Un long chemin de la maison

[Charlie]

"A long way from home"

I got a peculiar phone call from my parents last night. They told me they were stopping by... Mom had some beer that we left at her house last weekend, a T-shirt with a 71 Dodge Challenger on it, and a surprise that I would have to wait till they got here to see what it was. Okay... that was odd. They don't normally act mysterious like that.

They get here, and my dad has a box in his arms, and says there's another in the back of Mom's car. It was dark, so I didn't really notice what he had. Just looked like a box. In the back of Mom's car was another box... but just more than a box... it was an old radio. Couldn't really tell exactly what, so I grabbed it and brought it in the house.

Turned out they were shortwave sets... first glance looked about 1938 to 1940. The design of the front wasn't anything I was familiar with, and there was a lot of detailed writing on the dials... more so than you'd normally see. The dials and speaker areas had sharp, 90 degree corners. I glanced in the back of one of them (there was no back and looked as if there had never been one) and the first thing I noticed was a weird plug of sorts on the power tranny. Then it hit me... it was a voltage selector and these were foreign sets! The other set actually had a back on it... it was in surprisingly good shape considering that the radio cabinet was kinda rough. The back was not held in place with screws.... it was in grooves and slides up... kinda neat. It, too, had a voltage selector.

The radio with the larger dial appears to be branded FAMILIAL RADIO as indicated in the center of the dial glass. I did not see any other markings on the cabinet or chassis other than a 6 digit number that I believe is a serial number. It looked like the wording on the glass was French, so using Google Translator, I was picked out longwave and small wave. In the bottom left of the glass, the words ondes courtes et tres courtes translated to shortwave and very short. I think Google likely made a mistake there, so for those of you that still know your French from high school (I don't), s'il vous plaît m'éclairer.

The insides look complete. It has 6 tubes... one of them being an eye tube. There's a 5Y3 branded Philips with green lettering. Next to that is a 6F6G branded Mazda. Not sure what's on the left side of the 6F6... not going to pull it out for the moment. The short black metal tube is branded Brittany. The tall metal tube on the far left is a Mazda 6K7MG. It's interesting that those two taller metal tubes have aluminum envelops. Can't tell what the eye tube is at this time.

The dial has a small window in the lower right corner that shows which band is selected. Turn the selector and the lettering in the window changes.

The 3 pieces going across the middle of the speaker are chrome and look like they should clean up nicely. It doesn't appear to have any pitting.

The cabinet is rough, but I think will clean up with a light sanding and some MinWax. There's a couple of spots on the top rear corner and a side bottom that the veneer is messed up, but not so bad that will take away from the rest of the cabinet. From the front, it should display nicely.