Page started April 21, 2006. Last updated April 21, 2006.

Yet another hobby, because you can never have too many hobbies, Radio.

I started in Radio in the 70's with boatanchors. What is a boatanchor? A boatanchor is any big, heavy, old radio. Normally it is a tube set.

Boatanchors are sometimes abreviated "BA". Pretty self explanitory, it stands for (B)oat (A)nchor. Of course, I guess it could stand for Big A** also, because many of them are.

Years ago people often started with these radios because they were inexpensive. In the 70's and 80's you could pick up a mid 60's top of the line, $600 original cost radio, in fantastic shape, for less than $100 regularly. Prices at garage sales for these were often in the 10's of dollars.

In the 60's you could do the same thing picking up 40's and 50's rigs. People buying new wanted the latest and greatest, and that meant solid state and smaller.

The tubes in tube radios are sometime called "Hollow State" as opposed to transistors and ICs being Solid State.

There is a saying among some people that real radios glow in the dark. They are generally talking about the glow of tubes. Never mind that with most tube radios, when in normal use, you can not directly see the tubes. It is the thought that matters. To some people the older radios just seem to have a warm glow about them, even if you can't see the tubes. For sure the old backlit tuning dials and meters did look different from todays radios.

I bought my first BA for $25 in the mid / early 70's. It was a Hallicrafters SX-99 with matching R-46B speaker. Both units were absolutely perfect, not a mark on them. They both worked as new. The SX-99 is long sold (and I kick myself regularly), but I still have the R-46B. The SX-99 may not have been a top end rig, it may not have had the best selectivity, and it may have been hard to tell what frequency your were monitoring, but man it sure was a joy to use and it sounded great.

 Radio sales history DB.
 Some of my current boatanchors.
 Use of a BC-221 to find what frequency you are listening to on a BA.
 Radio Links.
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