Hi, I am Gerry O’Hara and have been a member of the CVRS since around 2006 and am the current editor of the CVRS Newsletter ‘Canadian Vintage Radios’ (since 2007), as well as a CVRS Forum moderator and Director of the CVRS. I have been interested in radio since I was around 14, becoming a licensed radio amateur in the UK in 1972 and currently hold UK and Canadian call signs (G8GUH and VE7GUH). I was ‘trained’ in the radio trade an old-fashioned radio and TV store back in the UK while at school (Saturday/holiday job) and during vacations while at university, though went on to become a geologist, hydrogeologist and then environmental engineer. Back in my teens and 20’s I was mainly interested in construction of amateur radio equipment, including 10GHz gear. In the mid-1980’s, pressure of work, travelling and family resulted in a waning of interest in the hobby until around 2004 when I spotted a 1924 radio for sale at a fleamarket in Langley, BC. I took it home and restored it and, eventually, got it working – I was then hooked on a new aspect of the radio hobby, vintage radios and the history of communications! I found out there was a radio museum in my home-city (Coquitlam), the Society for Preservation of Antique Radios in Canada (SPARC), which I joined and eventually became a Director of and then President since 2012. I have a collection of many radios (mostly restored and working), around half of which are communications-type receivers, including many of the UK Eddystone marque. My current main interests are restoring domestic sets of the 1920’s through 1940’s, though I will tackle just about anything with tubes in it, as well as writing articles on restoration topics. I am still in full-time employment as an engineer with an international consulting company and time tends to be scarce for my hobby at times. These days, most of my restoration work is for the SPARC museum, where visitors bring in sets for repair or restoration for a donation to the museum – that way I get to fix radios and don’t clutter my house up any more… much to the relief of my family. And that photo is me operating some Collins gear when I was newly-licensed. The gear belonged to a radio amateur’s club that my then girlfriends dad belonged to. The Racal RA-17 receiver to my left is a formidable receiver, a similar one of which (RA-117) I managed to finally acquire in 2009 and restore.
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