Radio Holland 1946 RCA AR-88 "Koningin Emma" restored [RADIO]

For a symbolic sum, a family living on the nearby Overtoom street here in Amsterdam gave me one of the radios that the man of the house, now deceased, had enjoyed listening to so much in his radio space on the top floor of the old house.

There is much information about the history of the RCA AR-88 on the Radio Boulevard Western Historic Radio Museum page. The one I got was produced in 1946.

A technical manual that came with the receiver, an RCA AR-88 branded as Radio Holland, suggests that the receiver has spent a number of years at sea on the Koningin Emma:


A few pictures of the inside on the 'operating table' of Egon van Kampen working on restoration:


A number of vacuum tubes has been replaced, a series of capacitors was also replaced by fresh ones. Especially the 'bathtub' modules, each packing three paper/oil capacitors, were up for replacement. It's remarkable in itself how well the receiver worked even with the leaking 'bathtubs' in the circuitry:

'bathtub' capacitor container

Much about the receiver is remarkable. It looks as if it's been assembled by improvisation but if you listen to the sound it produces from the signals that it absorbs from a basic antenna, you can only be very impressed. This one is designed and built by people with a full understanding of the technique, well beyond the mere theory of the concept.

Remember, this thing is 73 years old!

And it's been all over the place. It probably helps that so many thousands were built by large teams who'd developed a perfectionist production routine to help win WWII. And this one was built when much of the production capacity was still going strong.

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