Every so often, while doom scrolling through Facebook Marketplace (as one does), you stumble across something that stops you dead in your tracks. For me, it was this massive 1950s Motorola VHF base station weighing in over 300 pounds of old school vacuum tube radio engineering, still standing tall and looking surprisingly complete for its age.
The seller was asking next to nothing for it, which made it even more unbelievable. The only catch? It was in Tomahawk, Wisconsin a long haul from where I live. I happened to be eating dinner with a friend at the time and mentioned it to him. Without missing a beat he said, “Well, let’s go right now!”
I laughed at first, assuming he was joking. But for a moment I really sat there thinking, what if we actually did it? A spontaneous road trip for a 300-pound antique transmitter… equal parts amazing and completely impractical. In the end, we didn’t make that impulsive midnight run.
A day later, the seller messaged me to say it had been sold. I wasn’t surprised just disappointed. I sighed and resigned myself to the idea that this giant piece of radio history had slipped away.
Then she offered to pass my contact information to the buyer.
The next day, I got a message. The new owner told me he had intended to part it out, and I made my pitch: I’d take the whole thing, as-is, and even triple what he’d paid still under $200. He agreed, but there was one complication: he was scheduled for double knee replacement surgery that week. We agreed to reconnect in mid-to-late November 2025.
When November came around, I reached back out. We picked a date, loaded up for a 1,200-mile round trip, and hit the road. Now this big old Motorola beast is sitting in my garage.
To my surprise and excitement, it came with the original manuals and schematics, the kind of documentation you almost never find with equipment this old. I’ve searched for information on these units before and found very little just a handful of Reddit and Facebook posts. Now I have the real thing and the paperwork.
The plan?
A complete restoration and if all goes well putting this 1950s transmitter back on the air, making RF once again. I plan to convert it into a VHF repeater.
I couldn’t be more excited!
I had the manual scanned! Here is a digital copy for anyone who may like or need it.