The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay The Radio Bench Sprayberry Antique Radio Course

So I see a lot of guys that drop in here at the Radio Bench, would like to say that
they repaired the original radio in their Stovebolt.
Taint as easy as reading any article Friday night and restoring your radio over the weekend.
It's gonna take a bit of study and one of the absolute best radio correspondence courses
from back in the day was this one, which was based in Chicago, IL.
Finding the original hard copies of the course booklets is near impossible, believe me, I've
looked for decades to complete my original course material. But....the other day I happened
to be looking for something on Google and ran across this ebay item. Thought I'd take a chance
on it, what the heck, $7.49 with free shipping is less than I spend when I go out for breakfast.
I don't know the source, have nothing to do with it, I'm just giving it 5 stars. I got it within a few days,
it's in .pdf format, down loaded quick onto my Dell hard drive or read it from the CD. Excellent
quality scans, all clear and aligned straight and well organized. So if you want to learn the basics
I'd highly recommend adding one of these to the bench in the man cave.
Can't link to it, but look for this at ebay and it will pop up.
SPRAYBERRY ANTIQUE RADIO SERVICING COURSE - Over 3,000 Vintage Pages - CD

The NRI or National Radio Institute correspondence courses were also very good and began
back in the early 20's and ran well into the 60's. They are much easier to come by and I've
also seen them on CD. But......my first choice would be the Sprayberry courses.
Enjoy,
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny,
thanks for pointing that out. I have it on my watch list and I may get one just for the fun of it!

Update: I just looked at the vendor's store. It has a pretty awesome collection of books for sale, all on Cd.

Fred

Over the past 30 years I had collected quite an extensive library. Full sets Riders, Sams up to the 60's,
Courses from Coyne, hundreds of the classic text books and electronics catalogs. I'm very materialistic
and I hate to let anything go but....got rid of the Sams and would like to do the same with the Riders because
all of that is either available online or on CD for not to much money. In fact, I do have a couple CD's from
different sources with contain complete Riders.
My collection of old radios is about 300 strong and 25,000 tubes also. Been looking on ebay and what I
paid $50 - $100 for 25 years ago are now worth.......well hey....will ya pay me to haul them away!
In other words, this hobby as an investment was as bad as having stock in 1929.
Anyway, for as little as I do with radios now a days, the CD's will see me thru for the next 24 years.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Thanks Denny. I have been having issues with my stock radio in my 53 3100. Have been interested in trying to fix it by myself. Went right to ebay and purchased the Sprayberry Antique Radio Servicing Course CD, as well. Really appreciate you taking time to share the information with us. Looking forward to watching and learning.

Thanks again,
Rugo

There is a learning curve involved Steve, but with a bit of study anyone can do it.
After all, millions of GI's learned their trades after the war with correspondence courses.
I picket it up reading at lunch breaks, in the evening before bed and .........on the stool.

Good luck.
Denny Graham
Sandwich,IL

My dad learned radio and TV repair back in the 60s by correspondence. He went with DeVry Technical Institute. He had a long time business repairing them. Several years ago when we had to dispose of everything in his house, we sold all the old vacuum tubes, the tube tester and an old oscilloscope and got decent money for the whole batch. Nobody fixes that stuff anymore, just toss it out and buy new.

By the late 60's Leo, Devry had been accredited to confer bachelor's degrees in electronics.
So, when I got discharged from the USAF in 1968 I enrolled in the engineering program
at DeVry. Living in the Chicago suburbs meant that I was close enough to the main campus
that I could drive in for full time classes in the morning. After the first year of agony, my lack
of math background had overrun me and I finally had to admit that I didn't have the right stuff
to become an engineer.
It was at this time that I also realized that electronics had changed so radically over the last
decade, that the old radio shop was a thing of the past. Television had taken over and most
electronic repair was becoming "Works in a Drawer" or throw away.
So......the one thing that I did come away with, was a fairly good understanding of the basics
and with some effort and study from the correspondence courses and old text books I can
usually figure out a simple circuit.
But when it comes to anything that has more then 6 tubes or is solid state.....I'm lost.
dg

I feel like I should tell my story, for some reason. So as a youngster, preteens, I used to read everything about electronics that I could get my hands on. At the public library I used to get permission to go to the adult section to read the more advanced books on electronics. By the age of fifteen I was repairing family friend's televisions. They would drive me over to their house to work on it. Some of the mathematical concepts were out of reach until I reached university. That I found frustrating. In high school we had an electronics shop class one year. I got along well with the teacher and he would have me teach the odd lesson, just for the fun of it. These days I enjoy working on the old tube radios. I don't have any old tube televisions in my possession and I probably won't get involved with them again, but they were interesting to work on. I especially enjoyed the old color sets. Getting the color just right was an art that required patience but it was very rewarding.

Anyone remember Forest Mims (the 3rd, I think)? He wrote for Popular Electronics magazine and you could get his electronics notebooks from Radio Shack. I devoured that stuff - I got into electronics in the early 1970's with the Radio Shack 250-in-1 kits. I also built several Heathkits and we had a Lafayette Radio chain here in the Northeast that I spent time in. The only place left to get hobbyist parts around here (brick & mortar) is the "you do it" store...

http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/