Our Plans Short Term
We decided to change a few things on the IARCHS website because we wanted to use the website as a tool that the club could use to do a better job in a few specific areas.
- Add website Support our annual Antique Radio Auction
- Explain how the auction operates
- Have a nice gallery of upcoming auction radios with descriptions
- Add Previous auction highlights pictures
- Improve our Iowa Radio Manufacturer listing pages
- Be able to add pictures for each Iowa made radio when we can get them.
- Add Early Commercial Iowa Radio Stations
- Provide Guidance to folks with Orphaned Radio Estates
- Radio-Collector.com domain name
- Reduce membership paperwork-workload
Annual Radio Auction
Brett Wears does a fantastic job managing our radio auction, it is always a great time for all. We need to do a better job getting the word out to other radio collectors. The more folks that know about our auction, the better attended it will be. Better attendance should mean that more radios will show up at the auction, and that with more attendees, the a nice radio should expect an even better selling price. We intend to get there by highlighting our past auctions with searchable radio pictures, and by having a better current pictures gallery. Pictures need names and descriptions if we want the collector of that radio to know we will have one at our auction. We can do this with our new website.
Iowa Radio Manufacturers
This has always been a club asset on our website. The new site has reformatted the existing list, splitting it into two parts, a list by Iowa city, and a list my radio maker. This allows someone living in a city to look up radios, and also someone with a radio to look up to see if it was an Iowa radio. The new format will allow us to add actual pictures of these radios right into the ‘encyclopedia’ entry for it. If you have an Iowa radio, we would love to get a picture of it from you to put on the website. As a side benefit you will get website mention of you as the pic donor, you can always opt out if you don’t want the fame.
Early Commercial Iowa Radio Stations
There has been some interest in profiling early Iowa commercial radio stations. There have been many, and only a few have survived through the years. We added a new feature to the website where we list the radio stations that existed, call sign, frequency, and in many cases the corporate owner. We currently have the first 5 or 6 years on the website. The future goal is to highlight individual stations, describing their history, call sign, frequency, and power changes through the years. I am sure there are many interesting stories that can be shared surrounding these pioneer radio stations. FYI: at one point all the stations were on the same frequency, check it out.
Orphaned Radio Estates
What happens to his collection when an avid radio collector passes away? This collection becomes an Orphaned Radio Estate that needs to be adopted. The adoption process is a difficult and extremely stressful process for most. The antique radio community is at risk of losing those wonderful radios, in some cases even unique one of a kind pieces. As concerned IARCHS club members we would like to see a happy adoption outcome, even if it involves a group of adopters connecting at our annual auction. We want to use this website to help this adoption process be less stressful for the late collectors family members. How that will be done we don’t know yet. But, if we can connect with even one otherwise lost Orphaned radio estate that will be a good thing.
Radio-Collector.com
Why are we using http://www.radio-collector.com as our website name? Actually it is just a second name, we will continue to use http://www.iowa-antique-radio-club.com as well. We haven’t transferred the name to this site yet because the final approval for the move has yet to be given. At this time all of the data content from the old site is now on radio-collector.com, plus some new stuff as well. To get better search engine exposure, this shorter more concise name is a great help. Having a second name allowed the new site to be built without degrading the existing one, which I thought was a good thing. When it is all done, our club website will have both names directed to it, and all will be good. This is not uncommon.
Refining Membership
Being a member in a group that shares your passion for collecting, repairing, or researching radios is a really great thing. But with any organization there is the burden of administration, and making membership affordable. We hope to use this website to manage the majority of club membership paperwork. This would be done by having online membership and annual dues collection done by the website. The second concern occurs If we become famous and everyone wants copies of our stuff. This is a problem because of the large size of our technical library. Some of our documents are 200 megabytes in size, we also previously referenced another site that had even more huge documents, they don’t exist anymore. I would say the huge data bandwidth those documents generated cost too much to support. For that reason we are going to limit access to those document to members willing to pay an annual $5 membership fee. We are working out the details on this, ideas and comments are welcome. Check out our membership page for more details.
Summary
We want to help the radio collector community, save rare Iowa made radios from destruction, get more visibility of Iowa’s radio heritage. If we work together, and allow this website to capture the fruits of our mutual efforts, I think that everyone will benefit. Let us know what you think.
David Fitkin, WB0FZV, a Zenith fan and Collins Radio Collector
We had another great auction this year with over 550 individual lots sold. The weather might have been dreary outside, but as this auction was inside the nice building at the west side of Hawkeye downs it was nice and cozy. If you were there, see you again next year, if you weren’t, hope to see you next year. Great fun for all and just watching the Amazing Wears auction team in play is a show in its self.
