Trevor Gale's Vintage Wireless Page.

I still have the web/HTML FAQ for the newsgroup rec.antiques.radio+phono and although it is only my first revision of all the good contributors and editors in the past, I hope that it is at least helpful. The FAQ can be accessed under this link or by going to http://www.tgale.net/oradio/index.html with your browser.

Questions and AnswersThis is a link to the odd facts & figures which I have dug up in response to questions and answers provided by myself and others. My thanks to those who have helped me by providing information for some of the answers. Note: e-mail addresses of people concerned here have been clearly modified by myself (remove "antibot" from the address concerned) due to the sad fact of spammers' activities which have become commonplace in todays' internet environment.

Safety information for this hobby can be found under this link: this is the one section which I feel it is my duty to present it here even though it is also covered in the FAQ since there are some serious aspects which simply do not regularly arise when persuing more modern aspects of an electronics hobby. Whilst I respect the inputs from others on this issue, I hope they appreciate my including the information on this site.

Buying and Selling components, spares and assemblies. Since a considerable number of people have mailed me with requests of how to purchase various valve/tube components, and I have no commercial interest in dealing in such material, I thought I would place some links to businesses which *do* supply such stuff as and when I come across them. Please note that these links augment the businesses in the FAQ section rather than duplicate them, so do also look in the FAQ for more such folks.

Military and service equivalents are tabled under this link; this new section should be of assistance to those dealing with old wartime radios especially where a commercial valve/tube could be the perfect replacement for an otherwise hard-to-find military type. Hopefully our commercial replacement will not have to endure any rugged action in the field of battle, either. Both U.S. and European service types are included.

Valve/tube Substitution Hints can be found under this link. I have included these few notes on substituting different valve types when the exact original is not available and you want to get a set working in the 'same way that a service engineer would have done then'. Substitution was normal practice even when it meant changing valve bases and/or changing out some components or re-wiring a base, so it's not as 'unauthentic' a process as some purists would have you believe it to be... it is a question of your own attitude to this aspect of restoration.

This reference will lead you to the FAQ resources which are both on this site (in its' own directory, the version which was on the older revision of this site) and more recent versions held for the newsgroup rec.antiques.radio+phono.

Links to newsgroups and other sites are to be found under this link, the list is by no means complete at this time (remember from the introduction that this is the first part of the major update of this site). If you have your own relevant site, or know of a useful one that should be included, please e-mail me with the URL and I will take a look to see if I should include it in the next part of the site update.

The first list of valve pin connections and characteristics is available under this link. Most of the information is derived from old manufacturers' valve/tube listings catalogs and whereas major data such as anode voltage and negative control grid voltage, heater/filament voltage and current, and explicit function is included, secondary electrode ratings and mutual conductance values are omitted since they are not specified in a lot of the catalogs that I used to compile this listing. Judging by the number of visits to date however, it has still been of use to quite a number of people. It is in pure text format so that your browser 'find' button can be used to find a particular tube.

The second list of valve pin connections and characteristics is new with the update of this site and has many additional valves/tubes (I have tried not to duplicate any of those in the first list). Information for this section has been derived from more complete data books and valve tester book resources; in contrast to the first listing more secondary electrode ratings are included together with mutual conductance values where appropriate; however whilst heater/filament voltages are quoted, the current is not, mainly since many tester books only required the setting of the correct voltage to check the valve/tube. Again it is in pure text format so as to be able to use the 'find' browser button.

Here you will find a few circuit diagrams, with some notations, and information, of typical old receivers and amplifiers. I have included them to give an idea of 'where things belong' and as a sort of prompt to assist those with limited experience of valve/tube circuitry, including the younger ones amongst us (!). It's a simplistic section but I do hope it helps some folks, including newcomers of all ages.

You can E-mail the author of these pages (Trevor Gale) by using this link. on the Dutch Internet service provider XS4ALL.