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Front panel of a Canadian Marconi multiband tabletop; documentation on these radios is very difficult to come by. This one is probably from the late 1940s.

It was a stroke of wonderful good fortune that I made two visits to Bob Eslinger's for it was only on the second that I saw it: a steel and chrome anomaly in a forest of walnut and mahogany veneer.

Bob will pick up communications receivers when they are clean and interesting, often restoring inexpensive models for youngsters, to pique their interest in radio. And this was one of them--a 1960 or '61 Hallicrafters S-120--a five-tube 550 kHz to 30 MHz squealer with a 0 to 100 bandspread and a beat-frequency oscillator. (And vacuum tubes, of course!).

The very model this writer bought, with paper route income, for his first shortwave receiver. The very model he used as a Novice and early General. I left Bob Eslinger's house that second time a little poorer of pocket but much richer in spirit, the S-120 under my arm.

My first commercial transmitter, after a month or so with a home-brew TVI generator, was a Heathkit DX-20. A week after finding the S-120, I located a DX-20. It's a little rough, but fixable. It works, and my first contact was with KR1S, who loaned me two 40-meter crystals. See you on 7040, more-or-less.--Jim Cain, K1TN

Bob's ham gear includes bands from 1.8 to 432 MHz. A 50-wpm CW operator, he is active on OSCAR 13 and is on the verge of making the DXCC Honor Roll. His tribander was stuck north all winter, but that didn't stop him from working 3YOPI on Peter Island for a new one back in February.

Out back is a 68-ft Rohn 25 tower with a Wilson System-1 triband Yagi. "Bob said the tower would be 'way back in the woods,'" Barbara says, "but it didn't turn out that way. And the woods are covered with wires, too. But all that pales compared to the satellite dish, which is truly ugly, don't you think?"

"My hearing isn't quite what it used to be [whose is?] and I find it more comfortable to crank in a narrow filter and listen to CW rather than to voice," Bob says. "I like to hang around the MUF (Maximum Usable Frequency) to work weak-signal stuff." Bob also is enamored of aurora and tropospheric propagation on the VHF bands, and says a 2-meter moonbounce array is in the planning stage.

Bob was licensed in 1964 as WN1BZS. "I've been thinking about reconstructing my first station," he says, "a Heathkit DX-60 and Hallicrafters S-38C. And sometime I'd like to put on a 1930s ham rig, in keeping with the motif around the house. And I'd like to have a nice vacuum-tube AM rig for the ham bands on the air, too.

"For now the station is all modern gear because I like to be competitive.

"I've run out of space."

Also in the hamshack is some old hi-fi stuff and some cassettes. "I listen to tapes other people have made of vintage radio shows like 'The Shadow' and 'Amos and Andy.'

"A lot of people who are interested in old automobiles are interested in the old radios, too. Some of them make concessions and install modern radios and cassette players in their old cars, then make up for it by driving around listening to tapes of 50-year-old radio shows. That's where these tapes come from."

On the couch in the hamshack are a couple of boxes of tubes and some other goodies from the recent trip to New Jersey. On a chair in the corner is a National NC-183D receiver from the 1950s.

"I'm going to restore this old National," Bob says, "but I'm not looking forward to it. These are a bear to align." He goes into a spiel about their alignment cans use some sort of Mickey Mouse arrangement, and he loses me.

Eslinger says it usually takes him about a day's work to bring a radio back to life, "but that's not your 8-to-4 day. I'm a nightowl and sometimes I'll just keep working until I'm finished."

On a wintry Sunday morning Barbara is dusting; Bob is still in the sack (Self-employed people punch a clock; it's just a different kind of clock.)

The only work Eslinger farms out is cabinet restoration, which he leaves to several retired craftsmen in the area. But he does stockpile wood. "You never know when you will need a scrap of Nicaraguan mahogany."

Some people will settle for a radio restored with modern parts, and some won't. Eslinger uses originals whenever possible but his thinking is that the idea is to make an old set work again, and if that requires substituting a modern part, so be it.

On his workbench is the chassis of a Philco broadcast set from the 1930s. Condensers (in the spirit of the moment let's not call them capacitors) are doubled up in sealed units called "boats" (a Philco exclusive), and as a matter of course, Bob always rebuilds the boats. "This takes a lot more time but I'm happier, as it makes for a much neater-looking chassis."

Why the boats?

"They provided natural tie points, eliminating the need for terminal strips," Eslinger says.

But of course.

This is really a pretty simple set. Eslinger has no trouble understanding how these old tube radios work and seems to have no trouble fixing them--with the help of 45 feet worth of maintenance and repair manuals.

Another business major gone astray!

The Eslingers have two sons, Keith, 22, KA1MCY, and Neal, 20, KA1MCX. Both have novice licenses and are in college.

Bob's outside interests revolve around the water. He's built two ice boats, and currently sails a commercial one on Lake Webster in Massachusetts (which is 800 feet above sea level). "It'll go nearly four times the wind speed," he says. Bob also scuba dives, and in the summer he and Barbara take a 17-foot powerboat to Webster Lake.

Bob Eslinger strikes the visitor as a happy man. "I was lucky," he says, "to have gotten in on the ground floor of what I think is a great resurgence of interest in things of the past.

"These old radios are works of art as much as appliances, and thousands of them didn't get tossed out the way we do modern appliances.

"They have beautiful workmanship as well as superb audio, sensitivity and selectivity."

So if you have an old radio, call Bob. Don't throw anything away!

Antique Radio Restoration and Repair can be reached Tuesday through Saturday at 860-928-2628 (voice), or write to 20 Gary School Road, Pomfret Center, CT 06259.