Dad's Radio
Apr. 24th, 2011 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
I collect radios. I spend a lot of time "listening to static," as Teph so charmingly puts it.
A few weeks ago I came across a Panasonic set. A nice transistor radio with good sound, it is nevertheless far less capable than any of the more modern digital sets I already have. Three bands, AM, FM, and shortwave. A dial with a needle, no clock (thank goodness!) and no digital frequency display or digital anything.
It is newly made, but so 1966. It even comes in a cut-away case, made so you can operate the radio while it stays inside its case, the way all transistor radios did back then.
Well, I think I may have found why I had to have this thing. It's so like a radio my father had, that fascinated me as a kid. Here, take a look at them:
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/channel_6519.html
http://cgi.ebay.com/PANASONIC-RF-562D-AM-FM-SW-Shortwave-Transistor-Radio-/140524431938#ht_2663wt_901
They're not at all the same, but there's more than a little resemblance.
The funny thing was, my dad never seemed to use this radio, or like it much.
It was a present from "his" employees when he left one school district to take over another. They picked it out for him because it receives aircraft band signals, and he had a pilot's license. It's the thought that counts, of course, but what it amounted to was a bulky radio that specialized in picking up one band that only had morse code beacons on it, and another that wouldn't pick up anything much unless you lived right next door to the control tower of a major airport.
Still, I was fascinated with this set, because it told me for the first time that there were radio signals out there other than plain old medium wave broadcast radio.
So I suppose that Channel Master portable was where all my listening to static started. And I suppose its resemblance to that old radio, that I had forgotten until I stumbled upon it online, is why I had to buy the Panasonic. The mind is a murky place, sometimes.
A few weeks ago I came across a Panasonic set. A nice transistor radio with good sound, it is nevertheless far less capable than any of the more modern digital sets I already have. Three bands, AM, FM, and shortwave. A dial with a needle, no clock (thank goodness!) and no digital frequency display or digital anything.
It is newly made, but so 1966. It even comes in a cut-away case, made so you can operate the radio while it stays inside its case, the way all transistor radios did back then.
Well, I think I may have found why I had to have this thing. It's so like a radio my father had, that fascinated me as a kid. Here, take a look at them:
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/channel_6519.html
http://cgi.ebay.com/PANASONIC-RF-562D-AM-FM-SW-Shortwave-Transistor-Radio-/140524431938#ht_2663wt_901
They're not at all the same, but there's more than a little resemblance.
The funny thing was, my dad never seemed to use this radio, or like it much.
It was a present from "his" employees when he left one school district to take over another. They picked it out for him because it receives aircraft band signals, and he had a pilot's license. It's the thought that counts, of course, but what it amounted to was a bulky radio that specialized in picking up one band that only had morse code beacons on it, and another that wouldn't pick up anything much unless you lived right next door to the control tower of a major airport.
Still, I was fascinated with this set, because it told me for the first time that there were radio signals out there other than plain old medium wave broadcast radio.
So I suppose that Channel Master portable was where all my listening to static started. And I suppose its resemblance to that old radio, that I had forgotten until I stumbled upon it online, is why I had to buy the Panasonic. The mind is a murky place, sometimes.
