ORCATS

History

The Oldtime Radio Collectors And Traders Society (ORCATS) began when two Amateur Radio Operators, Ken Piletic and Larry Evans, callsigns W9ZMR and WA8DDN respectively, were talking to each other on short wave one Sunday in 1972 on the Forty Meter Ham Band.

During the conversation one of the two mentioned that he used to record radio programs from the broadcst band, and that he still had many of the old tapes. The other person said that he did the same thing, so they decided that they would make a list of the programs they had and meet the following Sunday to compare lists.

The following week they met again on the air and decided to make copies of some of their programs to exchange by mail. There were other hams listening to the conversation and a few of these listeners came on frequency and expressed a desire to get copies of these programs, too. It turned out that there were even more listeners who did not check in at that time.

Another week went by, during which the two received each other's tapes and listened to them. On that third Sunday, their conversation was mostly about those tapes and making arrangements for another trade.

The on-the-air chats were now scheduled for the same time, same frequency every Sunday. More people joined in. When it was discovered that there were commercial dealers in the business of selling reels, members of the group ordered various tapes and began trading these in a round-robin. Eventually, up to 10 tapes at a time were circulating among the group.

Interestingly, when scriptwriters for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater contacted CBS for copies of their programs that appeared on the radio series, they were referred to Ken Piletic because of his vast collection from recording the series off the air.

By 1975 the group was going strong, but it still didn't have a name. It was just a bunch of hams who met on 7.238 on Sunday mornings. The group decided that they should have a name for the group, settling on ORCAT, which stands for Oldtime Radio Collectors and Traders.

A year or two later, Fred Korb (K9HWZ) joined the group. Fred was an "organizer" type of person. He decided to add an "S" to the name. This stood for "Society". Fred was our first secretary. He kept track of the round-robins, printed and mailed a newsletter, corresponded with commercial dealers, and in general kept everything running smoothly.

Fred published articles in the name of the ORCATS and invited non-hams to join the group. All it took was an interest in preserving and propagating old time radio programs. The ORCATS as a group purchased "Big Buy Collections" from dealers, which consisted of a number of reels that none of the individual members could afford to purchase by themselves. Fred arrannged for these Big Buys and any of the ORCATS who were interested could contribute the same amount and receive copies.

Occasionally, ORCAT members were involved in supporting activities that benefited the Old Time Radio community. One event involved some of the ORCATS was the discovery of about 150 Electrical Transcriptions in the abandoned studios of WMMN in Fairmont, West Virgina. The ETs were copied to reel-to-reel and some included historical country music shows. These ETs were donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Using the technology

The ORCATS as a group was able to purchase blank tape in large quanties. The biggest purchase of blank tape was for some 19,000 blank reels at once. By the time the deal was completed, the number of reels increased to 25,000 - which included some broken reels that needed to be sorted out and re-spooled.

When cassettes became more popular, they were convenient for 1 or 2 programs, but copying and trading a large number of programs on cassettes was not practical for the ORCATS, so the group continued to trade and collect on reels.

When mp3 became a viable method of storage, the ORCATS began loosely trading mp3 programs for those who were interested. A round-robin external hard drive was sent through the mail again for those who could purchase their own hard drive to transfer the programs. A hard drive can hold more oldtime radio programs than an entire basement or garage full of reels!

Getting together

A number of ORCATS gather annually, when held, at a picnic that includes trips to various site seeing tours in the immediate area. Radio recreations are sometimes performed using originally created scripts written by members of the group. Some members of the group still meet up at the radio conventions mostly in Newark and Cincinnati. Though new kinds of interference have made it harder, many of the "ham" ORCATS members still try to meet up every Sunday on 7.238 kHz.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the ORCATS, contact either Bill Jaker (bilj at Hancock dot net) or Jim Widner (nspjfw at gmail dot com) (webmaster for the web page). Thanks to Ken Piletic for most of the history and Bill Jaker for additional information.