News items of interest to Antique Wireless Museum Followers and AWA Members
Below are news stories of interest to AWA Members or those interested in antique radios. Should you have an item of general interests, contact the Website Administrator here.
Silent Keys are now located on their own dedicated page here.
AWA Spring Meet Date Change
23-01-25
Due to a scheduling conflict, the 2023 Spring Meet will be held on the 2nd Saturday of May on May 13, 2023.
Complete Spring Meet details are available using button to the right.
Ben and Troy Continue PCB Projects
2023-01-14
Troy Taylor’s nephew Ben was up for a visit with him in December 2022 to resume working on radios and AWA battery eliminators. Here is a picture of them with Ben’s Crosley 51 powered by the AWA battery eliminator board that Ben built. It sang again for the first time, probably in many decades, but still has some unresolved performance problems to sort out. But Ben was quite pleased to be able to hear this two-tube marvel of Roaring 20s engineering playing again.
The headphones are original, unrestored, period-correct.
Troy mentioned that they still have two more AWA boards for them to build together; one each for Nephew and Uncle. Troy said that they didn’t necessarily need this many, but these AWA printed circuit boards are GREAT opportunities for the next generation to practice soldering. We agree and we hope the AWA PCB offerings encourage the membership to use them together with their loved ones.
Ben and Troy are doing great work and they’re helping to make sure that communications history is preserved well into the future.
(The “’AWA Universal Battery Eliminator circuit board’ mentioned above is the AWA Universal Battery Eliminator (UBE) PCB available for purchase here.)
AWA Printed Circuit Board Brings Excitement to Young Radio Enthusiast
2022-08-04
Troy Taylor and his nephew Ben, a young radio enthusiast, are shown during the spring of 2022 when they revived Ben’s Atwater Kent Model 20 Big Box radio. With Uncle Troy’s guidance, Ben utilized the AWA Universal Battery Eliminator circuit board. This was the first time Ben had ever heard a radio wake up from many years of silence. The first broadcast they received was a Mariner’s game.
(The “’AWA Universal Battery Eliminator circuit board’ mentioned above is the AWA Universal Battery Eliminator (UBE) PCB available for purchase here.)
QST July 2022 Item
2022-06-15
AWA Awarded Grant
2022-05-27
The KeySpark Archive Comes to the AWA
For those of you that attended Rachel Isbell Branch’s Conference presentation on The KeySpark Archive, you understand that KeySpark Archive is the significant and historic collection of the ephemera of her great uncle, Arthur Abner Isbell, IAA, the fourth wireless operator in the US.
The KeySpark Archive is composed of original photos, letters, newspaper clipping and postcards from the formative years of wireless.
Arthur learned telegraphy as a boy and had been a schoolmate of Lee DeForest. He became a General Manager at the original DeForest Company, joined the Massie Company in 1906 and while employed there equipped and operated on the first ship with wireless to sail the Pacific (the S.S. President). He later designed and built a 10 K.W. spark station at Kahuku, Hawaii for the Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., became New Orleans Division Superintendent for United Wireless, erected the first wireless station in New Zealand, worked for Marconi, where he became a construction engineer and later became a General Superintendent at RCA.000000000
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Rachel Branch and Bob Hobday, on behalf of AWA, have signed an agreement conveying the ownership and copyrights of KeySpark Archive to AWA for its preservation, digitization, and promotion as primary wireless history research.
This is an incredible collection and we are very honored that Rachel chose to place AWA in the role of stewardship of the KeySpark Archive.