Vintage Radio Headlines

Radio of the week

Brand: AWA.
Model: Radiolette.
Valves: 5Y3GT, 6A8G, 6G8G, 6V6GT.
Year of manufacture: 1947.
Place of manufacture: Ashfield, NSW.

Vintage Radio News

Ebay to restrict payments to PayPal only

A lot has been said recently regarding Ebay's decision to ban sellers and buyers agreeing on their own payment methods for goods and services purchased on the site.

Within a month, assuming that the four Commonwealth Government departments who claim to be investigating Ebay's plans do nothing, Ebay will ban sellers from accepting payment for old valve radios and most other items via EFT (transfer of money between bank accounts), cheque or money order.

The only options will be COD, either with the buyer picking items up or via the Post or using Ebay's own PayPal service. Sellers offering any other payment method will have their listings removed.

This chain of events will greatly affect the trade of vintage radios. We are entering an era where many pioneer collectors are disposing of their collections of radios, valves and other spare parts and Ebay has, until now, been a popular way of doing this. More than 99% of sellers in this category either offer EFT as a payment option or as the only payment option.

A majority of these people refuse to accept PayPal because PayPal charges a high commission on payment processing. Will PayPal's commssions fall when it becomes an almost exclusive payment option? No. Sellers will pay twice when using Ebay, once for listing fees and sale commission and then again for the privilege of accepting the buyer's payment.

Because of this many people are either threatening to leave Ebay and use Australian auction sites, of which there are many, or have already closed their accounts there, never to return.

As a service to the vintage radio fraternity I will remind all collectors and potential collectors that the Vintage Radio Forums are the perfect place to offer any items you have for sale. It is just a matter of opening a free account here on Vintage Radio and then after signing in, simply navigate to the Wanted and For Sale forum and offer your items in a post there.

All of this is free and you can be contacted and paid any way you like. It's something to think about as Ebay gets closer to bleeding us collectors dry in the next month or so.

I know that I will be using Ebay a lot less from here on.

Written at 00:40 on 11 May 2008 by Brad.
Comments: 0

Vintage Radio 4

Late tonight Vintage Radio will go offline for about an hour whilst a new template is installed. This template will give Vintage Radio a brand new look but just as importantly, the new code paves the way for some new features to be added. The changeover will occur after midnight to ensure that as few people as possible suffer from the disruption.

Please watch this thread for more information after the upgrade takes place.

Update 1: The new site is now live. There are a few links to new pages which are not yet uploaded but this will happen today (Sunday) as the day progresses. More will be mentioned about new content as news of this comes to hand.

Update 2: Tonight you will some improvements to both the front page and the forums. The forums now sport a new look with the members' columns showing more details about the members. The new colour scheme makes everything easier to read too. I need to update everyone's postcount and that should be done by the end of the week. Some text formatting and smiley features are now listed on a page called Forum Guidelines which can be accessed from a new prominant link on the forum home page.

I have also added a new function called Radio Of The Week to the front page. Every week a new picture of a radio will automatically appear accompanied by some information about that radio.

Written at 17:25 on 5 April 2008 by Brad.
Comments: 0

E-mail issues and new site

Currently my mail server is not behaving itself. I am continuing to try and find what the fault it but at the moment I can receive mail but not send and for this I do apologise to anyone expecting a reply.

I hope to have things sorted soon.

In other news, the new website for Vintage Radio is progessing nicely. When it goes live in a couple of months it will be the culmination of many suggestions put to me by visitors to this site. About two weeks before the big change takes place I will provide a sneak preview at the new look which I am sure that you will find easier to use and a bit easier on the eyes too.

Update: E-mail is working again. Still not sure why I had the problem but as it is working again I will just leave things as is.

Written at 19:54 on 25 February 2008 by Brad.
Comments: 0

Network upgrade

Today a new faster connection was installed to make Vintage Radio load faster on your machine. This increase in speed is the first of many upgrade activities to take place on this website in 2008.

I am currently designing a new website to replace this one and whilst at times it may not appear this way, I have taken on board many suggestions that vintage radio enthusiasts have offered me via e-mail and in the chat forums on this website.

Such feedback is always welcome and I hope that throughout the year the many new things here will help keep everyone interested.

Naturally this does not mean that the job will be finished. Sites like Vintage Radio are always evolving. If you have a suggestion relating to something you'd like to see included here then I am still pleased to hear about it. I look forward to continue improving this website throughout 2008.

Written at 21:00 on 16 January 2008 by Brad.
Comments: 0

Happy New Year

I am back from a well-earned break, well I thought so anyway, and I will take this time to wish all visitors to Vintage Radio a happy and safe new year.

Below is a small photo of that Radiolette I polished up over Christmas. I also replaced the electrolytic condensers in it but all other components tested okay. I am sure you will agree that it is now looking much better than it did in the previous photo.

I've received a few e-mails over Christmas which have all just been read through and I will reply to them this week.

Written at 20:24 on 5 January 2008 by Brad.
Comments: 3

Christmas present

Today I received an AWA Radiolette made in 1948 which is some sort of aqua or turquoise colour - a very rare situation indeed. It is a guess on my part but it is likely that there are only a handful of Radiolettes in this colour left in existance.

Apart from showing signs of many years of storage this receiver is in pretty good condition for a radio that is sixty years old.

I had to pay a very big price to scoop this set - $900.00 to be exact. The set was recently purchased off Ebay and the fact that I was locked in a bidding war with only nine seconds left in the auction shows that $900 is a fair price to pay for a Radiolette in such a rare colour.

I am very much looking forward to cleaning this set up and putting it on display with five other Radiolettes of the same model, one each of walnut, ivory, jade, cream and burgundy. I believe there is one last colour I need to get - ivory with orange marbling. These match well with the four Empire State Radiolettes in my collection. I am sure that many will agree that the AWA Radiolette, particularly the models built in the 1930's are the holy grail of any radio collection and are worth every cent paid for them.

In the new year I will post some photos of this set once it has received the once-over.

In the mean time I would like to wish all visitors to Vintage Radio a Merry Christmas and a safe and prosperous new year. I will be enjoying some time off work some of which will be spent working on the new Vintage Radio website, which will hopefully be launched at some time during the last weeks of February 2008.

http://vintage-radio.com.au/

Written at 19:37 on 19 December 2007 by Brad.
Comments: 0

New radio society

Whilst reading the Letters page in the November issue of Silicon Chip I noticed a letter from the President of the Australian Vintage Radio Society announcing the Society's existance. I thought it prudent to add a link to their website from the links page here and I wish the new Society every success.

Australia has a number of small but active clubs (see Links page for site URLs) whose members dedicate their time to the preservation of Australia's radio, manufacturing and broadcasting heritage and this type of resource networking is to be encouraged.

Written at 17:48 on 11 November 2007 by Brad.
Comments: 1

Batteries used in valve radios

I have added the first new tutorial here in a very long time. It is a fairly brief article but interesting none-the-less, to do with some of the batteries used to run valve radios when electricity wasn't around to do the job.

The article can be accessed from the Tutorials links in the sidebar to the right.

Written at 00:46 on 18 August 2007 by Brad.
Comments: 4