Don's Radio Museum and Emporium

About Don Tutt:

Edited June 30, 2008 By: Gord Routley - Don's HostMaster, Guru & Friend!

How does one get to his age of 59 and be fixin' old tube radios for a hobby? Well folks, its a bit of a tale.... if you care to, go find a cup of coffee, get back here, sit a spell and read.....

Don lived all his life in British Columbia, Canada, starting with birth in Kelowna where he lived until moving, at age 13 to Chilliwack, BC. Another move at age 15  put him in and around Terrace, in northern BC until age 27. Then he moved back to the lower mainland of BC, Burnaby, Vancouver, Surrey and finally back to Chilliwack.

At a young age in Kelowna Don started the long trek into radio restoration country by building his first crystal set from a neat little kit his parents bought him. It had a nice yellow plastic case and a few simple components. He recalled an important and challenging task in getting the best reception was the construction of a good ground and aerial system. At his family home in north Kelowna, on Okanagan Boulevard his dad did many home improvements including the erection of a massive 8 by 8 clothes line pole beside the sawdust shed at the back of the property. As a 7 year-old boy his ambitious task was to get a ladder up on that shed's flat roof, prop the ladder against that clothes line pole, climb to the top of the ladder and spike a 2 by 4 to the topmost part of the pole. Tied to the top of that 2 by 4 was all the rigging and a pulley to allow him to raise a long copper wire aerial that ran back to a ring he'd attached to the chimney of their house. Thence a lead down and into the bedroom he shared with his brother.

Man!  He spent hours, when he should have been asleep.... with his ear on the pillow, listening to Kelowna's CKOV radio station and a few weaker ones whose call signs he couldn't recall. For a young chap the whole process of rigging up the antennae, grounds and "equipment" that allowed him to hear voices and music coming from afar was.... well... fascinating. A young imagination could run wild. And it did.  In the meanwhile he was picking up at a young age the basic skills of radio system assembly. This would continue into his teens as he learned to read schematics, recite by heart the resistor colour codes, and solder components into various "chassis" that he made up from scratch.

In Chilliwack his radio building "took off", as it were. Bruce McAlpine and his parents operated McAlpine Electric and Bruce was his mentor. He had his electronics training and was the store's service technician. On the way home from school, it was always a big day for him, if he could stop in at the store and take up Bruce's time getting answers to questions he had about radios and what he had to do next on the "project" of the month.... It was hilarious for him, he often said.  He would ask for answers to complex electronic questions and Bruce would accommodate him with in-depth answers that presumed knowledge of mathematics at a level well beyond his schooling. He would always nod his head up and down in "understanding" as he continued to the end of what Bruce had to say. Then he would skedaddle home and toil for hours trying to build whatever radio circuit he was currently enthralled with. He was totally wrapped up in the romance of learning and fiddling with anything radio. It didn't take long for his acquisitive nature to show itself and Bruce seemed to delight in indulging him. He would show him all the neat radio junk in the back of his shop and notice him drooling over stuff sufficiently that he had to break down and find a way to give him the occasional junker radio chassis. Such treasure would be disemboweled for parts or a valiant effort would be made to get it going again. He surprised Bruce by building a 5-tube superhet from a schematic and scrap parts and getting it to work without the benefit of proper tools to align the IF transformers..... Shouldn't have happened.

Apart from school homework and the radio hobby some of his time in Chilliwack was spent on his fun duties as the founding lead side drummer in the Chilliwack Junior Pipe Band. Chilliwack's #147 Squadron Air Cadets also kept him busy.

When he moved with his family to Terrace, he left behind a real happenin' scene only to rebuild it for himself in the small northern lumber town that was Terrace in the early 1960's. He joined the newly formed #747 Air Cadet squadron and finished his 5 year stint with them. In the process he won a flying scholarship and spent the whole month of July, 1966 getting his pilot training at Pitt Meadows Airport. Ron Headrick was the Chief Flight Instructor and Gretchen Matheson was his gorgeous instructor. Don ate the course up, scoring in the top 5% nationally, that year. he continued his radio hobby with a new mentor, Bill Simmons who was a technician at CFTK Radio/Television in Terrace. He gave him more advanced help as he was a bit older and more able to understand. Again his workbench in a corner of the basement looked like the back room of a radio/TV shop except without the advanced test gear. Don still he managed to have a lot of fun learning and fixing things "radio."

If his family wanted a "pipe band" in Terrace, they had to start a band. Don's father and Jim Miller did get a band going. Later after he returned from UBC and Allan returned fresh from RCMP training in Regina they resurrected Dad's band with Nelson Gillis, Barry English et al. Don's fondest Terrace memories are of times spent banding. Some of his drumming students were Kelly Bachman, Barry English (still in the band and lead side drummer), John Adames (he went on to become a fabulous rock and jazz drummer -eclipsed him totally- and a UBC English professor; he think he lives in Toronto now) and Jim Valance (who teamed up with Brian Adams for a while).  Adolescent life in Terrace kept him busy until high school graduation took him off to university in Vancouver, BC.

Don didn't do well academically at UBC and dropped out after three years of slogging away, trying to make a go of it. Absolutely hated being forced to take French language lessons. Saw no practical need to learn French and totally resented the imposition of it. Had a miserable time in mathematics too. His 1st year math professor was a recent Czech immigrant. He had a tough time getting past his heavy accent to either understand or hear the math he was trying to impart. The experience with him was his first real test of tolerance for something (language) completely different. He made a good old college try and did not "jump" out of his class to seek a more intelligible prof. Several classmates had done this. Over the years his reflections on this have led him to suspect they had someone coaching them on how to survive at UBC. He got a bit better at calculus in his second year's attempt to pass Math 100 but still couldn't "get it" even though he loved the concept of rotating a catenery in space and calculating the volume it described. After a third year, having switched to arts from science he left UBC defeated and certain he was the world's biggest dummy because he couldn't make a success of it. Many years later he met a woman who was the coordinator of women's housing at the time he was on campus. She told him to ease up on himself. According to her, UBC at the time, was not a very student friendly campus. More recent reports confirm that little has changed.... yet many seem to successfully pass through UBC's educational gamut.

After UBC he went north (Terrace and area) working in various jobs including stints in a lumber mill, a pulp mill and then seasonal work as a commercial fisherman operating out of Prince Rupert, BC. During four fishing seasons his travels took him to the coast off Oregon for tuna; the west coast of Vancouver Island for salmon; all around the Queen Charlotte Islands for salmon, halibut, sole and cod; and as far north as Icy Bay in the Gulf of Alaska for halibut.  Then a doctor friend in Terrace suggested he look into enrolling in the Biomedical Electronics Technology training at British Columbia Institute of  Technology in Burnaby BC. Don applied and Art Ridgeway, the Biomed Dean, accepted him for the two year course of multi-discipline studies, starting in the fall of 1976 with graduation in summer of 1978.

It was this training at BCIT that turned his self image around. Mr. Sims was his math instructor and he waltzed through far more advanced math than he ever saw at UBC. His first mid-term exam came back with a mark of 96% and he had to say there must be some mistake. But no. He was getting it. However, he recalled, not so fondly, a math course of a different sort that came along in second year.... the dreaded LaPlace transforms.....  Lord! Don sat through 5 weeks of lectures not grasping what the heck was going on... then, one day during a lecture, the light came on!  There was some training in tube circuit design and repair at BCIT, but at this time the syllabus was being reshaped and they were getting a lot of tuition in solid state digital design.

The upshot of the BCIT training for Don, was the realization that his brain is the most amazing thing: it can absorb myriad, disparate information and spit out meaningful, reasonably correct answers during exams. By the end of 2 years his attitude was, "Hey! Got an exam? Lay it on him, he can do it."  If an exam could be described as a pin, well, then he was a pin cushion! BCIT is notorious for graduating scholars with educational momentum. Unfortunately not all post grad employers understand or are capable of properly assisting in and capitalizing on the maintenance of that momentum. That is just the reality Don found. He was on his own as far as post grad continuing education and he'd done a lot of it.

In 1976, BCIT was replacing instruction in vacuum tube circuitry with instruction in solid state circuit analysis and design. They did, however get one three month session on vacuum tube circuitry, thank God. It was this training and subsequent self-teaching that put him in his present position..... he know some things about tube circuitry.... and he always had an ear for the next thing to learn regardless of what it was.

For example, the 1995 challenge was to train in the use of FrontPage2003 so Don could assemble this site as the first of several he intended to build. At end of March 2005 he put the basics of this site in place, thanks to mentoring from Mr. Gord Routley.

For the past while he had also been taking training in the design of database systems using the world's newest database kernel. He hoped that part of this site would have a vacuum tube database that listed all the new and used tubes he had for sale. You would have been able to scan his inventory and literally pick the individual tube you wanted. With this new database inventory control system in mind he was hopeful of bringing his radio hobby to you in a fashion that has meant and means, a ton of educational effort..... to the point Don yearned for a few evenings shut away in his shop, out back, having a good old fiddle inside a dusty chassis or cabinet.

Filling in the thread of what he did post BCIT graduation.... he had a series of jobs: X-ray service technician;  electronics technician in a laboratory (while at this job he completed 24 three month BCIT night school courses for his second diploma.... in Manufacturing Operations Management, setting a national record for the shortest time to do it); production manager at a microwave dish plant in Vancouver (the 1985 scrambling of satellite dish signals killed their market and Don lost that job). A series of attempts to secure steady work in the manufacturing sector followed; forming his own company and being self-employed. Self-employment had been his lot since 1989 and things had transitioned over the years. Starting with a PC software/hardware design center that Don created (and found ONE buyer, worldwide); he then moved back to the country town of Chilliwack away from city life in Vancouver. He invested in typesetting equipment and became a printing broker in 1991,  adding sign making to the mix in 1995.

Recent completion of a fortuitous database training opportunity had him in the challenging position of engaging in his first database consultancy, again in a self-employed mode.  This new venture was fun and very interesting for Don. It is more of the same kind of thing he had been doing for years. Helping people. Sticking his nose in their business, defining the need, delivering the product and taking a payday.

In the '90's, in addition to his printing work, he had a three year gig as a framing and finishing carpenter for a Chilliwack residential contractor. He went into government service, building conjugal visit huts in prisons (amongst other supervisory duties) and since then, from time to time he took on short carpentry jobs. For example he had just finished squeezing in a short snapper of a home reno. Starting in December 2004 and ending mid March 2005 he renovated a 6000 square foot home that had been damaged by a marijuana grow-op..... so, for him, there is an up-side to that illegal business, he got a bit of work patching up the mess, after the cops are done busting it and the realtor sells it to new owners.

And then, there is a shop full of old tube radios from the 20's, 30's and 40's just waiting for him to restore them. And that was another project he didn't get to finish.

Well, for those of you who indulge in this hobby..... you know there are many facets to radio restoration. Skills are required and interesting things must be contemplated. Basically it boils down to restoration of two things: the chassis, the cabinet.

About 2002 Don decided to pick up his adolescent radio hobby and he began scouring local garage sales and haunting auctions in search of treasures. He found enough old radios to keep him busy for years!

Radios are not enough. One needed test gear. He got really lucky, several times. Don met a chap named Roy who invited him up to his home and took him into the basement where he had two ping-pong tables groaning with electronic test equipment for sale. It was an estate sale and he was charged with liquidating these assets. Don was first in! He availed himself of the heart of the test gear. All the key radio test and alignment instruments.  What a gift, he thought. What a good sign!

Another wonderful bit of luck was meeting and getting to know Klaus Waldhor. Klaus is a German speaking, Italian trained cabinet maker and wood refinisher. His guru on all things wood and anything to do with finishing, particularly lacquer! Nothing he doesn't know about these subjects. He had much to learn from Klaus and consider himself so fortunate to have him as mentor and friend. Even though there was much to learn on the subject of lacquer finishing, he helped him to acquire just the right gravity fed deVilbis spray gun with the correct sized needle for lacquer work. And there are countless things he needed to know about wood, stripping, sanding, prepping, mixing colourants in the lacquer, the various lacquers, adjusting the controls and air pressure for the gun to get the best application. And he haven't yet touched on the skills involved in doing touch-ups. For that he took a special touch up training course put on by the Mohawk products vendor in Vancouver BC. Veejay taught an awesome course! He still had plenty to figure out on this score though.

Last but certainly not least is his wife Heidi. As luck would have it they met at the urging of a mutual acquaintance, in 1998 and have made, he thought, a fabulous couple since. At the time they met she owned a really nice home and had been living alone for several years since the death of her husband.  Shortly after they got together they made plans for a renovation and in the end Don built a gable end extension to the house wherein Heidi got her new sewing room upstairs and he got space downstairs. Concurrently, they built a dream workshop out back to replace the small 8 by 10 foot garden shed. He doffed his cap to her German heritage by decorating the shop's front and back fascias and soffit covers with Bundwerk, a Tyrolean form of decorative woodwork.

There is a link to a picture of the exterior of the shop on this site's home page. He wanted to eventually do a photo gallery of the shop, revealing its many features including: fully finished gyproc and plywood walls, vaulted ceiling with skylights, full spectrum lighting, fire sprinkler system, compressed air system, under floor chip and sawdust vacuum system complete with automatic initiating dust collector, closed flame updraft furnace, well pump system, air exhaust system, quick setup spray booth, tons of wall receptacles, electronics workshop area, woodworking shop, garden tool storage, library and and hot and cold running water. There were lots of envious men friends who took the dime tour.

He considered himself one blessed and lucky dude!

As you see, he owed a debt to these many folk who by their love, friendship, training and encouragement helped bring him to this place in his radio hobby. And now that he have begun the process of creating a virtual radio museum he had no doubt he would make many new friends around the world who, if they are not pursuing as "insanely" as he, the hobby of radio restoration, may at least find some small entertainment in this site. Unfortunately, this is all that remains.

For those of you who will admit there is a certain insanity in this hobby, here is a picture of something that Don knew would gladden the heart more than somewhat, when it is found in a corner at a garage sale....

Here it is the fall of 2007 and he was diagnosed with a non-cancerous glial cell brain tumor. Treatment is biopsy then radiation. Prognosis 5, 10, 15 years, he didn't know. In this game "attitude" is everything. In the end, he passed away on Christmas day 2007.

In his last words to his class, his UBC psych prof Art Reber, looked over his glasses and admonished class at the end of the year, back in '71... "Have fun!"

That he has done!