A Crummy Commercial

The blog from yesterday on HELP! :  https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2026/04/help.html    Yes, the shot of George and the grass cutter guy: does show a record player in the background.  It appears to be a KB Discomatic EL-POR: The next question:  was it John Lennon's Discomatic OR did John acquire it while making the movie ?  Because he had one: https://www.lawrencestrauss.com/jljukebox.html wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lennon's_jukebox And so did Beatles manager Brian Epstein: source:  https://www.capitol6000.com/recordplayers.html So I'm suspicioning that the movie shoot inspired the Discomatic purchases.  I do remember seeing the show:  John Lennon's Jukebox on PBS - it concentrated on some of the songs in the Discomatic - here is the English version: source:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgABKFLOKj8 unless interested in a LOT of English ads, skip ahead to about 13:30 Here's a site on the unit: https://discomatic...

I saw this in the daily ad from Electronic Goldmine: $20 for a Germanium diode is a little high but the name Hoffman reminded me of this ad: Here is a Hoffman Solar radio KP706 for $289 on Ebay (and the solar cells don't work !) source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/177777411535 The inflated price of the KP706: More info on the KP706 here: https://solarmuseum.org/cells/hoffman-rp-706-solar-radio/ Here is a picture of Les Hoffman of Hoffman Radio: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/306751529317 Basically everything associated with Hoffman is high in price :) Here is the wiki for Les Hoffman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Hoffman And what could be done with that $20 diode in a $289 radio ?  Maybe as a detector replacement ?  Here is the Beitman 1960 schematic: It's a nice radio but of a pretty standard design, I'll keep both my $20 and $289 in my pocket :) Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

My aversion to these Collins radio machines was mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/collins-s-line.html Saw these photos on the K9YA Face page: source:  https://www.facebook.com/k9ya.telegraph See those RCA jacks (3) and plugs (2), especially in the middle picture ?  All a bad actor has to do is lift the hinged lid and then unplug or swap the RCA plugs around and voila, radio not working.   That was a "welcome to the real world" moment :( Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

The GE World Monitor radio was mentioned before: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/09/seven-days-in-may-movie-version.html Today I noticed an ad for an Admiral AM/FM/SW Transistor Portable: never knew about this radio And that got me thinking about the GE.  Where did I first see the World Monitor ? the hard to see price was $199.98 source:  https://archive.org/details/newsweek74julnewy/page/n245/mode/2up I was scrap booking the space program in 1969 and would try to buy Newsweek, Time, Life - we also got National Geographic in the mail then. Why didn't I just buy one ?: Even now I'd have to think a while about spending over $1700 For one thing I DID have the Hallicrafters S-120.  And I was 13 years old in July 1969, no way I would ever see that much cash. Just for the heck of it I tried searching on the Sams Photofact with the GE World Monitor: TSM-148  Bang: there it is on the wonderful WorldRadioHistory site !  Just dumb luck. https://www.worldradiohistory...

I saw a picture on Face of a Hallicrafters S-108 receiver with an outboard S-meter from Lafayette.  It was a TM-59a from the early 1960s, here is the catalog page from 1962: And the inflated price: Here is the schematic clipped from the BAMA manual: A very high impedance triode DC amplifier.  It wouldn't be that easy to add to a transformerless set like the Hallicrafters S-120 though - powering the filament / lamps would mess things up for one thing. schematic source is the TM-59 manual:   https://bama.edebris.com/manuals/lafayett/tm-59a/ IF I ever do bring back my Hallicrafters S-120 as a receiver, an S-meter would be a nice thing to add.   BTW, I'm still not sure what radio (with S-meter) was used on Mission Impossible : https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/08/s-120-with-meter.html but it was certainly in the same S-120 family.  The Lafayette HE-40 was similar to the S-120 but added the meter and a couple of switches: the inside looks just like an S-120...

This radio strikes me as impossibly French: Google translate version source:  http://rxcontrol.free.fr/Receivers/RS560/ The white face, aluminum knobs, tiny speaker and meter, unusual dial - it's a very interesting looking radio !  It actually reminds me of my stereo from JC Penney which had that same look with the silver face and metal knobs. MCS 3210 - I never liked those metal knobs    The RS560 is a solid state receiver from the 1960s with germanium transistors.  Looking at the internal pictures with the shielded boxes I imagine a very expensive radio machine. What does impossibly French mean ?  something like this: https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a45737315/renault-4-history/ The wheelbase was different on the driver and passenger sides due to the rear suspension :) Remember the Renault Alliance ?  One of the last of the "Kenosha Cadillacs".  I remember reading something similar about the car - but I couldn't find the article online....

One thing missing from the blog post yesterday was the radio price.  This was the latest Allied ad I saw for the S-120, on sale March 31, 1966: Inflated:    I can't really remember when I got that radio, certainly had it in 8th grade (1968-69) but did I have it in 1966 ?  I don't think so.  So possibly it was an advertised special from the local Allied store after that ?  The S-120 doesn't show in the 1967 or later Allied main catalogs.  I believe I may have QSL cards that might indicate when I started listening. One other radio in that same 1966 Allied sale catalog was the Knight-kit Star Roamer: That might have been a less expensive alternative.  5 bands versus 4 on the S-120, a signal meter - no BFO but I have read elsewhere that it could pick up Morse code and SSB.  A couple more advantages are that a safer transformer power supply is used (rather than the transformerless "hot" chassis of the S-120) with an actual fuse (rather than a ther...

I thought of this record recently: Here is the album on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nHqkXrnPs7k_Vd2dNwa78EZ3KE02orHpQ I never owned a copy but I did know about it.  (I do have a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band greatest hits CD somewhere though).  I became aware of this particular album and remember it because of this: the S-120 had really nice audio in my opinion (we won't talk about selectivity or sensitivity or dial calibration or precision though) Yes, I have a Hallicrafters S-120 and in addition to trying to listen to hams, I also used it to listen to AM broadcast radio AND especially to shortwave radio.  I listened to Radio Havana, Radio RSA (South Africa), the BBC, Radio Austalia and also to the Voice of America.  All of those stations share one characteristic, a good loud signal to the middle west of the USA at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s.  With an S-120 a good strong signal was needed due to the inadequacies of the radio, it w...

I saw a picture of a 1950s station on Faze that had a Hammarlund receiver similar to this: source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/136778372006 and a Johnson Viking transmitter similar to this: 11 meters ? source:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/297845200608 And I thought of this: Jack Sprat could eat no fat,  his wife could eat no lean;  and so between the two of them,  they licked the platter clean Isn't it strange that some of the radio companies were kinda like that?  Hammarlund made receivers almost exclusively.  EF Johnson made transmitters almost exclusively.  Certainly Collins, Hallicrafters and the rest felt free to sell both receivers and transmitters. I wonder why at least those two decided to "Jack Sprat" it ? Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm  

I remembered that my 8th grade English teacher, Miss McGrath, would read aloud to us from the book: H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N .  So I did a little searching and found out that Leo Rosten (pen name: Leonard Q. Ross) started publishing the Kaplan stories in the New Yorker Magazine. I fired up my copy of The Complete New Yorker and quickly found the Rosten stories:    In a way they are perfect as separate short stories since the 1930s were a different time with plenty of unfortunate stereotypes and language usage.  So a little taste goes a long way. But I also saw this ad (the New Yorker used to be able to sell a LOT more ads than they do today): Interesting in that this was a compact set made to run from 6 volts and probably included either an RF stage or an extra IF amp to boost the gain.  Plugging the price into the inflation calculator: Wow, that is a LOT of money today and considering that the Depression was still an ongoing thing, yikes, I wonder how it sold ?...