Montgomery Ward AIRLINE 10 band receiver

[proquist96]

A friend just gave me what looks like a portable radio 13"x8" and has a knob on left that switches AM,MB,SW1,SW2,CB bands and on right;FM,AIR,HAM,PB2,PB1 bands. It works great on Aircraft very loud and clear. It doesn't scan, you just turn the knob up and down until someone talks. Has anyone come across one of these? Its fun to mess with and makes a nice addition to my collection. looks to be made in the early 1970's or late 60's and is solid state.The PB bands are;148-175mhz and 30-50mhz, and MB 1.6-4.5mhz. Radio has a selector in the middle so its like two radios side by side. Pretty slick.

 

[TooLate]

OH yeah! My first intro to "monitoring" around 40 ys ago. Those radios (usually multibanded like ours) brought big bucks in the day ($80-100+).

I still use mine to monitor storm watch traffic when it's too dicey (lightning) to leave the scanners on. As you note, it does not scan but it tunes and as such, it can drift due to the tension on the tuner string...as it expands and contracts from the internally gen'd heat...it will move the tuner a tad one way or the other. The upside, is that no matter how on the center of the frequency the service is (or not), with the tunable, I can always bring it clearly.

And, I can find a given station fairly easily by placing a piece of write-onable tape on the tuner dial and making small hash marks w/a pen...then tune accurately as conversation occurs. That's not long in a storm situation. Speaker quality is actually better than my scanner. It's my survival radio (as long as I have batteries) or the power stays on.

FWIW, I DO "scan" by rotating the tuner back and forth so as to catch conversation and then stay and monitor for a while. Although page tones etc from frequencies near my PD's can creep in, I just tune a little off to the far side of the PD's freq and it's GTG. Enjoy!

 

[proquist96]

Thanks for your reply, you're right about the audio, im close to an airport and the sound is so loud and clear much better than my scanner. I need to replace antenna and maybe add a bnc so i can use an outdoor antenna. Glad i found this, i like old radio stuff. Thanks,John

 

[dodge92]

airline 10 band receiver

just bought one yesterday in a thrift store.had to clean all of the controls to get it to work.but i am going to have to replace the volume control.even after cleaning with electronic cleaner you have very little control of volume.other than that it works great.