'39 Motorola "Picnic" portable
 

Some call these sets that. I call them "luggage-style" portables. In the pre-war years these sets had nice big chassis' and very often tweed cloth covering with multi-colored or brown stripes. Those are my favorites. The post-war models often had wimpier chassis' and non-striped tolex covering. This 1939 Motorola 41D has an unusual dial. Off, you see a decorative "Batteries Off" plate. When you turn it on that plate swiftly springs to the left revealing the numbered dial plate behind it. Someone killed all 4 tubes sometime in it's past, but with the help of a friend and modern batteries it lives again! It's one of the best playing battery-only portables I've ever heard too. Very sensitive with plenty of volume.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...0&d=1543079705

very nice!

Thanks. They're fun sets at bargain prices.

Back when radios were cool!

Oh yes. That's the whole reason to be in this hobby - cool styling. When you get one of these portables, you'll soon have another. That have a warm yellowish/beige tint and a warm sound to match!

These are so inexpensive and fun that I got another one. This is a cute cube-shape stlyed 1939 Emerson CT-275. Again, it has the old "luggage-style" striped tweed case, and is battery only. With modern batteries and a friend going over the chassis, it is an excellent little performer. Sensitive, clear, and with a nice mellow tone. The red mark on the left side bottom of the dial designates that it is on. When you turn it off it's gold.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...7&d=1543723960

I be liking that two band!

One band, AM only.

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Thanks. Yes, that one's my favorite so far. It plays as good as it looks too. It's only a single band though showing both Kilocycles and Meters.

These are great fun! :thmbsp:

I have always wondered why they don’t seem to be more popular among radio collectors. I’m guessing that many are avoided because of the batteries, but it is really easy to make a workable battery pack, and with more effort, duplicate the appearance of the original pack. :scratch2:

Could you post a picture of the Motorola “turned on”, so that we might see the dial markings after the dial changes?

jr

I have several of those large portable radios, but most of them are the 3-way type, AC-DC and battery. I did build up a few AC power supplies for the battery only sets. The best way of doing it now is to use a 5 volt regulator chip.
I still have to build one up like that.
For a power transformer, I use a transformer from a scrap VTVM or other obsolete, worthless test equipment. Total line isolation!

I love battery tube sets! all mine are post war though. I've got a funky red Motorola one that does three way power and a battery only bakelite Emerson. I also have a "recipe" for homemade 67 1/2 volt batteries.

Ah, gotcha.

They are fun and, as I mentioned, will surprise you how good they play. I was a collector who ignored these for years too. I always thought they were too utilitarian looking with the mesh grills, handles, and unlit dial. As whenever you go outside your area of focus in the hobby, you soon get hooked! I did that a while back with '20's sets too.
I don't concern myself with the look of the batteries. A single "D" and a series of 10 9V's is easy to tuck into the back of these early sets. With limited collector use, the batteries last for a good long time.
Here's the Motorola turned-on with the "Batteries Off" plate out of the way. It's really cool how it springs back and forth!

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...8&d=1543788207

Very nice... thanks for posting! Still scratching my head trying to figure out where the other plate goes. :scratch2:

jr

You're welcome. It's actually a bit complicated. The plate is on a center geared shaft with a zig-zagged tension wire attached to a notch on it's right side. On the on/off control shaft is bent metal wire that tugs a tab at the bottom of the plate when you turn the shaft, the plate pulls it away to the left. When you turn the set off that bent wire frees the plate to spring back.

The springing action isn't abrupt. I happens swiftly, but rather softy. I'm glad it's a tension wire rather than springs because I doubt it would be still working!

I could never understand the reasoning to buy a battery-only radio after the three power models came out. Almost all the US firms made them until the end of the tube era. Those batteries were never cheap!
I have a Motorola model 41H that looks like the one pictured, only a 3 way job. That is one interesting circuit, using the resistance line cord from H*ll,
dissipates 38.25 watts. :scratch2:

The battery only sets seem to be smaller, lighter, and they were probably cheaper too than the plug-in models. Likely that appealed to people who might of also realized they had their AC home set. I believe these battery only sets had maybe one battery replacement and then they went into storage because, as is still today, batteries are expensive!

Some of the ultra compact shirt pocket tube battery only sets were the smallest lightest radios you could get before transistors were being sold.

I'd imagine reason for owning one would be similar to the reason for having a Walkman in the 80s or 90s sure your average home stereo had a cassette deck that was better by all measures, and you already own a home stereo, but that thing is not practical to take with you on your daily walk to _______.

Some time ago I read a piece on the first small portables with miniature tubes pre WWII and there was an ad for a IIRC Sonora portable advertisement that had a picture of a lady jogging with the set strapped to her arm.... It sort of blew me away how ahead of it's time that ad seemed to be.

What, the portable, or jogging? I didn't think people jogged back then.

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Smaller, lighter, cheaper for sure, but also I might add safer... as a little kid, my battery only Arvin was the only radio that I was allowed to take into the bathroom and damp basement, as there was NO shock hazard.

Batteries were fairly expensive for a kid whose source of income was doing dishes and mowing lawns, but I assure you that that many sets of batteries were purchased for the set. IIRC, a 67.5 “B” battery was $2.75 and the “A” cells were just inexpensive (25cent) flashlight “D” cells. A “B” battery outlasted the “A” cells about 3 to 1.

jr

Now that you put it that way, it does seem like the price of the batteries wasn't the issue. It's just hard to figure out why some of these sets are found used, yet in such clean shape. I guess it was simply that the old generations were frugal and took care of what they had!

PS WISCOJIM - I'd like to see that ad with the woman jogging with an early portable set. It would be way ahead of it's time! Although some of the "camera-style" portables were small, with the batteries installed they were not exactly super-light. They were not really practical to run with.

This ad, perhaps:

https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/924/1...ebp&quality=50

jr

Thanks. It looks like the couple is just taking a leisurely walk. Even a small battery set like that would not be good to run with. In the early days of portable tube electronics, they often tried to make them seem even lighter than they were.

That may have been it.

Also, the pre-war battery models spent 3 or 4 years on the closet shelf because batteries were almost un-available during the war. :thumbsdn:

Interesting. I never knew that. Likely, after the war, people choose to get the newer smaller models. The airplane-luggage look may've have seemed dated.

The buyers that had the foresight to buy the 3 way portables used them as an extra radio. The '40 Zeniths I have are rather beat up from all the use they got. The leather handles are missing and some had a removable cover over the controls. They're missing as well.

On many battery portables, the volume by design couldn't be turned all the way down, so as to prevent the radio from being left on unintentionally.

Aha! I noticed that on some sets. Very clever. This thread is really revealing a lot about these portables!

My favorite lugables are the Emerson models 505 & 523 post-war or the pre-war FU424. These were 3 way portables That had the elegant design of having a higher power output stage for use on the AC-DC mains, 1 watt vs 250-300mw on batteries. They designed the tricky way running the battery tube filaments from the cathode of the line audio output tube. Some models used a 50B5 and 35W4 and others used a 117N7, combination penthode and rectifier
A few other firms built a variation of same.
They sounded a lot better than the others that ran the battery output tube when using it on AC or DC.

I personally try to stay focused with these and stick to the battery-only models with the airplane-luggage covering. As time went on they lost the simplicity of the early models with busy metal and plastic grills.

This western air patrol has been in my collection for about 25 years. I really like the simplicity of the design, and the proportions of the cabinet. I ran it off 9 volt batteries in series for the B cell, and a couple of Ds for the A cell. It worked nice, I should try it again some time.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...0&d=1543953472

Thanks for the pics. You have a real gem there and rather rare one, especially in that condition. The decorative grill trim was a very nice touch. If I may give you a tip for the frayed threads - put a little dab of CLEAR Elmer's glue on your finger tip and smooth the threads down. It works great and neatens-up the cabinet.

Hey that's a great tip, thank you! I don't usually go for battery radios, but this one is quite attractive looking. It's also kind of unusual to find a US market set of this age in Canada.

You're welcome. Just put a dab of glue on your finger, not a big glob. It seems these sets are very addicting once you get a good one and see how well it plays. The bargain prices make them very enticing too. I'm up to 7 so far!

That's easy enough to do! I'm not really actively collecting radios right now, but they do tend to find me from time to time. I do like the complete absence of hum with battery portables. The one battery set I'd really like to get my hands on is the R-100/URR morale radio from the second world war.

That "morale" radio is an interesting one. A nice war-time artifact. I keep saying that I'm not active in the hobby anymore because of display space, but I keep getting that "last one"!

One solution is to sell stuff you like less... I always want something so when I run out of space I sell stuff I like less than what I want.

Is that the big metal cabinet job that is both battery and AC/DC?
Most were made by Majestic and used
locktal and octal tubes. I have two and the backs are missing on both. :sigh: