Bob D.
12-21-2008, 08:05 AM
Wow, things sure have changed at Radio Shack,
I know some of you will enjoy checking out this Site.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html
Radio Shack or Rat Shack, however you refer to it, the company
did much to further the advancement of electronics and the fledgling
computer industry for which they are for the most part unrecognized.
I remember as a kid pouring through their catalog and dreaming of all the
radio gear I would buy if I had the money. Heck, I didn't even have a real
job except for mowing lawns and my paper route, so wasn't about to buy
much with that little bit of cash.
Anyway, I remember that a friend and I rescued the guts out of an old
Zenith floor model shortwave/broadcast radio from the trash. We gutted
the cabinet for the speaker and chassis and took the knobs. We couldn't
get the whole thing as we were 5 miles from home and all we had was our
bicycles. I was somewhere around 12 to 14, don't remember for sure but I
was still in grade school. This was in the mid 60s.
Well we got that radio working after we got a replacement capacitor and
a tube from the local Radio/TV repair shop. We had taken all the tubes to
the local drug store and used their tester to check out the tubes.
Anybody here remember those?
Anyway, we soldered the new capacitor (my Dad showed us how) in and
replaced the bad tube. We strung a wire out and connected it to the TV
antenna on the roof of the house, not having anything else and not
understanding the relation between frequency and antenna length at the
age of 13. :)
After some tuning around we heard a Ship-to-Shore call from a tanker
named "Lightning" to the marine operator in New York City and listened in
on the call for about 5 minutes.
After that my mind was made up, I wanted to get my Ham Radio License,
which I did some years later. And I poured through every Radio Shack, Allied Radio, Lafayette Radio, and other catalog I could find and read all the magazines on electronics and radio such as QST (http://www.arrl.org) I could find in our local library.
I know some of you will enjoy checking out this Site.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html
Radio Shack or Rat Shack, however you refer to it, the company
did much to further the advancement of electronics and the fledgling
computer industry for which they are for the most part unrecognized.
I remember as a kid pouring through their catalog and dreaming of all the
radio gear I would buy if I had the money. Heck, I didn't even have a real
job except for mowing lawns and my paper route, so wasn't about to buy
much with that little bit of cash.
Anyway, I remember that a friend and I rescued the guts out of an old
Zenith floor model shortwave/broadcast radio from the trash. We gutted
the cabinet for the speaker and chassis and took the knobs. We couldn't
get the whole thing as we were 5 miles from home and all we had was our
bicycles. I was somewhere around 12 to 14, don't remember for sure but I
was still in grade school. This was in the mid 60s.
Well we got that radio working after we got a replacement capacitor and
a tube from the local Radio/TV repair shop. We had taken all the tubes to
the local drug store and used their tester to check out the tubes.
Anybody here remember those?
Anyway, we soldered the new capacitor (my Dad showed us how) in and
replaced the bad tube. We strung a wire out and connected it to the TV
antenna on the roof of the house, not having anything else and not
understanding the relation between frequency and antenna length at the
age of 13. :)
After some tuning around we heard a Ship-to-Shore call from a tanker
named "Lightning" to the marine operator in New York City and listened in
on the call for about 5 minutes.
After that my mind was made up, I wanted to get my Ham Radio License,
which I did some years later. And I poured through every Radio Shack, Allied Radio, Lafayette Radio, and other catalog I could find and read all the magazines on electronics and radio such as QST (http://www.arrl.org) I could find in our local library.