Less than 1 Week Till our Antique Radio Auction

Crosley-PUP-Complete-Wire-TagsMark your calendars, empty out the car or truck and prepare yourself for another one of our Club’s unforgettable Collectable Radios, Parts, Tubes and Accessories Auctions. If you haven’t been to one yet, here is your chance, you can even stay overnight in one of Cedar Rapids Great Motels and be very rested for the festivities. Keep looking through our collection of pre-auction pictures, we might just have that radio that you have always wanted. Brent Wears and his staff is once again conducting our auctionKennedy-Model-V, and we have figured out how to handle all the cool stuff even quicker. Bring a pocket full of money and take home a load of radio goodies. Hope to see you there! New pictures added 5/02/2016. 2016 AUCTION EVENT Link

KMA Iowa Pioneer Radio Award Presentation

KMA-Pioneer-Radio-Station-AwardHere is a link to the KMA Award broadcast

Anton and Bob arrived for their visit to KMA around 11:00 am on April 5, 2016. After introducing ourselves we were given a tour of KMA’s impressive newly remodeled studios. We gathered around the microphones with Chuck Morris, KMA-Radio-ComponentsDigital Manager and Ed May Jr., owner and grandson of KMA founder, Earl May, to record about a 9 minute segment for their Friday, April 8th morning broadcast.  Anton and Bob fielded questions from Chuck Morris about the club activities and its members. Chuck and Ed talked about KMA’s colorful history sharing some historical high notes. Bob read the IARCHS certificate and presented the recognition plaque to Ed May. After the radio interview we talked for awhile with staff and did a little more touring of the station. Chuck Morris and retired KMA broadcaster, Tom Beavers, then invited us to lunch at a local restaurant called the Sanctuary Radios-in-Shenandoah-Museum-Near-KMARestaurant. The restaurant is a church converted to an eating establishment evidently popular among the residents of Shenandoah as the place was full. After lunch Tom Beavers gave us the grand tour of the Shenandoah Historical Museum which was opened just for us. We were impressed with the displays and items in the museum. There are quite a few Earl May/KMA installations of interest in the museum including several old radios from the the 1920s and many things relating to the Everly Brothers who were residents of Shenandoah. After the museum tour we returned to the station and said goodby to Chuck Morris and thanked him and Tom for their gracious hospitality. Anton and I then drove back to Osceola where we had met for the carpool to Shenandoah and parted ways for our trip back home. It was a pleasant day for a road trip and Anton and I kept up lively conversation which made the trip very enjoyable.
Bob Elbert, for IARCHS

KMA-Shenandoah-Super-Six-RadioKMA-Shenandoah-Super-Six-Radio-ConsolePictures of a Radio Build in Shenandoah and used to listen to KMA back in the 1920s.

WHO Radio Pioneer Station Award

WHO Radio in Des Moines was the third station to be honored by IARCHS in our club’s 2016 project of recognizing Iowa’s Pioneer Radio Stations.

WHO-Pioneer-Radio-Station-Award-PresentationHERE is a LINK to WHO Radio with the Audio from that Broadcast

Craig Huseboe and Keith Lowe were our club delegates to WHO on March 21, and both found themselves on the Van & Bonnie Morning show which has a large listening audience in Iowa. Both Craig and Keith handled their roles quite professionally, as expected, and with a bit of humor appropriate to the show….like… “if I bring one more old radio home, my wife says she’s moving out”…. But talk show hosts Van & Bonnie were sympathetic, and said they also appreciated and even owned antique radios too. As with other IARCHS pioneer radio station visits, our main focus was to spotlight the history of that station. WHO-Pioneer-Radio-Station-AwardWHO went into their archives for us and found an amazing recording from WW2 that they played during our IARCHS segment on air. It was of Jack Shelly, their very well known WHO newsman who found himself on a Pacific island at the very end of the war interviewing the pilot of the B29 that just dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima…Paul Tibbets… also from Des Moines. Van and Bonnie made a point very well with their playing of this special recording ….it represented just a tiny bit of the unbelievable amount of history that has gone out over airwaves from WHO to countless thousands for decades…and continues to this day.

Craig and Keith, the IARCHS duo, presented WHO with a plaque from the IARCHS club and a Proclamation signed by Iowa Governor Terry Branstad naming WHO as “An Iowa Pioneer Radio Station”. Even though our segment on air was only about 12 minutes, it covered a lot of ground and was placed on the WHO website, with the IARCHS website mentioned. In just a few minutes after the broadcast, an email came in from an Ames listener wanting more information on club membership. We thank all at WHO Radio, including those behind the scenes, for their hospitality and support. It was quite an experience.

Anton Vanicek for IARCHS