VBARC speech by Vic Johnston

What follow are excerpts from a speech given to the Virginia Beach Amateur Radio Club on June 3, 1999.

President Young, vice president Waters, distinguished guests and members of The Virginia Beach Amateur Radio Club, thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight. I am truly honored to talk to this esteemed group about my hobby, shared by thousands worldwide. First off, I’ve always had a great respect for Hams. My mom and daddy are Hams, so need I say more? Yes.

Hams are actually the core of the premier antique radio club I belong to, the AWA. The Antique Wireless Association is THE club to belong to, if you’re really interested about old time radio. I’ve given a great amount of thought about Hams of the earlier days. The analogy with the Internet is inescapable. Starting more than ninety years ago, the public has had the opportunity to quickly, and with minimal restrictions, communicate with others. I’m not talking about the telephone, created much earlier; I’m talking about radio, or wireless as it was originally called. In fact in Great Britain, it’s still known as "the wireless."

Why do I collect dirty old, dusty old radios, as my 7-year-old daughter says? I inherited the interest from my father who bought a twelve-tube E.H. Scott back about 1961. He serviced and installed Scotts back in the 30s while in high school, and the relic brought back a lot of good memories. He couldn’t quit looking for classic radios as well such as Scott, McMurdo Silver and Lincoln. His favorites are Scotts, and this got passed on to me.

E.H. Scott began manufacturing transformers and then Superheterodyne kits in the mid-1920s. He set long distance records with his copper clad superhets, claiming the secret to their performance was the perfectly matched set of four I.F. transformers. In 1931 he came out with his All Wave 12. The radios were all hand built and all the tube shields and transformers were chrome plated. They were not cheap. But they were superior performers. He built some of the highest tube count radios in production. One, the Quaranta, boasted 48 tubes and sold for $2,500 – in the middle of the Depression. Because they were so pretty, many were sold without cabinets. Dad now has almost every model produced by E.H. Scott from 1927 through 1946.

My personal collection is pretty diverse. But besides the actual radios, I also like looking for related items. Some items I have in my collection have very little to do with radio, except for the name. For instance, there are the radio pens, radio strop dressing and even a radio padlock. I’ve also managed to find a number of games with radio as the theme, such as The Quiz Kids, Toonin’ and RADIO, which is played just like Bingo. Back in the '20s, boys’ books celebrated fictional heroes such as Tom Swift, Tom Slade, Pee Wee Harris and Westy Martin. Equally as popular however, was the Radio Boys series. As a matter of fact, there were two separate Radio Boys series penned by different authors and put out by different publishers. There are also Radio Girls books, but they’re pretty tough to find.

One question I get a lot is how do you find tubes? They’re out there. I’ve found most of mine at swap meets, but for those times when you can’t find it anywhere else, and are ready to pay retail, Antique Radio Supply, out in New Mexico can usually provide what you need. The really old tubes, such as the WD-11, are rare but are out there. Individuals offering them for sale for $100 find ready buyers. Even rarer though, are Audions, the first production valves or tubes, invented by Lee deForest in 1906. Who used these early tubes? Hams of course.

Using loose couplers and crystal detectors, amateurs could receive Morse code signals. But the Audion, used as a detector and an amplifier, let Hams receive much more distant signals. While deForest claimed to be "The Father of Radio," someone who is far less known did far more for the advancement of radio. Edwin Armstrong developed the regenerative circuit, and while an officer in the Signal Corps during World War I, developed the Superheterodyne, the same radio circuit used to this day. He also proved FM would work and paved the way for static-free listening of broadcasts. Worn down after battles in court with deForest and RCA, he dressed up in his best evening clothes, to include a top hat, and stepped out the window of his high-rise apartment in the 1950s.

In our little club, the Tidewater Antique Radio Association, there are as many different collecting trends as there are collectors. One of the specialties of our president, Scott Balderston, is headsets. He has hundreds of headsets, made by dozens of different companies. Scott also has an impressive collection of crystal sets. A booming trend in antique radio collecting is transistor radios. I kind of wish I’d paid attention to these little jewels at those garage sales!

The Regency TR-1 was the first production transistor radio. Depending on the color and the all-important factor – condition – these radios will bring hundreds of dollars. There are hundreds of different manufacturers and models of transistor radios, so the ever-vigilant collector can satisfy his or her desire to collect myriad different radios for as long as wanted, or as long as the wallet holds up.

Console radios sound great, but there is a very obvious drawback to collecting them. They can eat up a lot of floor space. Besides the Scotts I mentioned earlier, one of the best console radio manufacturers was Zenith. The company started out as the Chicago Radio Labs. Zenith made some great radios. Hampton Roads is fortunate to have one the greatest authorities on Zenith radios as a resident, Dr. Harold Cones, a professor at Christopher Newport University. He and co-author John Bryant’s first book on Zeniths covers the entire run of the Zenith Transoceanic, from the 1940s through the early ‘70s. Called the serviceman’s friend because so many folks in uniform bought them, the T-O is a multiband portable with a five-foot telescoping antenna.

Each year more books come out covering the radio-collecting hobby. Some are price guides, or reproductions of early catalogs. Some are picture books, with expert photographs of some of the most collectible radios, such as Catalins. Catalin radios are pretty. Molded and cast under high temperatures and pressure and available in all the colors of the rainbow, they command prices in to the thousands of dollars. While these radios are pretty, they are generally pretty poor performers. Most of them only have five tubes and are not multi-band.

The majority of my radios are battery sets. Until about 1927, all radios with any kind of performance were powered by DC. Three voltages were usually required. "A" voltage powered the tube filaments; it was usually 1½ to 6 volts. The "B" supply ranged from 45 to 135 volts and "C" voltage of 4½ volts provided negative grid bias. You have quite a few connections required for the radio to work correctly, but there is a distinct joy to hearing a radio manufactured in 1922 come to life. Hook up a horn speaker, tune to a real oldies station, soak up the glow of the vacuum tubes and it’s one of the best time-traveling experiences I can imagine. That’s why I collect old radios.

Biographical note. The author is a 20-year USAF veteran and is Chief of Community Relations for the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. He is the secretary of the Tidewater Antique Radio Association.
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