Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Transistor Radio

It's funny that the only radio I can get any kind of signal in my shop which is a metal building is an oldish small boom box. Now that thing is broke and the volume is stuck on the highest setting. I've tried several stereo AM/FM receivers but they won't pull in any AM station and very few FM stations. It's getting harder to find any old stereo receivers anymore that would pull in any signal. I guess I'm going to have to run a coax outside and put up an antenna. I need to find a signal booster for my cell phone because it is useless in there as well.

You're handicapping yourself trying to receive in a steel building unless the radio is in a window facing the right direction. The GE Super Radio is very sensitive on AM, good sound, but the FM is monaural. GE discontinued them so you may find a good deal on a closeout.

About 1958 or so, Channelmaster radio. I'd lay in bed late at night, using opposing fingernails on the tuner seeing what I could pick up in central Il. KTHS, WLAC, plus the occasional burst from Waxahatchee, Mexico, and occasionally out east. Four carbon zinc batteries. Many mornings I'd wake up with stiff shoulders and dead batteries.

Got a GE transistor radio for my birthday when I was about 10 (1962)

I used to take it to bed with me, and listen quietly after "lights out"

Nowdays the Wife and I listen to news talk radio on a transistor radio, out on our front porch 'most everyday.

(Gotta keep and eye on my bird feeder!)

Virgil B.

I vividly remember wanting a crystal radio back in the late 50s or perhaps 1960. It was shaped like a rocket (as were many things back then) and needed no batteries. Just clip it to a ground and an antenna. Instead, that Christmas, I got a 4-transistor Japanese radio. I was both elated and disappointed, because I really wanted that little crystal rocket.

Flash forward many decades, and a box arrived with the few things my asswipe brother decided I could have from my late Mom's belongings. In the box was that radio, still in its zippered blue leather outer cover. The battery had naturally died and leaked years before. Still, I cleaned everything up, snapped in a new 9v and held my breath as I turned it on. It emitted a second or two of crackling sounds, then died altogether. After gazing at it in nostalgic contemplation for a bit, I tossed it in the trash.

Today, that darn crystal rocket would probably be worth more. And would still work.

Dayummm! That's it!

And at $30 it IS worth more than a 4-transistor job. I remembered one more thing about the 4-trans, and a correction to my post above. It was marked "Made in USA" and all of us wisacre kids joked that there was probably a town called Usa in Japan, where everything was actually made. Today, it would be Usa, China.

Had a couple of teachers who would let us listen to the Mercury flights in the room.

My kids got me the midland emergency radio for Xmas last year. Has solar charger and hand crank for its rechargeable battery. AM FM and NOAA radio. I like listening to high school football games on it.

I loved the transistor radios. Back when I was a kid the World Series was played in daytime.
I wanted to listen to the game but I was in 5th grade. Mrs. Cofield would not have approved.

I got my transistor radio stuck in my belt inside my shirt. Had on a long sleeve button down shirt.
Ran the cord for the earplug down the sleeve and had it in the palm of my hand. Had my book open to the math lesson, but I was leaned over with my ear resting on my palm, listening to the game!
I heard Bill Mazeroski hit the famous home run to win the Series over the Yankees, right there in Mrs. Cofield's class! Even today, one of the greatest moments in baseball history.

Good God if she had caught me it would have been straight to the Principal's office and I would never have seen that radio again.
After class all the boys were asking me what happened in the game, they heard me give a little shout when Mazeroski hit the ball. All the boys knew what I was up to but of course no girls did, they would have ratted me out. Bunch of Teacher's Pets.

No, the 45 year old Battle Axe teacher doesn't get up early enough in the morning, to keep up with an 11 year old yard-ape.

I went to sleep at night listening to WSAL (Logansport, IN) on my galina crystal radio. In later days I was a SWL.

You musta been that special breed o' yard ape. I never got away with [bleep] until high school when I figured out that you flaunt the rules, do what you want, and deny nothing. At least, that's how it worked out for me (and not to my advantage in the long run).

Grandma always listened to Salt Lake City Utah when she couldn't sleep

KSL 1160 was the powerhouse station. Growing up in the west, I could always get a clear signal from KSL.

That's what started this thread. Remembering the times spent with my father and grandfathers listening to college football on Saturday afternoons. Great times.

I used to listen to Paul Harvey with my grandma at her kitchen table while she cooked.

WOWO with 50K watts of power from Wheeling WV. kept me awake on the road.

I used to hear Paul Harvey early in the morning riding with my grandaddy to his John Deere dealership in Fabens, Texas (where I was gainfully employed at times). For some reason it seems like it was always ass-freezin cold when I heard Paul Harvey.

My dad let me take his Zenith Trans Oceanic to school to listen to Alan Shepards flight.