You Listened To KAAY on What?

I was blessed a few weeks ago by a fellow Ham radio operator, who is now inactive.  He gave me several pieces of gear and numerous AM, AM/FM and AM/Shortwave table radios, just so they'd have a good home.  Pictured above is one of the radios he gave me, a Channel Master Model 5636.  It's in reasopnably good shape, the wood is smooth, clean and not cracked (despite being out in an open trailer) and barely needs a little cleaning.  This is a tube unit, I believe built in the early 1960's.  All I can find, info-wise, is that someone has Sam's Photofacts for sale for it, but not the date of manufacture.

It was so clean that I was tempted to plug it in and see if it would play, but that little Ham voice said, "Check it out!"  In older tube-type radios, the capacitors can sometimes dry out and need to be replaced.  These capacitors, when they dry out, can short out and produce disasterous results when they explode with power applied!  At the least, the capacitor will be destroyed- at the worst, the radio....

Needless to say, I'll put this radio through a variable transformer and bring the voltage up s-l-o-w-l-y, to make sure I don't lose this treasure!

As you can probably tell, I love old radios...more to come, both a little newer, and a whole lot older!

What did you listen to KAAY with?

BudS (staceys4@hotmail.com)