[Boatanchors] AWA Museum

[Freeberg, Scott (STP)]

Last week I attended the Antique Wireless Association AWA Convention in Rochester NY.  This was my first visit to the convention.  One of the activities included a visit to the AWA Museum in East Bloomfield NY.  
 
Holy moly.  It was truely radio heaven!  The ham shack is on the second floor and it is simply incredible!  At the top of the stairs there were two homebrew low power Novice ham stations.  They were set up on period desks with period lamps, clocks, and feel of a 40's station.  They even had the builders log book there and open.
 
Inside the first room was the spark stuff which was amazing.  They would run it and hold the key down for several seconds for us to get pictures.  Lots of zzzzztttttt sparks and noise and flashes.   They had several spark stations from a 'qrp' transmitter with a itty bitty spark to a monsterous spark transmitter generating a scary amount of power :>   I wonder if anyone on here has built a spark station.
 
All around the room were homebrew 20's glowbug gear, transmitters, receivers.   The walls were papered with 20's qsl cards.  
 
The main floor has an incredible collection of keys, tubes, and radio equipment.  I got to pound out CQ on Hiram Maxim W1AW's morse code key.  There just wasn't enough time to see everything.
 
Next we went over to the AWA Annex which contains shelves stacked to the ceiling with old homebrew and commercial ham radios in one room, a whole room of military equipment, a whole room of TV, spark, etc.  Plus I got to sit at the mic of James Millens homebrew KW transmitter and HRO receiver.
 
With me being a 20's and 30's glowbug enthusiast, the museum was the most wonderful and inspiring radio experience I've ever had.   If you get the chance, I'd highly recommend a visit.  
 
Another wonderful experience was the fresh homemade peach pie at the Holloway House across the street from the museum :>
 
The museum & annex were open for only 2 hours that night so we only had an hour at the museum and an hour at the annex.  I could have easily taken the whole day at just the museum! and still not have seen everything.  

One of my goals at the museum was to see a real Grebe CR-18 and Pilot Super Wasp in person.  They had em and I spent some time looking them over and taking pictures.  I just love the styling of the CR-18.  The insides seem kind of quiet with a detector and 1 audio stage.  IS anyone here using a CR-18 on the air?  I'd like to hear about its performance.  The Pilot Super Wasp was less impressive than the CR-18 on styling but more impressive inside.  The Super Wasp appears to be well built, with separate aluminum box shields for the detector and tuned RF front end, plus two stages of audio. Can anyone report on the Super Wasp performance?  I'm in the process of acquiring a Super Wasp but don't have any leads on a CR-18.  I'm looking to use them regularly with my 29 transmitters.  Any leads would be appreciated on the CR-18.

I saw a radio in the flea market, already purchased, that really tugged at me.  IT was a Browning Drake breadboard receiver called a Regeneformer or something like that, with the outboard audio assy.  What a beauty.

Now that I'm all wound up on 20's and 30's glowbug radios after visiting the museum, I'm looking for a few parts to build my next 29 projects. If you can help me out, I'd appreciate it.  I'm looking for some nice Cardwell and National DX variable capacitors, some Pilot variables, some National style tube shields (with bases) like those used in the National SW-5 and SW-3 and FB-7 and HRO Jr and HRO Senior and HRO5T, etc, Pilot coils or coil forms, and some of those round National IF transformers and BFO coil (like those in the FB-7 and HRO) for a superhet project.  I'd like to find a couple more blue beehive insulators as well for a PP self exciting oscillator using a 1/4" copper tube tank coil.  Thanks.
 
73, Scott WA9WFA