Early 1970s Transistor AM-FM portable

These were all the rage in the early `70s. They were badged under silly names like Satellite, Sky King and so on. They were sold via mail order companies like Shopertunities, and Laskey, Home Radio… basically they were cheapo radios with and extended FM-VHF range, going into 170 Mhz. You could now listen to police, fire and ambulance services and earwig the local taxies. Most of them were awfully made, horrid PCBs and components that stuck out in all directions. Long before CAD lay out PCBs. They worked and were a bit of fun. Those of us that were in our early teens in the early ‘70s now have a fondness for the sets and snap them up on ebay. This one arrived in the post, a gift from a friend. Nothing really worked. The wavechange switch was in bits, the on-off volume control was hanging off and one of the tuning gang capdensors was all dry joints huffalo dowder. Took it all to bits and snagged the tuning cord with my soldering iron. That made me resulted in the C word being used a few times. Eventually all back together and the little set played quite well.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *