Have loved old radios forever. My first was a wooden behemoth that weighed half a ton – gifted to me by a benevolent grandparent. At this distance in time (I was given the radio in 1964), I can no longer remember the brand, but the beautiful, full, deep tone has stayed with me. The radio had its little idiosyncrasies as well. The chief one, involved one particular valve whose glass part was more than a tad wobbly in the base. This required removing the back panel, & giving the valve a bit of reassurance, whereupon (usually) the radio sprang into life. I was devastated, when I was required to move from Victoria to the NSW Central Coast, & was forced to abandon my radio. My father was an engineer who specialised in electrical instrumentation & for quite a few years was engaged in the building & fitting out of a number of new power stations being built at that time. Sadly, I did not absorb a great deal of electrical knowledge from him. One of the few things I do remember was a less than politically correct mnemonic to assist identifying the values of resistors… Recently I was given another old radio: an HMV in a wooden case, with a thus far, unidentified model designation. It may have been once identifiable via the back cover, but sadly the cover is no longer extant. I was assured that the radio ‘was’ working – at an undefined distance in time. I did plug it in (no dim bulb available) & the valves do light up, including the magic eye, but as a beloved Japanese amplifier I once had noted on its rear panel: “no sound is come out.” My aim in joining is to hopefully (& eventually) persuade the HMV to return to life, & in the process learn a great deal more about the workings of these beautiful old things.

Hello Ian, welcome to steam radio!

It sounds like you are looking for a bit of education. In that regard Peter Lankshears articles on the New Zealand vintage radio site are very good:

https://nzvrs.com/peter-lankshear-articles/

Some of these articles were published by Electronics Australia as was, if you prefer a more tangible reproduction:
Discovering Vintage Radio by Peter Lankshear, which occasionally appears on ebay.

Good luck.

Welcome to V-R.

Suggest that you join the HRSA:

https://hrsa.org.au/melbourne

As for educational reading material, here is a summary of books:

https://vintage-radio.com.au/default.asp?f=2&th=736

If you're after things to read, my page has quite a bit, including all of the Peter Lankshear mentioned above.

http://messui.polygonal-moogle.com/valves/index.html