Electric Radio Magazine — Barry Wiseman N6CSW & Ray Osterwald N0DMS
The Publication That Gave the Community a Voice
Every technical community needs somewhere to put its knowledge down in writing — somewhere permanent, indexed, and reproducible. For the R-390A world, that place has been Electric Radio magazine, now in its fourth decade of continuous publication. Two men made that happen: Barry Wiseman, who founded it, and Ray Osterwald, who carried it forward and made it technically indispensable.
Barry Wiseman N6CSW — The Founder
In May 1989, Barry Wiseman launched Electric Radio from Cortez, Colorado under his Symbolic Publishing Company imprint. The premise was straightforward and, at the time, genuinely unusual: a monthly print magazine devoted entirely to the restoration, maintenance, and continued operation of vintage radio equipment. Not collecting as a passive hobby, but using the gear — putting it back on the air, understanding its circuits, keeping it running.
Barry’s editorial statement from those early issues set the tone that has defined the magazine ever since: “Electric Radio is published primarily for those who appreciate vintage gear and those who are interested in the history of radio. It is hoped that the magazine will provide inspiration and encouragement to collectors, restorers, and builders.”
That framing — restoration as both technical discipline and living history — attracted exactly the kind of serious contributor the R-390A community needed. Les Locklear’s contract survey series, Tom Marcotte’s military receiver histories, Jan Skirrow’s RF module redesigns, and dozens of other foundational articles all found their way into print through the vehicle Barry built.
Barry eventually stepped back to the role of Editor Emeritus, leaving the magazine in the hands of Ray Osterwald — a transition that preserved both the publication’s character and its continuity.
Ray Osterwald N0DMS — Editor and Technical Contributor
Ray Osterwald, based in Bailey, Colorado, has been the editor of Electric Radio for many years and is himself one of the magazine’s most prolific and technically rigorous contributors. His byline appears throughout the R-390A literature at critical junctures.
In April, May, and June of 1991 — issues 24, 25, and 26 — Ray published the three-part series “The R390a Receiver: A Milestone in HF Communications,” which stands as the first comprehensive modern technical treatment of the receiver in print form. This predates the online reflector community and the web entirely. For anyone who came to the R-390A in the early 1990s, this series was the starting point.
His technical writing on the receiver continued steadily. The Collins Linear PTO received a dedicated two-part series (ER #30 and #31, 1991). The R-390A front panel restoration and PTO repair procedures followed in 1992. In 1996, Ray produced a four-part deep-dive into the R-389/URR low-frequency receiver — an exhaustive treatment of the circuit design, RF architecture, and IF subsystems across four consecutive issues. These are not casual overview articles; they are engineering-level analyses written by someone who had opened the chassis and worked through the theory.
As editor, Ray has also served as the gateway through which the broader community’s technical work reached permanent print form. The contract number surveys, the restoration guides, the tube substitution research, the alignment procedures — all of it was reviewed, edited, and published under his stewardship. When Les Locklear needed five issues to fully document the R-390A contractor survey, Ray ran all five. When Tom Marcotte’s military contract history needed room to breathe, it got the pages it required.
Electric Radio also maintains the Collins Compendiums — three-ring-bound reprints of all technical service bulletins for the S-Line, KWS-1, and 75A-4 — and has served as a source for an extensive library of radio-related books and technical references. Under Ray’s management, ermag.com has made back issues available and searchable, extending the archive’s reach well beyond the original subscriber base.
What the Magazine Means to the R-390A Community
It is difficult to overstate how much of the documented R-390A knowledge base flows through Electric Radio. The r-390a.net bibliography of ER articles runs to dozens of entries covering contracts, general restoration, audio upgrades, tube substitution, PTO calibration, and receiver variants. When researchers, restorers, and new owners want to understand the depth of what has been written about this receiver, they are largely reading articles that Barry Wiseman’s founding vision and Ray Osterwald’s editorial and technical work made possible.
A magazine that has run continuously since 1989 — through the rise of the internet, the death of print generally, and the aging of its core readership — is not sustained by inertia. It is sustained by people who genuinely believe the knowledge matters and who show up every month to produce it. Barry and Ray have done exactly that, and the R-390A community is measurably richer for it.
Electric Radio is available at ermag.com. Back issues from May 1989 to the present are available for purchase. A subscription remains one of the best investments a serious vintage radio operator can make.
Mike Peace VK6ADA / r-390a.net Administrator