Welcome to Radio Alley

Did you ever go to a swap meet and find that one old radio you’ve always wanted? Maybe you hesitated buying it because it needed a little work. An alignment perhaps? A bulging capacitor or missing tube to replace? A loose dial cord to be re-wound?

Maybe you heard the seller say “It just stopped working” and now he’s selling it “as is” for a great price. Like me, you might have hesitated when he said that and walked away from it even at that bargain price because he added, “No, I don’t have the manual for it.”

Radio Alley© is dedicated to helping you find manuals for gear at least 25 years old. Manuals for recent gear are readily available, although expensive. Manuals for ten- or twenty-year old gear can sometimes be found through friends. Go much beyond that time frame, however, and you may find it more a matter of luck than contacts to find a readable, complete manual to guide your restoration effort. To find a color copy of an original or even the original itself is equally hard.

Older publications are also hard to find. For example, reference books or magazines were usually bought for one purpose and tended to be discarded or thrown out as they became obsolete. Some people, though, like me, find a certain charm and fascination in these publications.

Reading the War Time Edition of the 1944 ARRL Radio License Manual, for example, is a real eye opener to a time of war. Did you know, back then, you could still test for and receive an operator license even though station licenses were suspended? If you couldn’t operate, why would licenses still be offered? One answer is, the Armed Forces needed more and more skilled operators as the war went on. What better source than a constantly refreshed base of amateur radio operators already trained in the art of radio repair and both phone and code communications? And if you already possessed a transmitter, whether licensed or not, you had to apply for a Certificate of Registration, according to FCC Orders No. 99 and 101.

Radio Alley© offers rare and hard-to-find older manuals and publications in PDF format on CD-ROM and diskette media for a competitive price with great customer service. You can print them on your own printer and bind them as you wish.

As scanned, some manuals are of poorer quality than others due to age and frequency of use. Some manuals also contain useful notes and jottings by previous owners’, particularly in troubleshooting and repair sections. In days gone by, remember that people actually modified and repaired their own radios, and often wrote in practical alignment tips or corrected published voltage-resistance charts on the pages of the manual. Occasionally you can see drops of coffee on the edge of a page from someone working on equipment late at night in his shack or shop, sipping now and then as he leaned over to examine a schematic.

Radio Alley© considers these “imperfections” to be part of the charm of old and antique manuals. However, we also know you need clear information for your restoration or repair project. So we rate the technical condition of each manual on a Condition Rating Scale and adjust prices accordingly. The price and condition of each manual is listed in the Catalog of Publications.

Radio Alley© is constantly looking for rare, old, hard-to-find manuals. We buy select manuals and publications. We accept donations of treasured items, and pay the estate of the donor a percentage of sales of the donated manuals and publications.

If I don’t buy them or you don’t want to donate them, please let me know what you have and let’s find a home for them anyway. I hate to think of any piece of radio history being lost or tossed, especially any writing from days gone by. Email me for the latest edition of our catalog showing manuals completed and for sale and those still in process.

We also accept selected consignments of vintage gear 25-years old and older.