[HN Gopher] My father may be gone, but 'our' radio is still going
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My father may be gone, but 'our' radio is still going
Author : mirthlessend
Score : 131 points
Date : 2023-06-17 22:17 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| [deleted]
| varjag wrote:
| It feels like LA Times are appearing a notch more often on the
| front page since they've dropped their ban of European users.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Btw, anyone planning to tinker with valves/ tubes....I thoroughly
| encourage it...but you need to learn to safely discharge caps
| before you open valve equipment. Caps can hold 'instant death'
| voltages long after they are unplugged. A search on the interwebs
| will show you the way
| troymc wrote:
| As Kevin Kelly pointed out in his book _What Technology Wants_ ,
| most technologies never actually go extinct. There remain people
| who are still interested in making "new" ones and reparing broken
| ones. And thanks to the internet, it's fairly easy to find them.
| For tube radios:
|
| http://www.xtalman.com/ --- Borden Radio Company sells kits to
| make all kinds of old radios, including tube radios.
|
| https://vacuumtubes.net/ --- "Welcome to the Vacuum Tubes
| division of Radio Electric Supply, home of the largest supply of
| New Old Stock vacuum tubes in the world."
| delgaudm wrote:
| Assuming the manufacturer "allows" it repairable at all, which
| seems to be a lot less common now.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Yeah, pretty big change over the decades in that regard.
| 1940's radio? Comes with schematic, repair manual, and an
| order form for replacement parts. 2020's radio? Comes closed
| with special "security" screws, adhesive, etc., encrypted
| firmware, and a nearly guaranteed lawsuit if you have the
| audacity to open it up, reverse engineer it and publish
| schematics, repair instructions, etc.
|
| This is not progress. :-(
| winrid wrote:
| A nice story.
|
| This person should consider replacing the capacitors in the
| radio, or having someone do it.
|
| The old, bad wax capacitors will quickly burn out the tubes. The
| tubes themselves are quite reliable.
|
| If they do that, it could last decades more easily.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20230619132008/https://www.latime...
| ilamont wrote:
| My grandfather, a retired farmer and factory worker, always had
| an old police scanner going in his kitchen. Prompted me to get a
| modern programmable one years ago at Radio Shack, which drew
| hoots of laughter from my city colleagues when I told them. I
| didn't get the derision - it let him (and me) understand what's
| local emergency services are dealing with.
| creeble wrote:
| Which reminds me of when I was 19 and was stopped by the police
| for what I assumed was hitchhiking - since I had just walked up
| a hill from the highway where I had been dropped off after
| hitching home from college for the weekend.
|
| Alas, the reason he stopped me (which he never mentioned of
| course) was that I looked very close to the description of
| someone who had just robbed a bank in my home town.
|
| By the time I got to my parents house, everyone in town had
| "heard" I had been arrested for bank robbery thanks to a few
| folks with police scanners.
| ilamont wrote:
| I had an experience about 10 years ago when I unknowingly
| jogged in a large park that an armed robbery suspect had just
| escaped into. I matched the basic description (WM, dark
| T-shirt) and all a sudden a police officer pops out of the
| bushes and asks to see my ID. I don't know if anyone was
| listening on the scanner, though.
|
| Much of the activity I have heard on scanners is mundane:
| running plates, responding to alarms, ambulance calls, noise
| complaints, accidents blocking traffic, minor disputes where
| one side feels compelled to summon the police.
|
| There are the tragedies. Lots of medical calls where someone
| is unresponsive, which could be anything from an OD to a
| heart attack. "Domestic calls," usually fights between
| spouses or parents and adult children. Mental health
| emergencies. Seniors wandering the street, who have forgotten
| where they live.
|
| Then there are the serious emergencies: fires, armed
| robberies, once a car chase. When I first got started decades
| ago there was a Boston police channel that a gang unit
| sometimes used but since then they appear to have migrated to
| a non-public frequency. I frequently hear police now asking
| specific colleagues to call them, I assume because the info
| shouldn't be shared over the regular dispatch frequency or
| would take too long to explain and tie up the channel.
| interroboink wrote:
| Why were they laughing about it, do you think?
|
| To me, it'd be like someone saying: "Oh, you're curious and
| like to look at the stars? How _droll!_ "
| ilamont wrote:
| I was very surprised when it happened, and after that I did
| not share much about my personal life. I think they thought
| it was incredibly corny and/or nerdy.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's a fun read. I've scored some interesting radio gear from
| the street and found that in the worst case, I can at least give
| it a good cleaning and pass it along, even if I decide not to fix
| it. :-)
|
| Recently I started keeping a radio switched on in the kitchen all
| day, and the family seems to like it. I thought there might be
| complaints, probably from my teenagers, but I switch it to the
| pop charts stations a few days a week. And the kids are even OK
| with 80s stations and tunes they remember from the memes of
| yesteryear!
|
| There are some interesting hidden advantages to having that thing
| on all day. For example, during emergencies like extended power
| outages, it's a very easy and reassuring way to get updates.
|
| But it all started when I grew up listening to Dad dialing in his
| favorite station, KIXI-AM in Seattle, every morning at his
| office.
|
| Got to work with a headache and too many projects to finish?
| Well, how long can you focus on those temporary annoyances while
| the dulcet tones of _Love Story_ play? (Andy Williams, not Taylor
| Swift)
|
| (BTW if you like that idea, tune into Hayama Beach FM Japan
| streaming for the next couple of hours and thank me later...)
|
| Hopefully my own kids don't feel too much pressure to check
| propagation on the bands with a handheld wideband receiver like
| Dad does on vacation at the beach, but I'm glad they get to
| experience what a good radio can do.
| don-code wrote:
| I did a walk-up amateur radio workshop with the Girl Scouts at
| a STEM festival a few months ago. I likewise was very surprised
| by two things: the younger kids had _no idea_ what they were
| looking at (isn't the radio in the phones? Spotify?), and they
| were also completely enamored with the gear. Some of the older
| kids (14-ish if I had to guess?) spent a lot of time with it.
|
| For the younger (7-10 year old) kids who came to our table, we
| actually didn't do anything terribly technical - we just asked
| them, "What's your favorite type of music?", showed them how to
| tune to an appropriate local FM station, and let them see the
| waterfall plot of the station, put the big headphones on, and
| that sort of thing. If any of them showed an interest, I'd hand
| them a hand-held CB radio, one of the big clunky 80s ones from
| Stranger Things, and let them make "their own radio station",
| then showed them how to pick it up like the FM station. We got
| a lot of younger visitors this way!
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That's awesome, seems like a great contribution to the
| community. CB radio, too, that's not so common these days. I
| scan for it sometimes but never find any local traffic.
| zhengyi13 wrote:
| I get the sense that there are some folk still actively
| using CB, but I also have the sense that for most people,
| their needs are better met nowadays by GMRS radios (which
| are in the UHF/~70cm bands, rather than 11m CB), which
| provide for legally higher power transmissions, at the cost
| of a nearly completely unenforced license.
|
| Part two of course is location: I'd expect CB to be more
| prominent on big cross-country highways; GMRS in wide-open
| country where folks might be overlanding. If you're hanging
| out in a city and expecting to hear either, I think you're
| liable to be disappointed.
| davesque wrote:
| My father is still alive, but, when he passes away, my version of
| this is that his crystal radios that he liked to build as hobby
| projects will still be blathering away since they only depend on
| the power coming straight from the radio waves in the air.
| Pyrodogg wrote:
| My dad always had a radio tuned to a local country station
| playing lowly in the garage, 24/7. The thing never turned off.
|
| He passed in 2016, and now the radio plays away situated on a
| workbench in my brothers garage. It gets turned up when someone
| is actually working out there, but only turned down and not off
| when they retire to the house.
|
| As I recall this, I remember it wasn't even just the most recent
| model. Repairing radios wasn't his thing so eventually they'd get
| replaced when broken, but I can recall at least two distinct
| radios over the years so I really think he'd been doing that for
| quite many years.
| quesera wrote:
| Not sure if it applies to your dad's garage, but "low volume
| audio source" is sometimes used as a strategy to repel
| varmints.
|
| It does not work very well in my garage, but nothing does.
| squokko wrote:
| Not turning it off is one of the reasons it's lasted this long.
| One of the most common causes of electronics failure is thermal
| stressing from powering down and up.
| willcipriano wrote:
| A fitting tribute. Sort of like Kennedy's eternal flame.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Eternal_Flam...
| BooneJS wrote:
| "Our" radio is decidedly more modern, circa early 1970's, but it
| has played thousands of hours of St. Louis Cardinals games when
| KMOX 1120 kHz would fade in about 7 PM up here in Western
| Wisconsin. Every time I consider ripping out the guts to make it
| a bluetooth streaming speaker, I can't go through with it.
| adql wrote:
| It might be interesting project to _add_ BT speaker instead of
| ripping whole thing out. Just put a relay to the speaker that
| switches to the BT receiver when it is enabled and back to old
| radio when it is powered down
| jimnotgym wrote:
| >These days I use it sparingly; I realize that each time it
| flickers to life could be its last.
|
| I think seeing that they are made of glass, people assume vacuum
| tubes are delicate in some way. They are not really, this person
| should use their radio. Tube radios are much easier to fix in
| general than a transistor radio.
|
| > How does one go about finding ancient tubes nowadays?
|
| The internet! Or if you want the manual touch, a radio rally.
| Many tubes are still in production albeit sometimes in tricky
| parts of the world!
|
| > Where are the parents with the know-how to fix such things
| anymore?
|
| Also the internet! There are several people who could fix the
| radio on this thread!
| SLWW wrote:
| I can count the number of ham labs (owned by 40+ men) i've been
| in on one hand that didn't have a stack of old tubes in their
| original boxes lining the shelf above an old CW Transmitter.
|
| I've been in a lot of ham labs; they are everywhere but super
| cool.
| skip_region wrote:
| Love this article. About once a year, I'll buy an eBay tube radio
| from someone local. I'll fix it on up since the tubes are usually
| good and all that needs to be replaced are the sad wax caps.
| Maybe a little realignment as well since I have it open.
|
| I then give it back to the seller who usually is excited about
| having it work again. Once in a while I will put the stories on
| eham.net.
|
| If for any reason the radio breaks, going to send the author an
| email to offer to fix it for free. All it takes are about $3
| worth of mouser capacitors in my experience.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So you run a charity repair service? You buy something from
| someone, fix it, then give it back to the person you bought it
| from? That's a very noble hobby.
| skip_region wrote:
| The latter. I don't really consider it a charity since the
| people could easily pay for it (plus tube radios are so
| simple to fix). However, upon receiving it back, they are
| quick to realize the missing memories they might have given
| up.
|
| Selfishly I do it to keep up my soldering skills when none of
| my amateur radio related radios need servicing. Plus putting
| a little good karma out there never hurt anyone.
| 0ct4via wrote:
| 73 to you, Sir.
| codetrotter wrote:
| And o7 as well :D (although o7 is IRC speak, not ham
| speak :P)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| 73?
| tejtm wrote:
| It is a salutary morse code "prosign" on amateur radio
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosigns_for_Morse_code
|
| edit: I may be overstating that the token is precisely a
| prosign.
|
| But if so it will be one of the closely related early
| electrical communication codes.
|
| https://hamradioprep.com/what-does-73-mean/
| jimnotgym wrote:
| 'Best wishes' but in morse it takes less time to write
| 73!
| et-al wrote:
| It's proto-pager code:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_signal
|
| https://www.pagercodes.com/common-pager-codes.html
| draz wrote:
| This is heartwarming to read. Would you consider recording and
| uploading videos of the repairs to YouTube?
| skip_region wrote:
| Here is a video I took a while ago:
| https://youtu.be/WDuR87r8nWs
|
| Bought it from a person who lived about 20 miles away. He
| grew up with it in his grandmas house. Bought it, fixed it
| and returned it back to him.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| I have a couple of KX-99 AM two-way radios. On of them (Bendix)
| receives well, but the other one (Bendix-King) has a strange tone
| and doesn't seem to pick up any signal. The tone is dependant on
| the frequency it's monitoring. Maybe this is a by-product of a
| superheterodyne circuit only present in the newer models? I
| wonder if any radio-savvy reader will be able to point me in the
| right direction here :)
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" I realize that each time it flickers to life could be its
| last. How does one go about finding ancient tubes nowadays? Where
| are the parents with the know-how to fix such things anymore?"_
|
| Fixing it is non-issue. Almost evey part will be available if not
| a direct replacement then a close substitute. Even new
| electrolytic capacitors can be made to look like old parts by
| burying them in the case of the defunct part.
|
| As for tubes, it's almost certain they'll be standard octals
| (they were commonplace by 1941), and there's any number of them
| around both new-old stock and secondhand.
| wkdneidbwf wrote:
| yeah, they're playing up the "can't fix it again" angle for the
| melancholy feeling.
| bwestergard wrote:
| Also, wouldn't keeping the tube filament temperature stable
| maximize longevity? In other words, couldn't leaving it on be
| better than using it once a day?
| winrid wrote:
| No. The old caps in there will be overdriving the tubes. It
| will die pretty quickly.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Thanks to guitar players, lots of tubes are being manufactured
| new these days for old amps. There may even be new tube amps
| being made.
| buescher wrote:
| Amplifier tubes have only a little overlap, if any, with the
| tubes you will find in a typical AM radio like the one
| described. Maybe the rectifier or the output tube.
|
| There is still (!) plenty of old stock of radio and
| television tubes out there, however.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Yeah, see my comment re the 6J8G.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > There may even be new tube amps being made.
|
| There are. I had the resident guitar expert at work pick me
| out a cheap-but-decent guitar+amp combo for my son, and the
| amp ended up being a 1-watt tube amp
| janeway wrote:
| Right, super popular for death metal guitarists, for some
| reason.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| Tube amps are really the default type of guitar amp for
| every genre. I can name hundreds of guitar players famous
| for playing tube amps, I don't think I can name a single
| one known to play solid state amps.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| With digital simulation, things are slowly changing and a
| lot of players now use digital amps on tour as a matter
| of convenience, even big names. This has been debated to
| death on guitar forums, but some would argue that digital
| is now undistinguishable from the tubes.
| throwaway1004 wrote:
| >This has been debated to death on guitar forums, but
| some would argue that digital is now undistinguishable
| from the tubes.
|
| I find that it's impossible for the average listener to
| identify the difference in recorded music, especially if
| there's a lot of distortion in play, but I can entertain
| the idea that it's a detectable difference.
|
| As someone who moved from solid-state and digital amps to
| tube amps I find there to be a huge difference in terms
| of dynamics and response, which massively influences the
| way I and others play. I can't imagine Jeff Beck or Gary
| Moore getting the same results with non-tube amps, since
| their playing relies so much on dynamics and physically
| feeling and moving air in the room.
|
| edit: for live touring, though, it's so much more
| efficient to use digital or solid-state options for size,
| weight and reliability, if it doesn't directly impact the
| artist's ability to perform
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I have never used a top line modelling amp, like kemper
| or whatever...but I immediately play better through my
| tube amps than lower end digitals (Katana or whatever).
| It is dynamics as you say. Anyone would prefer to hear me
| play (as if) through a valve amp (vacuum tubes are called
| valves in Britain). Valve amps are still the default
| option for higher end enthusiast amps, although modeling
| is taking over with pros for convenience
| throwaway1004 wrote:
| >I don't think I can name a single one known to play
| solid state amps.
|
| Dimebag Darrell and Buckethead are two names who come to
| mind, favouring the even response of solid state over the
| more-dynamic valve amps. If we include pre-amplification
| such as guitar pedals, solid state is everywhere - a DS1
| or a Rat gives that even response for big gnarly cold
| distortions. Then there's the Boss HM pedal which spawned
| a whole genre of it's own when players used it as a pre-
| amp for that unique "chainsaw" sound.
|
| So, you're right that most players opt for valves at the
| amplification stage, but solid state is all over guitar
| music.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Right, but I'm not so sure about superhetrodyne-specific
| tubes such as pentagrid and triode-heptode converters like
| the 6J8G (perhaps I'm wrong, I've not followed the matter
| that carefully lately).
|
| Reckon the demand wouldn't warrant tooling up (and they're
| messy complex tubes to make).
| zabzonk wrote:
| one may not need to find ancient valves - my little (65-year
| old) brother builds valve amplifiers and repairs valve radios
| as a hobby, and seems to do ok. only problem that as far as i
| can see, many valves are apparently sourced from russia (i
| don't know about this definitively).
| squarefoot wrote:
| Russians and other ex soviet countries kept manufacturing
| tubes well after the west stopped. They're often great
| quality military grade parts, a lot better than the Chinese
| remakes and fakes one can find at the usual online places.
| The same applies to germanium transistors and diodes, passive
| parts etc: excellent quality at very reasonable prices. Those
| who currently don't want to, or can't, buy from Russian
| sellers, can find the same items at various shops in western
| Europe: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Ukraine (some shops still
| active and worth helping), Romania, Poland, etc.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| You know, it depends how desperate one gets. I have
| longtime friend who occasionally repairs ancient B&W TV
| sets, not from the 1950s but earlier 40s and even late 30s.
| When he couldn't get new picture tubes he simply invested
| in vacuum pumps and necessary tube components and snipped
| the necks off the tubes and rebuilt them--and they worked
| perfectly OK.
|
| I reckon he was mad to attempt it but I have to eat humble
| pie because he became so expert at it. And what's more, he
| did all this in his backyard shed at home!
| zabzonk wrote:
| yeah, my bro doesn't, AFAIK, buy from russia direct. but
| even if you buy from UK suppliers, you are still indirectly
| supporting the russian economy. i haven't brought this up
| with him - we have enough disagreements about politics as
| it is.
| SLWW wrote:
| Well you are maybe placing a few bucks in some English
| person's pocket where there was already money long gone
| to the Russian economy, and reminder that most people in
| Russia don't even support the war so it's not like you
| are making an impact outside of buying an Englishman tea
| after he already paid a Russian for his... idk what they
| prefer to drink over there other than Vodka. :P
|
| Even in Russia, it's mostly a cottage industry, they
| aren't shipping thousand's monthly and definitely are not
| funding a war machine from that small investment, it also
| costs them raw resources when they do eventually
| manufacture. War has a way of getting funding much
| greater than from it's exports.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "and there's any number of them around both new-old stock and
| secondhand."
|
| I believe there are even a company or two manufacturing new.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| There are about 10 companies that still make vacuum tubes for
| a variety of products. There is also stock you can find on
| eBay or at ham radio festivals pretty easily. There are even
| customers who make crystals for old rigs like the
| Hallicrafters and Drake lines.
| Apreche wrote:
| Seriously. The author is smart enough to get their piece
| published in the LA Times. You would think they know how to
| search YouTube for "how to repair old radio".
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| komadori wrote:
| I was going to write that expertise in one area doesn't
| necessarily transfer to competence in another, but then it
| occurred to me: Perhaps the radio is still running off the
| same valve that his father installed in 1978 and that is part
| of the emotional value that it holds for him.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Radio of Theseus
| bombcar wrote:
| If your father fixed something _for_ you, it could feel
| like a betrayal of his memory to hire someone to fix it
| again for you.
|
| Though personally, if I had the deep emotional connection
| with it, I'd want to _fix it myself_ (almost certainly with
| assistance from some amateurs who know the radio).
| lozf wrote:
| Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish :/
| pfdietz wrote:
| That will never stop reminding me of the Pterry quote.
| mlyle wrote:
| You're never going to "teach a man to fish" on how to
| keep his one, mostly-reliable, tube type radio going. You
| can teach him to switch tubes, but eventually it's going
| to get more complicated than that, and you can only get
| so much experience from a touch of help every few years.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Whilst it doesn't happen very often it never ceases to
| amaze me that some of those old radios will still work
| after being switched off for about half century.
|
| I've switched them on expecting fireworks--the plates in
| the 5Y3G/T or 80 rectifiers glowing red hot because the
| electrolytic caps had shorted to deck--but no they
| actually still worked.
|
| What's more I've even had some of those ancient wet
| electrolytic caps (the 1930s-style 8mF/400V types in
| vertical cans mounted on the chassis) actually work.
|
| Mind you, I certainly don't recommend you do that--do as
| I say not as I do (I'm rather gung ho about such matters
| and rather enjoy the fireworks). Be warned, you can not
| only blow up the rectifiers but also the power
| transformer and that'll likely be much harder to replace
| than the tubes.
|
| I recall several years back being so shocked that some of
| those old wet electros still worked that I pulled the top
| seals off several and stuck my multimeter in the
| electrolyte and noticed that essentially there was no
| voltage between the electrolyte and the case. I even
| stuck my finger on the Al foil and could feel very little
| until I pushed hard and then suddenly whammo--ouch. A
| fascinating exercise, it's an excellent illustration of
| how good aluminum oxide is as an insulator and
| dielectric.
|
| _Please don 't try this unless you are as mad as I am--
| and even then don't do it!_
| Waterluvian wrote:
| And therefore have to omit that poetic line?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| That's rather unfair. Whilst I cut my teeth on old radios
| like that (which were essentially obsolete when I was a kid),
| and their operation is second nature to me, I know many
| electronics people brought up on transistors, ICs and 5-Volt
| supply rails that wouldn't know where to begin fixing one.
| For starters, plate voltages upwards of 250V scare the shit
| out of them.
| Animats wrote:
| An AM-only radio of that period almost certainly uses the "All
| American Five" set of tubes. All of which are still
| available.[1]
|
| Note that many of those things are a hot-chassis design. The
| chassis is directly connected to one side of the power line, so
| there is a shock hazard. On some units, the shafts of the
| controls are live.[2]
|
| [1] https://www.tubedepot.com/products/american-5-tube-set
|
| [2] https://geojohn.org/Radios/MyRadios/Safety.html
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