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Some fun with vintage AM - how many are left?
- Thread starter DaveBayArea
- Start date
Just a *little* more on the topic (promise!)
First car (in 1978) was a '55 Ford Customline. Managed to find a '55 radio in a local junkyard soon after we got the car. We also had this fantastic electronics parts shop at that time owned by a couple of guys that seemed that they were around since the days of Sarnoff, Zworykin, Armstrong and Farnsworth.
I drove by one day after school and asked. One of the fellows said "Be here at 8 am on Saturday". As a Navy kid, I knew that meant be there ten minutes early. I pull up, he's on the back step of the building, smoking a cigarette.
He opens the place up, we go into the shop area. Slightly larger than a broom closet, he takes the radio from me, on the bench and within minutes he has the covers off and the guts exposed. Attached a DC power supply...nothing. He takes out the vibrator and hooked it up on the bench - still nothing. He goes to the shelves, picked one up and again hooked it up on the bench. Ta-da! Plugged it into the radio...and finessed the power to the unit - it's glowing!
I had my first lesson on DC to AC conversion. Asked him how much he would charge me for the diagnosis...said buy the part, and we're good!
At 8 am, I was his first customer of the day - paid the few bucks it was for the vibrator and was on my way home.
KIT-1280 is still around (Yakima WA), same with KUJ-1420 (Walla Walla). KLZ-560 is listed (Denver), KHQ-590 is now KQNT (Spokane), KGER-1390 is now KLTX (Long Beach CA), and I see KGA-1510 Spokane. Not sure who KATL was, this was before the Miles City MT station took those calls and was on 1340, later 770.
In that era, most ads for radio sets specified "prices higher west of the Rockies". I suppose that gave P-B a leg-up. I don't think they were distributed very widely in the east, at least not until later years. I did have a very large late forties Packard-Bell portable radio/phono given to me, here on the east coast, with all of the "K" stations and nothing from this side of the country. I've often wondered if it found its way back with a solider or something such as that.
I have a pre-war Western Auto Truetone with a similar dial, but listing notable stations nationwide. I'd say primarily it was a selling point for models lacking pushbuttons.
I have a pre-war Western Auto Truetone with a similar dial, but listing notable stations nationwide. I'd say primarily it was a selling point for models lacking pushbuttons.
The one station I don't understand is KTRH. All the other stations I recognize are either in the Pacific or Mountain Time Zone. However, 740 KTRH is in the Central Time Zone. No other Texas 50,000 watt stations are on this dial, not WBAP, not KRLD, not WOAI, which are all Class I-A or I-B stations, while KTRH is Class II. (In fact, no W stations are on this dial, not even those like WBAP and WOAI that are grandfathered W stations.)
If you are on the West Coast and tune in 740 at night, you likely will hear KCBS San Francisco, not KTRH.
If you are on the West Coast and tune in 740 at night, you likely will hear KCBS San Francisco, not KTRH.
The only explanation I can think of is that what was then KQW didn't get 50 kw until 1950, and that this radio pre-dates that time. Still, I agree, it's unlikely one would have picked up KTRH on the West Coast at night.
What a great collector piece. I hope you get it working soon. I love that there are quite a few still using the same channel and call letters that are written on the radio after all these decades later.
It goes to show that, for all the big changes it has experienced over the decades, AM has remained basically unchanged since these radios were first built.
c
I recall a Peugeot automobile we used in Thailand, manufactured as a right hand drive vehicle for the Thai market. Everything but one control was relative to the driver. The hood release was on the far left side of the vehicle and the driver could not open the hood without exiting the vehicle and going to the other side of the vehicle.
In Europe, dials on older radios were marked in meters instead of kilohertz (or fraction thereof). As frequency (kilohertz) goes up, wavelength (meters) goes down. Dials went "backwards" in order to show the logical order based on wavelength. Therefore dials would go from about 188 (1600 kHz) to about 556 (540 kHz).