Radio Daze: Collectors host fascinating auction of antique radios

Growing up during the Depression, Ray Bintliff still remembers listening to the adventures of The Shadow and Little Orphan Annie on his parents’ Philco console radio. The 83-year-old Acton resident comes from a generation of Americans who heard history coming into their living rooms.

On radios made by Zenith, RCA and Sparton, they heard Orson Welles announce a Martian invasion and FDR pronounce a "Day of Infamy." They heard about the D-Day invasion at Normandy and the antics of Fibber McGee and Molly.

Many, like Thomas Romano of Grafton and John V. Terrey of Carlisle, followed a boyhood passion for radios around the country and world into careers that still keep them tuned in. The son of a Worcester radio repairman, Romano joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and used his technical expertise in the Korean War. Growing up in rural Alice, Texas, Terrey operated a ham radio as a teenager before devoting himself to cutting-edge research with Raytheon Company.

The radios that informed and entertained Americans throughout the 20th century will be on display and sale next Sunday in Westford at the largest indoor antique radio flea market on the East Coast.

Radio XXXVII takes place Feb. 19 at the Westford Regency Inn Market from 8 a.m. till noon. Romano called the flea market "an amazing chance to see old radios." He should know. The 72-year-old Millbury resident owns Tom’s Antique Radio in his home town. "It’s really intriguing. You always see something different there. Every radio is different. Believe me, I’ve seen them all. And even today, it’s amazing to discover what they have there," Romano said.

Terrey estimates more than 60 exhibitors will be showing and selling old radios, parts and related goods from about 90 tables in the 7,900-square-foot hall. Based on last year’s event, he expects more than 800 people will be on hand to share their interest in radio technology and culture. "Visitors will really get a view of what radios were like in the early days," Terrey said. "It’s kind of like going to a museum. Visitors will meet radio people who really like to share their interests."

Terrey, who has owned and published Antique Radio Classified for 20 years, said hundreds of vintage radios from the 1920s to 1960s will be on sale along with hard-to-find parts, early transistor radios and televisions, books, magazines and related items. He believes the flea market is the largest, oldest continually running event of its kind in the region.

Terrey’s extensive personal collection contains an estimated 1,000 radios and related items, mostly from before 1925, including parts from a 1908 Marconi radio. It includes shelves of radios that ran on vacuum tubes and clusters of horn-shaped speakers, transistor radios, antennas and novelty items like radio-shaped banks and playing cards. Terrey uses to his technical expertise to restore his old radios, most of which still receive AM stations throughout the region. He pointed out bookshelves stacked with volumes of "Radio Boys" and "Radio Girls" adventures tales from the 1920s and Tom Swift and Bobbsey Twins stories about radios. "I’ve been interested in electronics and radios since I was 13," Terrey said on a gray blustery morning.

Born around the time his parents were listening to Franklin Roosevelt’s "Fireside Chats" on the family radio, Terrey was a teenage "ham" operator before going to MIT in 1958 to study electrical engineering.

Terrey said Greater Boston Antique Radio Collectors is a loosely affiliated group of people bound by a shared interest. "It’s not a club. It’s just a great group of folks," he said.

When they get together, they often reminisce about old American radio manufacturers like Air Castle, American Bosch made in Springfield and Audiola. People who like old radios, Terrey said, fall into two broad categories. "Some like me are more into the technology and history," he said. "There’s others who are more interested in the old programs and personalities like Jack Benny and Milton Berle."

Romano falls into the first category. He learned to repair radios in his father’s Worcester shop in the 1940s, fueling a lifetime infatuation. He remembers listening to radio broadcasts of Warren Spahn pitching for the Boston Braves. After the Army, he attended the now-defunct Massachusetts Radio School in Boston and earned his living repairing radios, televisions and just about anything electrical. Now semi-retired, he’s collected more than 200 old radios over the last two decades and specializes in repairing old television sets. In an age dominated by digital technology and iPods, Romano described himself as "tube-type knowledgeable."

" I don’t think they teach that today. It’s all ’plug in, plug out.’ Everything’s expendable. In my era, we’d troubleshoot every component," said Romano.

An 83-year-old retired electrical engineer from Acton, Bintliff "can’t remember when I first got hooked on radios." He began repairing radios in high school and served as an aviation electronics technician during World War II. For years, he worked for RCA designing televisions, later becoming "a modest collector" after retirement. Bintliff said visitors to the flea market will see different styles of radios found in homes throughout the 20th century including the curved "cathedral" and square tombstone models. There will be consoles that sat on the floor and "mantle" radios, a style that fit onto fireplaces and shelves. He spends his spare time scouring antique shops and flea markets for rare electronic components, vacuum tubes and hard-to-find buttons, knobs and dials from radios built more than 50 years ago.

Some especially rare models, he said, like the plastic Catalin radio popular in the 1930s, have fetched $5,000 on the market. "You never know what you’re going to find in someone’s barn or attic," Bintliff said. "I think everybody has an interest in old things. The reward is taking an old radio and getting it to play again."

At the flea market, Joe Smolski of Framingham will be looking for old time radios like the 1941 Zenith console on which he first heard Polish polkas and later WMEX DJ Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg hype Adventure Car Hop in Saugus. His fascination in communication technology took root when he worked as a "bench man" repairing radios for an RCA dealership in the 1960s. He later studied electrical engineering at Wentworth College and worked in research and development for area technology companies.

Now 57, Smolski estimated he owns more than 100 old radios. His primary interest lies in keeping them running. "Many of these old radios used to be the central entertainment device in peoples’ homes. It may seem odd to think of it but before the advent of television, people used to sit around them and sort of watch their radios," he said. Smolski still has his grandmother’s 1941 Zenith which still receives stations from London and Moscow on its shortwave bands. Like other old radio buffs, he laments the anonymity and "disposability" of current communications technology. "Today almost all consumer electronics are unserviceable, even by their makers. In the old days, radios were made to be serviced," he said.

In simpler times, Smolski said people were drawn to the signature designs of popular radios such as "Zenith’s big black dial." "I doubt if people today feel as emotionally attached to their iPods," he said. "If somebody remembers those old classic radios, the (radio) flea market can be a trip back in time."

MORE DETAILS: Registration for Radio XXXVII begins at 7:30 a.m. It costs $30 to reserve a table.

For further information about Antique Radio Classified, call Pat Wedge at 866-371-0512; write her at P.O. Box 2, Carlisle, MA 01741; or e-mail her at arc@antique.radio.

To contact Thomas Romano at Tom’s Antique Radio, visit the shop at 8 Howe Lane, Millbury, or call 508-865-6293.

Love the pic! She will make a fine engineer/scientist I bet! :-))

She's getting an early start on the tinkering part. Here, she helped me change the blower from our furnace.

It's not near as glamorous as it sounds. Mostly I just sit down here, monitor PD and FD traffic and wait for something really bad to happen.

When there's something bigger than a Box or 2nd Alarm we have additional assets we can roll to the scene to assist the firefighters. We also are 'Weather Spotter Central' during bad weather. That's what the HAMs are for, among other things.

Personally, I think what you do is waaaay cooler than what I do. I mean spotting planets in other systems by the way they make their stars wobble is pretty fancy stuff.

But I do wish I had just 1/4 of this stuff in my puter room!

Gotta go..gotta fire.

Radio porn...

When I was a kid I had a Hallicrafters 5R10A (very much like the S-38D but without the CW mode or standby switch). Fun little SWL rig, it took me all over the world. Don't remember when or why I got rid of it (didn't have some features I wanted, probably) but I never should have. Nothing since has been so much fun.

I think my stepdad's old 8R40 is still out in the garage. I don't know what happened to it (it was still nice when I lived in the house) but it's too rough for restoration IMHO.

These days when I get the chance (which is to say when the wife is gone because she hates it) I SWL with a Yeasu FT747GX transciever. It's not the same, nothing sounds as good as the old tube rigs. I would really like to get another vintage tube rig some day.

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