More Old Radios

Get in the car to go to lunch, turn on the radio and what's this? It sounds like Russian. I wasn't aware of any Russian language radio stations in our neck of the woods. Could this be coming from Russia? I mean we got that Polar Vortex thing going on, bringing real arctic weather to the Midwest, Maybe somethin's goin' on with ionosphere and I'm picking up a broadcast from Moscow.

Well, no, turns out it was a local station, 1010AM, supposedly some kind of Christian station. I mean that's what the web site says, but I don't understand Russian so I have no idea what they are actually saying.

Still kind of surprising. There seem to be almost as many Spanish language radio stations as English, but I hadn't heard any other language until today.

Short Wave Receiver

This radio showed up on Reddit the other day, supposedly from a Communist country. Something funny about this story. I thought radios were pretty much outlawed in the Soviet Bloc. I mean they went to a great deal of trouble to jam foreign radio broadcasts. But maybe the radios were too useful in spreading the regime's propaganda, so they didn't wage war on the equipment, but rather on the airwaves. And maybe only the party faithful, the ones who could be trusted not to listen to any of the lies from the imperialist running dogs, got radios.

Radio Dial

The push buttons at the bottom of the front panel are kind of curious. They are labeled O, P, L, M, S  & US. L, M & S likely refer to Long, Medium and Short wave bands. US might refer to the FM band. O & P are anybody's guess. Does this mean that Europe didn't have FM?

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Sherman Tank Radio form WW2

Reader Eck!  pointed out that the moonshiner's car radio was an BC603 tank radio from WW2. With a little digging I figured out that the moonshiner's radio was only a receiver. The complete Sherman radio set (shown above) consisted of one transmitter (the big box on the left) and two receivers (the two smaller boxes on the right, the ones with the military grade speaker grills) (and the push buttons).

Sherman Tank Cutaway Drawing

The whole thing weighed 800 pounds and was mounted in the back of the turret (the white box opposite the gun). The bulge that makes up the back of the turret is for this radio.

Soldiers change out radio receiver
Look at it full size and you can even make out the receiver's push buttons