Enjoy Your New Zenith!

This is the Operating guide for a Zenith Super Trans Oceanic Portable Radio. It's a Model H500 in a 5H40 chassis. Zenith starting manufacturing these in 1951 and continued to make similar flip-top models into the 1960s. Like most instructional pamphlets it covers basic operation and it's general features, but this one also itemizes the multitudinous requirements for technical maintenance. It also provides detailed lists of weather and marine stations.

But what's more interesting is that it includes a log of all U.S. Clear Channel stations circa 1950. If it's a complete list, there were still entire U.S. states that had none, including North Dakota, Arizona, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Wyoming and New Jersey to name a few.  The scenario is possible, but it seems unlikely to be so many. I will delve into that in another post. Today there are 78 Clear Channel AM stations, this booklet lists over 140! I do note that 1510 KGA-AM  in Spokane from the list was downgraded to a Class B just last year so this is still in flux even today. More here.

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