Re: the 8BNY prints, they are great. This pic I thought especially cool. Things were tres different in the 1920's.

"YES Ma, I'm putting up radio towers in the backyard...NO Ma, I don't care what the neighbors think"

[N3DRB The Derb]

about all you could do was get into your neighbors BCL sets.

Of course, we have lived through the 'golden age' of the internet. Some may not care, but history is less spectacular when you are living it. It never seems as important, but 70 years from now ( if we make it that far ) people will be peering at photos of us using IBM XT's the same way. I was here when personal computers were born, when the internet was born, etc.

Thats why stuff like the wayback machine is so important. Web sites from 1993 already look as dated as those pictures do, but you can actually see the same exact thing now as it existed then. You can come close to that with radio if you try really hard and have a lot of bucks, I did it once upon a time.

But, then I had to ruin the experience by doing James Brown imitations into my D-104.  :?  It's hard to feel your back in time doing that.  

[W1UJR]

I know Joe, had the same thought about the antenna!

Could you see that today, man the lawsuits would fly, the city would jam you up on codes, the neighbor would poison your dog, etc.

The best part is that he was doing that to broadcast chruch services to "shut-ins", a most admirable cause, but would land you in a heap of trouble now.


Thanks for comments John, would would have thought this thread would hang onto 5 pages?

A credit to the creative minds of the AM miscreants!

[k4kyv]

I have corresponded with author of the website the photo was taken from.
Mike is a fine business fellow -not a ham - and really enjoys older radios and gear.
Most of the prints and such he has picked up at estate sales.

I now know what Fred Hammond VE3HC intended when he told me that I had missed the "Golden Years" of radio.

Those who hold such treasures should make arrangements for their preservation now.  

I am recalling Roger, N4IBF, a dedicated history buff as well as a ham and a student of antique printing techniques.  He worked at the TN State Museum, and once was sent by the museum to the Smithsonian where he worked hands-on with some of the actual printing presses used by Benjamin Franklin.

Many times we had discussed how so much of this stuff ends up discarded, damaged or destroyed when the owner/keeper goes SK.  We had rescued several estates of vintage transmitters, magazines and parts from the landfill.  Roger was adamant that owners of this stuff should make sure it doesn't end up thrown away, or as one case we checked out, 90% ruined because it was stored by a double-digit-IQ son-in-law in an abandoned warehouse that lacked a functioning roof.

Roger had a large collection of antique telegraph keys, a large parts and tubes collection, transmitters and receivers, and a photo album that originally bolonged to the chief OP at W1MK (later to become W1AW) at ARRL HQ.  The album was full photos of ham stations from the early 1920's, probably the original prints of QST photos of that era.

In addition to his radio stuff, he had a huge collection of lead font type for antique printing presses.

About 10 years ago, Roger came down with a terminal illness.  He soon lost all interest in his friends and radio stuff, and became very uncommunicative and reclusive, refused visitors, etc.  When he finally passed on, his stuff sat untouched for years in his basement.

Eventually his daughter contacted me because she had decided it was time to get rid of the stuff, and she had no idea of what most of it was, let alone the value of anything.  She offered to let me have the tubes and loose parts, and the antique telegraph key of my choice, in exchange for helping her catalogue the rest and suggesting asking prices.  We spent a couple of weekends on the project.

The first thing we looked for was the antique key  collection.  She had carefully wrapped each key in newspaper and packed them all in a large cardboard box, then placed the box into a  basement closet integrated into the cinderblock foundation of the house.  When we opened the closet, everything inside was of about equal dampness as the soil outside.  Although not totally destroyed, nearly everything in the once pristine key collection was badly corroded from years of moisture, nothing probably worth  more than 50% of what it would have fetched on the market if the collection had been kept dry.  His daughter, who did know the value of the key collection,  said it simply had not occurred to her that the closet would become damp.

Much of the printing press type was in perfect condition when Roger acquired it, but was ruined beyond usufulness because the lead had turned to white powder while stored for several years in the damp basement and the type face was pitted.

Evidently, audiophool thieves had ransacked the tube collection.  Most of the transmitting and receiving tubes were still there, but Roger had managed to collect a couple dozen NOS 2A3's as spares for his BC-610, and those were all unexplainably missing.

I described to the daughter the photo album, but no trace of it was ever found.

As much as Roger and I had repeatedly bemoaned the mindless destruction of radio and other irreplaceable historical items in estates, his own collection ended up meeting the same fate.  He would be still spinning in his grave.

[W1UJR]

Don,

That's a very, very sad story, but one which I hear repeated again and again.

You may recall my elmer, Dick W2UJR.
When he passed away a few years back very little gear made it out of his shack. I have his Collins 32V and bug.

His wife was NOT ham friendly, and sadly was very difficult to deal with.
So most of the stuff, parts and homebrew items, just sat inside his hamshack to waste away. His hamshack was an attachement onto the garage, not a very well built building.

A few years later I heard that she tore down the hamshack as it was infested with ants. To my knowledge very little of the Dick's neat homebrew gear made it out...very sad. http://hamgate.sunyerie.edu/~buffaloam/w2ujr.htm

W2UJR Hamshack, circa 1997

[Gary - WA4IAM]

One comment relating back to the original Radio Craft, Radio News, etc., Gernsback publications. In fact, I'm suprised nobody has yet offered this observation. I have quite a few of the Radio News mags from the '30s, and one thing that has struck me and many others who have collected issues of his magazines is that the artwork on the Gernsback publications more often than not feature some of the most ugly women ever portrayed on the cover of a national publication. Of all the copies I own I can think of only one female on the cover that was not depicted in "ugly hag" mode.

[Gary - WA4IAM]

By the way, I lust not only after the transmitter in one of the previous vintage station photos, but also for the Breting 12 receiver on the table!

[W1GFH]

the artwork on the Gernsback publications more often than not feature some of the most ugly women ever portrayed on the cover of a national publication.

Could be the editor in charge of the radio mags was a prude. Gernsback published lots of magazines, including AMAZING DETECTIVE STORES and FRENCH HUMOR....

[W1GFH]

Although there IS something vaguely unsettling about this 1927 RADIO NEWS cover. The potentially dangerous connection from radio to water suggests that some taboo is about to be broken. Then we have two guys wearing makeup dressed in matching outfits alone in the woods with a girl. The title, "A NEW RADIO HOOK UP" completes the disturbing image.




Full Size Image at:
http://www.magazineart.org/general/technical/radionews/RadioNews1927-09.jpg

[W1UJR]

Worse yet, he appears to be playing with his "pole"!

Notice the short "Capri" pants and argyle socks, clearly these are not wholesome American boys.
No Sir.

Now I understand the caption "A New Radio Hook Up"....

Very disturbing indeed. :-)

Is that a Maple tree I see being tapped in the background?

[w3jn]

Yer killin' me, Bruce! :lol:  :lol: