When astronomy became my main hobby some fifty years ago, one aspect I never dreamed I’d be doing in any way was radio astronomy. It seemed too out there, too abstract. Yet technology has progressed to the point that radio astronomy, even if on a rudimentary level, is now accessible to amateurs like me. What’s all this, then? I had been reading about Hydrogen Line radio astronomy for a while and, being a deep sky astrophotographer, it became clear that I could expand this deep sky addiction even further by building a modest radio telescope for detecting our galaxy’s Hydrogen Line. Even better ..read more

So, I’m one of those who likes to leave a scanner on all the time. It comes from a habit I developed as a kid. My father was a police officer and in those days, police transmissions were not encrypted. While I loved wheeling around the shortwave bands during the day, when Dad was working nights, I’d tune down to the VHF bands and hone in on the frequency assigned to his patrol division and see if I could hear him. In our area, the larger police jurisdictions have long since encrypted their signals, but other agencies like highway patrol and sheriff departments have not. It’s as interesting as ..read more

The Christmas season is busy for everyone…and hard on budgets. We took it easy on you last year by offering an auction brimming with reasonably priced accessories, and it was a big hit! You know, we’re hams ourselves and understand… Anyway, we have something new in store for our end-of-year auction – TUBES. A consignor recently sent a nice collection of tubes along with their regular equipment (some of which will be coming up over the course of 2024). While not normally a super exciting thing for us to sell, it turned out to be a nice stash of rare, useful, and valuable tubes, including some s ..read more

One of the joys of being in the auction business is discovering something special floating around in a sea of regularity – and that happened this October. As we were cleaning up equipment for photography and testing, KFØCOM discovered an original JPL/NASA DSIF (Deep Space Instrumentation Facility – pre-Deep Space Network) tag! It was affixed to the reverse along with a green and white inspection/calibration sticker with JPL stamp and handwritten dates 1/17/68 and 10/8/69 with “JPL 17” and “JPL 168” code stamps next to them – indicating this unit was in service during the heart of the Apollo pr ..read more

One of the most satisfying aspects of amateur radio is receiving or communicating with commercial and amateur radio stations from afar.  In the earliest days of amateur radio, mailing a written reception report to a distant station was done in hopes the station would reply with a verification letter on station letterhead, confirming the operator had indeed heard that station. As the number of operators and reception reports increased, stations gradually replaced long-form letters with the quicker-to-produce (and now more familiar) QSL postcards we still love to give and receive today. Com ..read more

Spring officially began in the Northern Hemisphere on March 20, 2023 with the vernal/Spring equinox as the entire world experiences an equal amount of daylight and darkness, as shown on the Geochron Atlas 4K.    The post Spring is in the air…The Vernal/Spring Equinox, courtesy of Geochron appeared first on Schulman Auction, LLC ..read more

Book Review – Wes Schum: Amateur Radio’s Unsung Hero by Dominic (Nick) Tusa, 2021, Jan-Carol Publishing By Charles Keller (KFØCOM) Like many areas and aspects of history, science and technology are most often remembered and discussed in the broadest terms. This is partially due to the depth of the subject matter and the likelihood that the average reader will lack a technical frame of reference for the underlying concepts and nuances. As a result of this broad-sweep approach, important individuals will inevitably be glossed over or pivotal events will appear underrepresented. Certainly, the am ..read more

SOLD for a record, $5,967.50 during our January 2023 auction! “The Hallicrafters Model FPM-200 Transmitter-Receiver/Transceiver is a complete, compact, self-contained radio station of advanced design. The versatility of the Model FPM-200 permits it to be operated as a fixed, portable or mobile equipment.”                  – from the FPM-200’s Operating and Service Instruction Manual Parts of the post below, are from the actual catalog listing from our January 2023 online auction. It was around 1960 when Hallicrafters put into limited production it ..read more

We get a lot of questions about how our auction process works and how we acquire and curate the equipment we sell. Let us start by saying, we don’t purchase collections outright. The simple reason is that you, the consignor, will benefit more if we sell your items at auction on your behalf. When you consign items, our seller’s commission is all we take. If we purchased your equipment or collections for resale, it would be like selling anything to a reseller. A calculation would have to be made – in our favor – accounting for risks and unknowns we would be taking, such as how much of the equipm ..read more

Welcome to the Schulman Auction blog. Whether you’re a ham radio op, a vintage audio enthusiast or collect or repair antique radios, we hope to have a variety of posts that pique your curiosity and provide relevant information on the above topics as well as provide information on our auction process. From cool new arrivals to behind-the-scenes operations from our auction facility of how we test, process and bring some exciting auctions to our customers, we’ll be providing regular content for your viewing. My name is David Schulman, WDØERU, owner and auctioneer of Schulman Auction. I’ve been an ..read more