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HISTORY GALLERY AGE GUIDE VALUE GUIDE SET INDEX AUTO RADIOS AROUND THE WORLD SCHEMATICS TECH SECTION RESOURCES BOOKSTORE RADIO REPAIR LINKS SITE MAP SITE SEARCH ABOUT ME CONTACT ME |
Ron Ramirez (self-portrait from
December 2008)
Since 1974,
at age 14, I have been interested in antique
radios. James A. Fred's "Antique Radio Corner," a regular
column in the old Elementary Electronics magazine,
served as my introduction to the hobby. I graduated from
National Radio Institute (NRI) in 1984 with a diploma in
Radio-TV Servicing. (Unfortunately, NRI, which had been
around since the early days of radio, went out of business
in 2002.) I immediately put my new diploma to work as a
sideline business, repairing televisions and radios when I
was not on the air, working at the local radio station as an
on-air person, producer and technician. Unfortunately, the
inner workings of televisions soon became miniaturized to
the point that they could no longer be serviced profitably,
and I gave up this sideline - for awhile.
Subscribing to
Antique Radio Classified
 in
1987,
I decided that
I, too, could write articles - and did so for a number of
years. These articles became a sort of training ground for
what was to come next.
In 1990, I decided to move away from
the 1920s battery sets I had been collecting, in
order to concentrate my collecting activities on Philco
radios exclusively. The word soon spread, and whenever I
attended a radio swap meet, I was often greeted with "Here
comes Mister Philco!" The name stuck, and as you now know,
the title was not self-anointed.
Soon becoming frustrated at the lack of information
available on Philco at the time, I decided to write a book
on Philco. It was a monumental task, and through the help of
many fellow collectors, without whose help the book
would not have been possible, it became a reality in 1993.
With the initial sales of the Philco
book, I began servicing antique radios as a sideline business. Eventually it
became a full-time venture. These days, I work full-time at a real job,
having returned to repairing radios as a sideline.
I maintain a modest collection
of Philco radios, along with a large library of Philco paper material which has
proven invaluable in my research. This website is the product of a great deal of
work studying and researching the subject of Philco and its prinicpals, some of
whose stories might otherwise had been forgotten by history.
I have been making my own web
pages since 1997. At one time I maintained websites for Chevytrucks.org, West-Techservices.com,
and Thevoiceofmusic.com. These days, however, I only design and maintain my own
sites.
More recently, I have been
writing a monthly opinion column in the
Evansville Courier &
Press newspaper. In conjunction with this, I also maintain an online blog,
Ron's Random Ramblings,
in which I write commentary on local, state and national political issues.
In addition to the Philcos, I
also have a small collection of Aladdin kerosene lamps, a little bit of
breweriana (some signs, prints and bottles), and a few lithographs from the
Victorian era.
I make my home in
Evansville, Indiana. I have two daughters, Kandi and Angie.
ABOUT THIS WEBSITE
This website is an outgrowth
of a small web page started by me in 1997, hosted on a local ISP and having
relatively little information on Philco.
Before long, I found myself
assuming duties running another specialty website, Chevytrucks.org. I moved
my Philco site there, where it remained until Labor Day 2000 when it moved
to its own website with its own domain name - Philcoradio.com. The
Chevytrucks.org site is now under the capable direction of Wayne Osborne.
Since 2000, Philcoradio.com
has continually grown in size and scope. Now, with a comprehensive history
of Philco and a huge online gallery showing all prewar Philco home radios,
Philcoradio.com truly is the leading Philco resource on the Internet.
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© 1997-2009, Ron Ramirez. All
rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
