AntiqueRadioChat.com

[David Roper]

The number of attendees is up from last year; a little under 100 from what I heard. I couldn't make it into town until after 11PM Friday so I missed the first day, but it's just for milling around and talking anyway.

When I walked in Saturday morning, one of the first things I saw was a working GE Octagon...well, not exactly working: it was showing a blank raster because its caretaker couldn't find his demo DVD! And not exactly a GE Octagon either, just a replica. A far better replica Octagon than the non-functional one which the museum got rooked into buying as the real deal, but still a replica.

Not long after that I wandered into the garage where the auction is held and saw the most recent newly-discovered GE HM-171. It's complete-- back and all--but had been rotting in a basement for many many years and will need exhaustive electronic and cosmetic restoration.

Nothing really interesting at the auction this morning except maybe the RCA 630 console which a guy won for his opening bid of $100--the auctioneer couldn't get anybody to bid $101! I wandered away...now I wonder if the HM-171 was part of the lot....naaaah!...

The presentations at the Mackoy Center were mostly enjoyable, the visual highlight being the screening of color kinescopes: Arthur Murray Party and Perry Como shows originally seen live on the earliest color sets, plus two colorcasts from before CT-100s were even on sale: Coke Time with Eddie Fisher and Dinah Shore from March and January 1954(!) respectively. For being 16mm film taken of three mono CRTs converged, they looked fantastic.

Later tonight there's a banquet and tomorrow there'll be more presentations and demonstrations. I'm intrigued by the mechanical color setup. Darryl Hock configured his multi-standard converter for color and put together an RGB light source to replace the usual orange neon. The results on 60-line standard are phenominal but apparently quite a bit less spectacular on Western 45-line sets. I haven't seen for myself yet.