Before the Internet, if you wanted to hear news from around the world, you probably bought a shortwave receiver. In the golden age of world band radio, there was a great deal of high-quality programming on the shortwave bands and a large variety of consumer radios with shortwave bands. For example, the Sony CRF-160 that [M Caldeira] is restoring dates from the late 1960s or early 1970s and would have been a cool radio in its day. It retailed for about $250 in 1972, which sounds reasonable, but — don’t forget — in 1972 that would have been a 10% downpayment on a new car or enough to buy a Big Mac every day for a year with change left over.
As you can see in the video below, the radio seemed to work well right out of the gate, but the radio needed some rust removal and other sprucing up. However, it is an excellent teardown, with some tips about general restoration.
We liked that there was an access port to get to the alignment adjustments without taking the whole thing apart. Overall, the construction looks great for the period. We were happy to hear the cleaned up radio once again tuning in the world or, at least, as much of the world as is still transmitting.
Of course, if your neighbor had one of these back in the day, you pretty much assumed he was a spy. These days a shortwave radio is not much more than a chip and won’t buy nearly as many Big Macs.
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