A MUSEUM OF LISTENING
SpecialSignals
Vintage radios, signals, stories, and the rooms where listening happened.
THE COLLECTION
THE COLLECTION
Catalog
Select a receiver to go directly to its room scene.
OTHER GEAR
Beyond the Receivers
Not every piece in the collection is a radio. Other interesting gear includes vintage speakers, a vacuum tube tester, a Morse trainer (and my ear is still pretty good!), a multimode signal processor, etc. More to follow in this section.
ABOUT THIS GEAR
SPECIFICATIONS
ESSENTIAL LIBRARY
Essential Library
Every serious collector needs a serious library. These are the volumes that shaped how I understand the signals, the machines, and the history they carried.
ESSENTIAL LIBRARY
Select a book to open its card.
MERCHANDISE
Merchandise
An Assortment of Procurable Interesting Items.
ABOUT THIS ITEM
COLLECTING
The Hunt
Almost without fail, when someone views my radios, they'll ask: “Where did you find these?” My first radio — the Hallicrafters SX-110 — came via EstateSales.net, which led me to an estate sale in nearby North Augusta, SC. I didn't know what to expect to pay, as prices aren't listed. I didn't know if I was paying too much or getting a steal. But the radio was clean, plugged in, and playing a Bulldogs game. I switched it to CW, found Morse on the first try, and that was that. Here is my list of go-to resources, in order of success.
ABOUT THIS RESOURCE
ABOUT THE COLLECTOR
Forty-four Years in the Shadows
On Station
“An Analog Man
Caught in a Digital Age
Lost in the Ether...”
Twenty years in the United States Navy. Twenty-four years in the Intelligence Community. A career spent listening for signals that mattered — Cold War intercepts, special signals, the quiet transmissions that shaped history before most people knew history was being shaped.
Retirement brought a different kind of listening. Vintage tube radios — the receivers that ordinary Americans gathered around while the world changed beneath them. A Zenith console in a Maine cottage the year of the Hurricane of '38. A Hallicrafters in a signals room the night Pearl Harbor changed everything. A Trans-Oceanic on a diplomat's desk during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Each radio in this collection came with a story. Some I know. Some I'm still working out. All of them are worth hearing.
FEEDBACK & QUESTIONS ARE ALWAYS WELCOMED
specsigsguy@outlook.com
OPERATIONS
Long shifts spinning through the ether, punctuated by moments of sheer, adrenaline-fueled, in-front-of-the-headlines excitement. That’s life in Operations.
Rotate your device to landscape to enter the operator position.
SPECIAL SIGNALS · OPERATIONS
−SYNC+
1
2
3
4
5
POWER
CH 1 · SWEDISH NAVAL
POWER OFF
MORSE TRAINER
Train your ear, not your eyes.
Rotate your device to landscape to enter the training position.
INTERNATIONAL MORSE TRAINERSPECIAL SIGNALS · TRAINING
PHASE 1 · CHARACTER TRAININGREADY