K0WWX
Member
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2023
- Messages
- 11
First time caller, long time listener. Have been reading these great forums for years. I appreciate all of the information that is shared here.
Been into SDRs lately, and after you use an SDR, it’s easy to forget about using all the other radios you ever had, but their wide tuning range, basically DC to daylight, has made me think about the vintage multiband portables that were commonly built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I’d classify a vintage multiband portable as a solid-state radio with an analog tuning dial, a built-in telescopic whip antenna, a carrying handle, and the ability to run off batteries. At a minimum it should be able to receive AM/FM, plus at least one shortwave band. Many also added the VHF police and air bands, and some even added a VHF TV band. In the glory days of CB during the 70s, some also added CB as a separate band. Some had longwave below the AM band. A few had a UHF band.
Vintage multiband portables are not hard to find, I see them at hamfests, and most are not very expensive. I’m sure some people collect them, but it’s probably a niche genre. They have some pros and cons:
Pros
The kingpin manufacturer of multibanders is probably Sony, “the one and only”. They never made ham gear, but they made some incredible portables, both performance wise and design wise, and they were probably largely responsible for pushing Zenith out of the radio business. National Panasonic made some great radios that probably equaled the top Sonys, but they had fewer models. Grundig made many multiband models, some of very high quality. Sony/Panasonic/Grundig could be considered the big three of the genre.
Then there were the department store radios and house brands. Stores like Kmart, Woolworth, and Woolco carried low end multibanders made by companies like Electro Brand, Juliette, Lawrence, Lloyds, Sound Design, Westminster, Worldstar, and York. Some of them look good, but they were of poor quality and almost none are desirable to collectors. The best multiband radio you find at a store like Kmart or Woolworth was probably a General Electric.
Airline, the house brand of Montgomery Wards, was slightly higher up the pay scale than what you would find at Kmart or Woolworth. Some of the Airline multibanders were made by Sharp and were decent quality.
The next step up the house brand pay scale was Sears. There were such a thing as Craftsman multiband radios. Their Wayfarer model was the same radio as the Sanyo Senator, which was fairly high end. I think their Roadtalker CB radios were by Uniden. They even rebranded the famed Yaesu FRG-7 communications receiver as the Sears FRG-7. For the most part, Sears sold good stuff.
Finally, you had the Realistic/Radio Shack multibanders. The Shack probably sold more multibanders than anybody, with two famous lines, the Astronaut series, devoted mostly to shortwave, and the Patrolman series, devoted mostly to police band, although some of the Patrolmans had shortwave bands. The Astronaut 8 was made by Allied, maybe others were as well. I don’t know who made the Patrolmans, but the earlier ones made in Japan, like the Patrolman 9, seemed to be high quality. Radio Shack also sold some cheaper multibanders that had just had catalog numbers and no model names.
I’ve owned and sold or gotten rid of most of my multibanders, but still have two Zenith Trans-Oceanics (both need a little work), a Realistic Astronaut 8 which is a surprisingly good radio, and my original Montgomery Wards Airline GEN-1475A, which got me started listening to shortwave almost 50 years ago.
Any recollections, observations, or comments about vintage multiband portables would be appreciated.
Been into SDRs lately, and after you use an SDR, it’s easy to forget about using all the other radios you ever had, but their wide tuning range, basically DC to daylight, has made me think about the vintage multiband portables that were commonly built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I’d classify a vintage multiband portable as a solid-state radio with an analog tuning dial, a built-in telescopic whip antenna, a carrying handle, and the ability to run off batteries. At a minimum it should be able to receive AM/FM, plus at least one shortwave band. Many also added the VHF police and air bands, and some even added a VHF TV band. In the glory days of CB during the 70s, some also added CB as a separate band. Some had longwave below the AM band. A few had a UHF band.
Vintage multiband portables are not hard to find, I see them at hamfests, and most are not very expensive. I’m sure some people collect them, but it’s probably a niche genre. They have some pros and cons:
Pros
- There were usually the TOTL of portable radios and because they were larger and more expensive, they sounded better than most portables radios. They could play fairly loud and had a decent speaker.
- Even if shortwave didn’t work well, they were sometimes better than average AM/FM radios.
- Many had beautiful tuning dials, sometimes multi-color, they can be eye catchers.
- Because they were all-in-one, they required very little effort to install and use. You just had to them on, extend the antenna, and start listening. No external speaker or antenna required.
- They had some of the greatest model names in the history of marketing or electronics. The names captured your imagination. A few memorable names of multibanders that spring to mind are Astronaut, Earth Orbiter, Jet Stream Patrolman, Senator, Symphonette, Trans-Oceanic, Wayfarer, World Monitor, World Ranger, and so forth. That’s not even mentioning the crazy names of the Grundig “Boy” series (City Boy, Concert Boy, Elite Boy, Melody Boy, Music Boy, Ocean Boy, Prima Boy, Yacht Boy, and so on).
- It’s not really possible to make a radio that works well on all bands with a single built-in antenna, so many had “dead” bands that barely worked. Most multibanders are not considered to be great shortwave radios.
- Build quality is worse than ham equipment. The cases are plastic, not much metal was used, as they were made to be carried around. Often times, the side panels were padded with leatherette to hide the plastic. The back side is where they usually look cheap.
- They can be hard to take apart and work on. They have a lot of stuff crammed into a small box. If you take one apart, they can be hard to put back together, and even simple stuff like cleaning the controls with deoxit can be difficult.
The kingpin manufacturer of multibanders is probably Sony, “the one and only”. They never made ham gear, but they made some incredible portables, both performance wise and design wise, and they were probably largely responsible for pushing Zenith out of the radio business. National Panasonic made some great radios that probably equaled the top Sonys, but they had fewer models. Grundig made many multiband models, some of very high quality. Sony/Panasonic/Grundig could be considered the big three of the genre.
Then there were the department store radios and house brands. Stores like Kmart, Woolworth, and Woolco carried low end multibanders made by companies like Electro Brand, Juliette, Lawrence, Lloyds, Sound Design, Westminster, Worldstar, and York. Some of them look good, but they were of poor quality and almost none are desirable to collectors. The best multiband radio you find at a store like Kmart or Woolworth was probably a General Electric.
Airline, the house brand of Montgomery Wards, was slightly higher up the pay scale than what you would find at Kmart or Woolworth. Some of the Airline multibanders were made by Sharp and were decent quality.
The next step up the house brand pay scale was Sears. There were such a thing as Craftsman multiband radios. Their Wayfarer model was the same radio as the Sanyo Senator, which was fairly high end. I think their Roadtalker CB radios were by Uniden. They even rebranded the famed Yaesu FRG-7 communications receiver as the Sears FRG-7. For the most part, Sears sold good stuff.
Finally, you had the Realistic/Radio Shack multibanders. The Shack probably sold more multibanders than anybody, with two famous lines, the Astronaut series, devoted mostly to shortwave, and the Patrolman series, devoted mostly to police band, although some of the Patrolmans had shortwave bands. The Astronaut 8 was made by Allied, maybe others were as well. I don’t know who made the Patrolmans, but the earlier ones made in Japan, like the Patrolman 9, seemed to be high quality. Radio Shack also sold some cheaper multibanders that had just had catalog numbers and no model names.
I’ve owned and sold or gotten rid of most of my multibanders, but still have two Zenith Trans-Oceanics (both need a little work), a Realistic Astronaut 8 which is a surprisingly good radio, and my original Montgomery Wards Airline GEN-1475A, which got me started listening to shortwave almost 50 years ago.
Any recollections, observations, or comments about vintage multiband portables would be appreciated.
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