50 Years Licensed and Still Building — Gary W0MNA & Martha W0ERI

Yeah, this is what got me started many years ago.

This was a kit that came out in the 50s, back when I was about 10 years old.

I found this in a magazine of some kind, and I talked my dad into buying me that.

It was a one tube type radio kit that you can build 15 different circuits on.

The parts plugged into a piece of perf board or peg board.

And then you wired it all up and ran off of a 45 volt battery for the B plus and a nine volt or a one volt, one and a half volt battery for the filament.

And that was what really got me into building things.

I really enjoyed that kit a lot.

I still have it.

And it was the only kit that also had a coil that you could swap out from an AM receiver to make it a shortwave receiver.

And most of your kits from that point after that, like the Radio Shack ones and Heath kits and Lafayette and all those, they never had a shortwave receiver.

But this kit did.

So I could listen to the shortwave radio signals at night, and that was pretty cool.

This is cool.

So this is a picture of actually your set then, huh?

Yeah, I got this when I was about 10 years old.

It's amazing you

have it after all those years.

Actually, I have four of them.

I found them on eBay.

Nice.

That ever ready battery brings back memories.

I remember when that cat was, I remember seeing that thing.

The problem with it was, you know, eventually it runs down and they weren't very cheap back then.

So that was, that was life back then.