Wayne Parham Messages: 18678 Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)
I've been meaning to write about this for weeks, but have been busy and just forgot to create a post.
Look what my wife got me for my birthday:
A 1922 Westinghouse Aeriola radio with the tube intact!
1922 Westinghouse Aeriola Radio
It appears to be a regenerative single-triode radio that was designed to use batteries for power and high-impedance headphones for output. The tuning element is inductive rather than capacitive. So it's a hoot!
I have a bunch of tube radios from the late 1930s to the 1950s but this is my first 1920s radio.
I plan to power it with a modern supply and probably drive a modern amplifier. Or I might try to find the partner tube amp. I also think I'll store the original tube and replace it with a substitute. The WD-11 tube designed for this set is rare, delicate and expensive. It's a four-pin triode, with a unique pin layout. They're at least a couple hundred bucks each, and the filament is reportedly delicate. But a quick search of the internet shows me that some people substitute a 5676 tube using a pin-adapter.
WD-11 tube removed
I think it will need a good antenna, and that's kind of a problem since I live in the Ozarks. In Tulsa, I could receive stations in the AM band from hundreds of miles away. Oklahoma is flatland, so you get the best radio reception. And Tulsa has a 50kW "boomer" station at 1170kHz - KVOO from 1926 to 2002, KFAQ from 2002 to last year and now KTSB since 2021 - easy to detect with a crystal radio. But where I live now - in the hills - radio signals are much harder to receive.
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