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April 2022 Update: Back in 2015, I ran across The Old Radio Builder website,
hosted by Mike Starcher, KB4YJ, of Louisville, Kentucky. He has a nice
collection of vintage radio restorations and building projects, all of which are
useful to hobbyists. Sadly, I received word from a good friend (Gary F.) of
Mike's that he is now a Silent Key, and
was asked whether there is a way to get Mike's website back up since the Old
Radio Builder website has been taken down. Fortunately, I discovered that the
Archive.org website has many captures of the website's pages, so in effect it is
still up and available! The last capture of The Old Radio Builder before it
expired appears to be
March of 2019. It lives on in perpetuity.
A
nice mixture of the classic and the sybaritic describes some of the projects designed
and built by
Mike Starcher (KB4YJ), owner of
The Old Radio Builder website. He has both a "Vintage Homebrew" area and a "Modern Homebrew" area, as well as "Restorations" on vintage equipment - you'll appreciate the photo
at the top of the page if you've seen the inside of some barn or garage finds. There's
even a page of tips
for how to take really nice photos of your components and hardware.
Some of Mike's projects feature a nicely crafted mahogany base onto which is
mounted wafer type variable capacitors, vacuum tube bases, hand-wound coils, transformers,
resistors, and a nicely painted black front panel with vintage dials. Structures
are left open to showcase the craftsman-like handiwork that includes carefully routed
solid wires. Viewed from overhead, the entire assembly looks like a real-life version
of a typical 1930s era schematic / point-to-point wiring diagram from electronics
magazines.
Here are a couple examples of Mike's projects:
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Browning-Drake Receiver
(The Old Radio Builder image)
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Double Slider Crystal Set
(The Old Radio Builder
image)
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Posted April 13, 2022
(updated from original post on 8/14/2015)
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