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I love the stories. I love the pictures.
Who remembers the radio
stations from back then?
Frequencies? Transmit power? Antenna pattern if
AM BCB? Station hours? Oddities? Etc.?
Brooce
Brooce Thinks Back
He wondered: “Who remembers the radio stations from back then? Frequencies? Transmit power? Oddities?”
This thread brings those things to mind.
Back during high school sometimes Dick Hayes gave a bunch of us a ride to school so we didn’t have to take the bus. His big ass car had a boss AM radio in the dashboard and he always had it tuned to KXLW 1320 AM, black rock and roll music with very lively black DJs who are now part of this town’s radio history. It was a 1 kW daytimer with a tower next to a grocery store in a growing suburban part of town.
As a result of that experience I began listening to the black music stations, including WESL 1490 from East St. Louis and KATZ 1600 which had live music broadcasts from various clubs and lounges around town.
All because of an old-time blasty dashboard radio in the late 1950s.
About 1967 – when I was 12 — radio and music exploded
for me.
Hartford CT – WDRC 1360 5 KW directional – on from
6:AM until 1:AM. After 1:AM sign-off one night –
I captured WBAY 1360 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
WDRC in Hartford was pop top 40 – but THEY called it
the WDRC 1360 swingin 60 hit survey. So they had 60
top songs. I couldn’t figure out why the format was called
top 40 radio – since there were 60 songs for this station.
Because of tech problems on this end, I’m going to have
to tell this story in pieces.
More coming.
Brooce, Part 15, Hartford CT
So Hartford CT – winter 1967 — I was 12 years old.
WDRC 1360 was the thing.
EXCEPT for another station
just a bit before — I was 100 miles away from home in
Boston having retina surgery. WMEX on 1510 was there — a great top40 station. Upon returning to
CT shortly after — I tried to
receive WMEX with no results. I had no way of knowing that the WMEX 5000 watt pattern was pointed away from CT and toward the Atlantic ocean!
It was impossible to get it in CT. I knew nothing of this. WMEX was on 1510, which seemed a very high number to me. I didn’t even know that the top AM BCB channel was 1600 kHz
then…
Brooce
<p style=”text-align: left;”>By the way– I am looking to recap a 1962 Zenith AM FM</p>
Hi Fi radio. It sounds great and is LOUD. I love the sound.It does need recapping and the dial cord is slipping.
Can I do this work myself?
Not sure.
I’ll have to dig up the model
number on this thing.
There are a couple of them on YouTube.
Brooce, Part 15 Hartford CT
Brooce,
Tube type or transistor?
Recapping tube radios is more involved because the leakage through coupling caps can destroy tubes so these, as well as electrolytics, generally need to be replaced. The leakage currents are much higher in tube units because of the high voltages involved which are not found in transistor units.
On transistor radios of that vintage the polarized electrolytics are likely the only ones which need replacing which makes the job easier. The reason is that by the early sixties the low microfarad non-polarized coupling and bypass caps (.22 uF or less) were not the old paper/wax dipped units which always become leaky…they were the more advanced polypropylene design which appear as if they were dipped in epoxy or some similar resin. These most likely don’t need to be replaced. The polarized caps should be replaced. Ceramic disc caps don’t become leaky but very rarely they can short. Leave them be unless they test bad.
As to whether you can do it yourself, you will need to decided. I recall vision may be an issue with you but only you know your situation re this.
Neil
Neil:
Right! Good question.
It’s a vacuum tube radio.
I’m thinking I will pay someone to recap this.
When the radio is turned
on it hums a real lot. As the
tubes warm up the hum goes way down.
BUT maybe not enough.
I’m not sure. There is a big
vintage radio crowd around here. I might be able to get an identical radio that is in better shape
for less money than needed to fix this one.
My Part 15 interests now lean much more to “broadcasting” through the
vintage radios rather than trying to achieve transmission range. Not that I have much of a collection. I guess my “best” radio is probably the HammarlundHQ-140X.
It looks good and runs great. I have a few crystal sets, a regenerative radio
(which I love) and lots of others – good, bad, and in between.
Again, the Zenith sounds really good (it has that so called vacuum tube sound.)
The FM sensitivity and selectivity is very good.
It hears my Part 15 FM transmitter very well. Some of the vintage FM radios here don’t get the
FM Part 15 signal in the next room.
Anyway – I’ll try to post
a picture of the Zenith
on here.
Oh yeah – I have a couple
of vacuum tube portables here. They are a challenge!
73
Brooce
Radio Parts and Part 15
Since Brooce mentioned that his current radio of interest is an old Zenith tube set, I decided to search for my old remembered radio that I talked about at the outset of this thread. After scrolling for hours up to 23 pages of thousands of old radios on Ebay I needed to stop for dinner, having seen a million radio models.
Probably every single radio ever made requires a new patent for the design and a new trademark for the model’s name. Maybe that’s why really good circuits get left behind.
Theoretically every radio ever made requires a unique circuit to qualify for a distinct patent, which rules out the chance to simply bank on a well performing circuit and keep every improvement. That might explain why so many radios today are inferior, because the engineers of the older models have retired and the newer designers with feeble educations are less able to make modern components do what tubes did so well.
Already, by denying science, the National Administration is pointing us away from the physics that enabled the golden age of broadcasting and nudging us toward cyber malls where we buy newer stuff to replace failed junk.
Repairing equipment has become an intellectual property violation and we are too large to control the micro-sized circuitry of today.
In its last days radio waits for disasters so we actually need them.
Bakelite
After paging through thousands of vintage radios the look and feel of their Bakelite cases jumps out as being part of their appeal.
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