November 22, 2007
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The Montgomery Ward Airline Radio, Model 62-368
Back in the 60s my dad brought home an old radio. He was into electronics and used to work on TVs back in the days before solid state electronics, when they were chock full of tubes, this radio was a very successful project and it worked well.
Having bands called Airline, Police, and Foreign, it was able to pick up stations from all over the world so it provided me with my first exposure to what later became known as world music. I listened to stations from Rio de Janerio, one from South Africa and various others I can no longer recall. I also heard blues for the first time on this radio and that changed my life in a lot of ways; I put down the trumpet and violin and picked up a guitar and a bass.
I inherited this radio after my father died and when I moved to Kansas, it stayed behind at my sister’s house. Yesterday, it arrived in a large box which means the cycle has started again, this radio desperately needs to be restored. This is my next project.
Old wooden radios aren’t that rare, I just think they’re way cool. I was on radiomuseum.org and they reckon that this model is from the 1940s but I really don’t know. Perhaps I’ll turn up some info as I clear some of the dust off?
The face is in exceptionally good condition for its age. Wish we could all say that.
This is the underside which, oddly enough, makes sense to me. I can identify more things in this chassis than I can under the hood of my Xterra.
This is the topside, a forest of glorious tubes, most of the tubes are the originals! After some cursory research, all of these tubes are still available.
Will I get this radio working again? In all likelyhood, yes. I am researching it just to satisfy some of the questions I have about tube electronics but all in all, it’s pretty simple stuff and I have the test equipment to determine if the components are in working order.
Ahhh, test equipment! I also inherited my dad’s old voltmeter, have a go at this:
A voltmeter from the Hickok Electrical Instrument Company, Cleveland, Ohio. Hickok is still in business in Cleveland. Obviously they’ve moved beyond this particular model.
I makes sense to me that if I’m going to restore an old radio, I should use old test equipment. I calibrated this thing using a newfangled meter so I know it is accurate.
EDIT, 11:19
The Woodworking Portion of the Project
The wooden radio has a veneer finish that is mostly in good shape but it needs some repairs. As an exercise, I created this block and made a veneer for the edges. I will have to experiment on something bigger before I actually attempt repairing the veneer on the radio.
Comments (1)
What an exciting project! The voltmeter is made out of phenolic (aka Bakelite). Just had to toss my teaspoonful of knowledge into your blog! LOL What is fascinating to me is the large bulky internal components used in a bygone era. They didn’t have the technology yet for tiny things, so it shows clearly what technology did exist then.
Something else about early radio that always struck me as odd…..everyone on the radio was so overdramatic and exaggerated. I suspect that those early actors came from the stage where you had to be that way so the audience could hear your annunciations and see your movement. Nowadays, since our actors show more of a natural personality, those dramatic radio shows seem over the top.