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Western Radio And Midway
Radio Of Kearney Nebraska

Does anyone remember the Western Radio company of Kearney Nebraska?



Thanks To Vic Yingst, W4CKI, For The Photo

From the mid 1930s until the late 80s Western Radio was offering radio kits,
walkie talkies, short wave radios, crystal sets, a ham radio transceiver and
various transistor radios as well as antennas and other electronics. There is
not much on the internet concerning Western Radio that I could find. I do have
an extensive library of old magazines from the 50s and 60s that carried
Western Radio's advertising, and I am attempting to put together as many
of their offerings that I can find for viewing in this website.

This will be a work in progress and I will add to it as I find things concerning
Western Radio. As far as I can tell they advertised in Mechanix Illustrated,
Science and Mechanics, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Popular Electronics,
and later, CQ and QST magazines when Western Radio was at the end of its life
and advertising HF wire antennas. When you look through their advertising you
might be struck as to how similiar it was to Gotham Antenna advertising from 1953
until Gotham went out of business in the early to mid 80s. There are echos of this
kind of advertising that show up in the MFJ advertising today. It looks like
Western Radio went out of business sometime in the late 80s.

NOTE: While doing the research I noticed that the company
used two different names: Western and Midway.

What follows are some of what Western Radio was
advertising from the late 40s to the 60s


I think that this was an early solid state
walkie talkie from the early 60s From Western Radio

Here is the advertising for the Tiny Tone pocket
Radio Shown Above

Here is an early Novice transceiver that seemed
to be patterned after the Hallicarfters SR-75.

An expanded view of the Novice BN-1 transceiver

Western Radio also offered a pocket crystal radio

And a set of Wireless Walkie Talkies

Here is a Regenerative Short Wave receiver kit 60s

Another take on the Crystal Set

This is an early (1950) wired voice powered Walkie Talkie set

Here is what might be the original Mr. Microphone

From 1949, here is a crystal set, The earliest I have found

I became aware of Western radio at about age 9 or 10 when I started to look at my
father's library of monthly magazines and found the Western Radio ads and
thought that their walkie talkie's were cool. It was interesting that they
would have from 2 - 4 ads in every issue they advertised in.Considering that
Western (or Midway) radio had been advertising their offerings
every month in all of the popular handyman magazines of the day one would
think that someone would know the history of the company.

Peter Bertini To the Rescue:
I have some more information concerning the genesis of Western Radio
and would like to thank Peter Bertini who writes the vintage radio column in
Popular Communications Magazine for a very interesting insight as to the family
who started the business and products back in the 30s. Here is the website about the
Beshore Brothers Of Western Radio.

Other than the advertising I have found in my collection of old magazines
there is virtually nothing other than a very good
and comprehensive article below on the BN-1 Novice transceiver

Would you like to build a copy of the WestKit BN-1 Novice Transceiver?
BN-1 Schematic And Technical Details

If anyone has material they would like to contribute to the website please let me know at:
Webmaster

Visitors Since 1/1/08


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