And Yet, MORE "Flea Marketing"...And Our First Radios!

The one you left behind with the McCoy looks like a heavily modified YaK-9. Enjoy your finds!

Now that's off the road flee there , glad you were able to pick up just what you wanted . Knowing you don't buy stuff to look at like some of us want to bees me included LOL Is the EZBee made to just stick and wedge the servos in there like that ? The pontooned Cub as Bob called it looks elect. and the prop is mounted LF Hd. ? We will bee watching for some air time .

Nice plane Kim. Glad you got what you wanted. I am kind intreguied by the way the plane comes apart in the front end. Kind of like a clamshell on the front of the fuselage, or so it looks.

NEW222 wrote:Nice plane Kim. Glad you got what you wanted. I am kind intreguied by the way the plane comes apart in the front end. Kind of like a clamshell on the front of the fuselage, or so it looks.

Yeah, it's got thru-screws that clamp it (sort of like our RTF control liners) on the forward fuse, while holding the firewall in place. The lower clamping lug on its right side was time-damaged and just crumbled, so I'll have put something there.

I'm sure it got some air-time, but there was only a slight amount of castor goo in the lower part of it.

Nice radio.

Bob

[quote="dckrsn"]Nice radio.


Thank You!

My 1980's Radio Shack Special croaked, but I'm hoping for a resurrection!

Kim wrote:
My 1980's Radio Shack Special croaked, but I'm hoping for a resurrection!

[/quote]
Maybe Jacob could hook you up?
Bob

Nice memories Rod! And cool finds (again) Kim

Here’s ”my first radio”. My dad went to his first longer business trip to Germany in 1976 or so, (known as West Germany back then), and brought back this radio. Not for me, he probably intended it to be used in the kitchen or on the nightstand, but mom didn’t like the way it looked. So, in 1978 when I went to first grade and got my own desk for school work, I also got this radio to put on the desk.



I could get some AM stations from around the world (mostly Soviet I guess), and of course both Finnish channels at the time. Local commercial radio stations came at around 1985 or so. The sound of that thing is quite terrible of course, with a 2” paper cone pointing towards the back. Works on 230VAC, so no worries about batteries When my parents were moving to a smaller house, I rescued the radio from the trash and cleaned it up, glued a couple of front face lugs, re-soldered a couple of wires and it works again. Well, my wife doesn’t like it, and the clock makes a humming noise (always did), so this will probably end up being a shop clock someday.

This is not exactly a flea market find, but just another rescuee at Kari’s Sanctuary for Neglected Bees:



I donated an old trainer (Kyosho Calmato) to a club to be used as a trainer for kids learning to fly RC. I had bought the plane used some years ago and never did anything with it, so I thought I might as well give it away. The guy brought me the Babe Bee in return, it was not really a trade, as I would have given him the plane and he’d have given me the Bee anyway. It’s a mix and match with drilled out lugs, dents and plier marks, but turns freely and has a pretty good compression. And after all, there is no such thing as a ”bad” Bee, is there

This is SO cool that I edited the title to help us find it in the future, or it may make a good thread itself!  I certainly don't mind the additional subject material!

When I was 7, I made friends with a family in Decatur, Illinois, and after we'd moved back to my hometown, those wonderful folks sent me my first radio!

An AM Universal 6 Transistor, it was magical stuff at that age, and I was sure that it was the coolest radio ever.  The ability to listen to late night stations from what I considered to be "from around the world" was simply fascinating.  

There was also a subtle "Threat of the Times" as I was told by some adult that the little red triangles on the tuning dial represented "Civil Deference Stations" that would broadcast information in case of a nuclear attack.

It eventually stopped working, but like so many of my things, I couldn't let it go, so it still gets hauled out to sit on my desk once in a while.



I bought this war-weary old dog-brand new in the early 1980's, and have refused to let it die, even though it desperately wants to go to radio heaven.

Currently, it's got a loose battery wire connection at its board that I will solder back in place when my nerves are calm and I got the mojo going.



This great song totally describes my experience with my first radio, though the video is a little wanting:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV5OFBPSQVU

Oldenginerod wrote:Nice radio by the way Kari.  Has a real "aircraft instrument" appeal.

Thanks, I am glad someone else besides my dad and myself like it too

It says ”cockpit look” in the description by the manufacturer

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/elac_rd50rd_5.html?language_id=2

Yeah, the head on that Bee is pretty bad, I don’t think I’ve seen one THAT bad before either.

My first radio was a “crystal kit” with a wire antenna run out the bedroom window to a tree in the backyard, listening  thru a.  single plastic ear bud!  This one my have been my second the Americana Six Transistor .....with the ulgyist heads in my collection!

Many, many years ago when my daughters were about 6 and 9 I bought each of them a Panasonic "Toot-a-loop" radio for Christmas.  They loved them.  Events took place and they disappeared.






A few years back I had a nostalgia Christmas and went on ebay and found the exact same radios in their original colors, yellow and blue and bought them.  Mark got a Cox Sky Copter, but that's another story.   Perhaps the best Christmas presents that I ever bought.  I had them all open them up at the same time and watching their expressions was magic.

Wow, I’ve never seen a Toot-a-Loop before, must have been a hoot

Here’s one that I bet most of you haven’t seen before. It’s a Luxor Westmatic, made in Finland in the late ’60s. Not my first radio, but I remember it from my childhood. It used to belong to my great grandmother. Her hearing was not good, so this thing was blaring so we could clearly hear it outside the house. She had no doorbell, and there were like three doors between the front steps and the kitchen where she usually sat. So we’d bang the door and yell, and when the Luxor went silent we knew she had heard us. This was in the ’70s, and she was born in the late 1800’s, so she was old for the time. She passed away in the mid-80’s, she was 89 I think.

A few years after she passed, my parents bought the house an we renovated it from (below) the floor to the roof and everything between. That took almost a year, and the Luxor was hanging on the wall by its handle on an 8 inch nail. And blaring its heart out. This thing is LOUD when needed, and has a surprisingly good sound. I think the driver is a 4x6” oval.

The renovation was completed eventually, tools were gathered and the Luxor was stored somewhere, by this time covered in paint and wallpaper paste. Miraculously it was otherwise intact. One of the two battery compartment covers had gone missing, unnoticed as it was run on a piggyback transformer that my great grandma had installed to save batteries

Again a couple of decades passed, and I found it. I traded the transformer for a sister-model of the Westmatic for spare parts. Got the battery cover and a better tuning knob plus the connector panel on one end. The original one had been modified to fit the piggyback. Now it runs six D-cells, that last a long time.

Anyway, here it is, all cleaned up.






”Westmatic” signifies a model that only receives FM. Finnish broadcasts went to FM in the early ’60s, as did most of Western Europe, hence the name. The spare part unit I have has both AM and FM. The ”Matic” probably comes from the 3 ”pre-sets” on the tuning knob. If you pry the trim piece off and loosen a screw, you can set the three numbers for the frequencies you like and the knob will ”click” and stop at the correct positions when you turn it. Nice feature that won’t lose its memory even if the battery dies

This radio replaced an ASA tube radio, I forget the type, but it is one of them wooden boxes. I have hoarded that too (obviously), it only has AM but should make a nice speaker, maybe using a Bluetooth receiver to feed its original amplifier. I tested it but it is mute. My dad confessed that at one point in the early ’60s he connected an electric guitar to one of the radios in the house, got zapped by the guitar strings   and the radio in question went silent. He was not sure if the broken radio was this one or a similar Telefunken unit that has since disappeared. But it could have some internal damage besides all the dust and spider web. My dad used to have long hair and he dig The Rolling Stones, my mom liked The Beatles

I had this beautiful miniature SONY radio in the late 80-s with AM FM SW MW reception. I was listening to the hot news on Radio Free Europe on it while srationed in the Middle East and the whole Eastern Europe underwent the political changes and the Iron Curtain went down...

That is one cool looking radio Kari, the first thing I thought of was that of an aircraft instrument as well.


That Sony ICF-P26 is one of the few remaining all analog portable radios still being made today using a CXA1019S AM/FM tuner IC. Even though you'll often have better results with older radios than one bought new today, the Sony still seems to be a solid performer. You'll find that many new portable radios (even ones that have a knob and dial) use DSP (digital signal processor) based tuner chips. With manually tuned radios that use a DSP tuner chip, you'll hear a choppy sound when turning the dial. DSP based tuners can be pretty good, especially if programmed with extra features for control of the bandwidth, etc, but when it comes to an inexpensive portable or pocket radio, they are normally not the best.


Out of all my tube sets, this 1953 Sentinel 343 gets the most use. Often on a few times a week, sometimes for several hours. It is one of the most sensitive AA5 tube sets I have, able to pull in quite a few distant stations that my other radios have trouble getting, even after a good realignment.



Camera flash shows off that I need to sit down with some toothpicks and q-tips one of these days and clean it up again .

More recently, I've been having fun with AM-stereo radios. A few years ago, local AM oldies station 740 WDGY dropped HD Radio and started broadcasting in wideband (±10.2kHz) C-QUAM AM-stereo. They were the first local station to broadcast in AM-stereo for years, I almost forgot about the technology. I recall the Delco radio in the 1990 GMC Safari van had AM-stereo. I've had people surprised they were even listening to AM radio when they heard WDGY playing in AM-stereo on one of my wideband radios or tuners. Unfortunately, WDGY reverted back to HD radio late last year...



https://archive.org/details/wdgy_cquam_stereo_sony_srf-42



https://archive.org/details/wdgy_cquam_stereo_sony_wm-f16



This Sony tuner has a ±15kHz IF bandwidth and predates the NRSC-1 standard, so it doesn't have the proper de-emphasis that later wideband AM tuners would have. This results in the audio sounding overly bright and shrill. I normally have to decrease the treble a bit (and boost the bass) when listening to this tuner. Today, stations in the US have to brickwall their audio at 10.2kHz, so hiss is a little higher on a tuner with an IF BW out to ±15kHz. If a station was still allowed to broadcast audio out to 15kHz, that would be virtually FM quality (minus a 10kHz notch filter to keep adjcent station's carriers from creating a 10kHz heterodyne whistle in the audio... as well as the static and interference inherent to AM).

https://archive.org/details/wdgy_cquam_stereo_sony_st-jx430a


Most radios made within the past 40 years typically have an AM IF bandwidth of less than 5kHz... usually rolling off around 3kHz... so really only good for talk radio. I believe audio bandwidth is limited to 6.3kHz in much of Europe, Canada allows out to 12.5kHz, the US allows out to 10.2kHz... I don't recall what Australia allows. Here in the US, numerous AM stations have adopted HD Radio (IBOC), which forces them to brickwall limit their analog audio bandwidth to 5kHz to protect the digital sidebands positioned above 10kHz. I'm not a fan of HD radio on AM. Besides needing a new radio, the digital signal typically sounds like a low bitrate MP3 with excessive aliasing and digital artifacts. AM HD radio can also be hard to lock and keep locked on the radio, you typically need to be fairly close to the station. The analog audio is also affected, not only limited to a frequency response of out to 5kHz, but the brickwall filters used often result in ringing distortion that can be heard on radios with an IF bandwidth greater than 5kHz. For that reason, 740 WDGY has gotten hard to listen to on many of my better radios. If in the event you are listening on a radio with an IF BW greater than 10kHz, you'll hear the digital sidebands as loud hiss (hopefully those radios will have a switchable wide/narrow IF switch so you can decrease the BW).

Here's some samples of 740 WDGY received in HD radio: https://archive.org/details/wdgy_hd-radio_stereo_accurian

Most HD radios are designed with a pretty narrow AM bandwidth, so when they start to decode HD, you'll hear a night and day comparison that will make you believe the HD signal sounds significantly better. All-digital AM radio was recently approved by the FCC, with all-digital HD, you WILL need a new radio to receive the station. An analog radio won't hear much more than a burst of hiss where the station once was. So far, only a handful of AM stations have switched to all-digital and time will tell if it works out for them considering they'll mostly be relying on listeners in newer cars (and their limited coverage analog FM translators).


Boy that was a tangent off into the quality of AM radio  

Thanks I really didn't get all of it but Thanks anyway !! My Dad in the early days worked as manager at a Bi-Rite Grocery store and as beast i can remember ? my first or close to was a Winsor >> https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/guest-column-collecting-vintage-transistor-radios-of-the-1950s-and-60s/ They would have events at the store back then to win promotional items . And i received a few difft. things as the only child .

1956 and my wife and I are renting half of a duplex apartment on the seamy side of Pensacola Florida.  One of our few belongings was a clock radio.

Both of us from New Hampshire and we had never seen roaches or "Palmetto bugs" so prevalent in Florida.  First palmetto bug we saw my wife broomed him out the kitchen door.  (After we became true Floridians we laughed a lot about that.) We thought it was some sort of a cricket and in the North it was considered to be bad luck to kill a cricket in the house.  

Later, we noticed movement inside the clock radio as roaches made their homes.  It didn't take us long to buy a new Trailer and move.

It's a stretch but I managed to carve that radio out of a picture inside the trailer after the radio was fumigated of course.  

My first scientific electronic calculator:

You can hear a buzz sound from that display