Another old radio saved

Everyone knows I’m an antiques junky, I don’t hide it, I’m kinda proud of it. I enjoy finding antiques in dis-repair and making them work again. I think part of it comes from being a system administrator and doing electronics design/repair. Too many of todays consumables are one use throw away stuff, while it can be fixed it’s more expensive than buying a new one. Not so with most things built before  the 1960’s when most towns had a well known fit-it person who repaired everything from radios and tv’s to toasters. I should have been born then……  lol.

The latest radio to rejoin the working is my Atwood-Kent model 84. I didn’t repair this one myself since I just don’t have the time right now. Instead I let a good friend of mine (thanks Louis!) do the hard work on it. Over all not much to say about it other than it’s an 80W AM receiver made around 1932. The sound on these old radios is very different than you would expect from a normal AM radio, much fuller and more robust than the typical ‘tinny’ static like sound of todays AM radios. Then again, all they had was AM radio, FM not introduced until 1933 and the first FM station going ‘on air’ in 1937 (W1X0J).

I should have put the knobs back on it for the picture, didn’t realize they were off until just now. Oh, well. I don’t plan on refurbishing the cabinet, I’ll leave it ‘distressed’ with all of the age marks and such on it. I will give it a good cleaning with Murphy’s soap, and several applications of lemon wood oil to keep the veneer from drying out. Mostly I will just turn it on and listen to it like my other old radios.

If you are wondering what I listen to, it’s not local talk stations. I have a small AM transmitter I made that is connected to an mp3 player. I have a large playlist on the mp3 player made up of some digital recordings of my 75 speed albums with Bing Crosby, Glen miller, ect interspersed with archive newscasts from all of WWII. It makes for a very powerful listening experience if you are into that kinda thing.

In other news the air quality here has gotten worse. The fires are bigger and the weather pattern is pushing the smoke into the valley and compacting it. Heres a couple pics from around 10am this morning.

I guess I should say something about it being 9/11. I’m not playing the bagpipes at any functions this year, the band is but I haven’t been active with them for about a year now. Besides there are a lot of other people doing great commemorative things and they have it covered. Even one of my daily blog reads from Canada has a tribute. If you are interested in seeing it, check out MissK’s blog HERE.