- company and my grandfather started this 1944 and originally him and his brothers started full of PEP
- appliance him and two of his brothers when radio came out big my grandfather split off started stands
- for radio 1944 like I say that was on Prospect Hill over on Roger Street and they
- had a duplex. The business was in one side and they lived in the other side. And he bought this property
- here in 1953. Built the building you see now and been here ever since. Still in the family. I have a
- picture here if you're interested in looking at it. This here is my grandfather. This was his two brothers.
- And that's a newspaper clipping from back in the 30s. So they've been entrepreneurs in this area for
- quite a few years. And the business has changed a lot through the years. Of course, radio's not the
- repair business it was. We graduated into the TV repair and covered most of southern Indiana.
- delivering parts to TV repair shops everywhere. And that basically carried us through the 50s, 60s,
- 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s. And as we know, not very many people fix TVs anymore. So that business
- has gone away. We graduated into the industrial business.
- doing business with Indiana University, several different industrial places around here, and the medical
- industry. The medical industry's been huge in our success here through the years and still continues
- on. Do you still get many like radio and TV hobbyists coming in? We do. We get quite a few hobbyists
- coming in. Not what it once was, but
- Still, we've got some amateur radio operators that show up, and just your general hobbyists. It's great.
- Yeah, I played in here when I was a kid. I started working here 54 years ago when I was 13 years old.
- My grandfather would find things for me to do. I'd mow the lawn, paint the building, put up stock, anything
- he could find to keep me busy and keep me involved.
- That was great. That was great. A lot of great memories. That's why I'm still here. That's why we're
- still going. My mother worked here. It was her dad that started the business. She passed away four years
- ago, but she was involved in the business through all those years. We worked together. My wife is a
- bookkeeper in there in the office. She takes care
- She takes care of the money. I take care of spending it. I've got a pretty good selection of old radios
- up here that a lot of people have come in and admired through the years and starting from the clock
- there, which everybody likes my clock up there. That one's a 1923 and then
- 1928, 1937, a lot of different ones that are pretty neat pieces. Like you say, a lot of things have
- changed through the years. That shelf right there and the back shelf back there used to be all receiving
- tubes to fix your TVs with. As you see, none of that exists anymore. You can take a look around. We
- got a lot of different parts. We got a lot of different
- cables, connectors, lamps, relays, fuses, capacitors, resistors, just you name it. I think at last count,
- we had 28,000 part numbers. And that's a lot. That's a lot, yep. We do sell wire by the foot.
- You got it all spooled up and I know it looks a mess back here but a lot of people don't need a thousand
- feet of cable or whatever you need as we'll try to supply it for you. There used to be stereo equipment
- all around the room in here and you could control everything from this old panel right here. If you
- wanted to hear an amplifier, you'd push the button. If you wanted to hear an accessory to that amplifier,
- This button, any set of speakers, you could do the whole thing. Just stand right here and turn everything
- on in the room. It's pretty neat. My grandfather's design here. I got this stereo right here that we
- still listen to every day. That was my graduation present from high school in 1970s. Wow. Great.
- A lot of old stuff in here, including me. The crystal radio was the first circuitry thing I ever messed
- with. And it's like this bunch of little wires and stuff and a crystal. You can pull in radio signals.
- It's pretty cool. That's a pretty good start in electronics for most young kids. Well, I would like
- to say thank you for the community.
- community of Bloomington and others around the surrounding area that's kept our business thriving through
- the years. So we appreciate each and every one of our customers and always good to see you come in.
- Thank you. Hi, my name is Dave Lindley with the National Free Flight Society. We're here today at the
- beautiful West Bodden Resort
- Flying a sport we call indoor free flight. It's a pretty simple concept, a rubber band powered airplane.
- Some are very large, some are very small, but they're all very light. The heaviest airplane you'll see
- fly today weighs 3.1 grams, which is the weight of a US penny. The bigger ones you see are actually
- lighter. They are the international class.
- and they weigh about 1.4 grams. And in this room today, we have the current world champion, Brett Sanborn,
- and we have four previous world champions in this room flying today.
- So we actually fly all over the world at big, voluminous buildings like this. The West Baden Resort
- is very nice for us because there's so much area in the round. But we fly in old blimp hangers around
- the country.
- In December, we took the US team to the World Championships in a salt mine in Romania. So 800
- feet underground, but the cavern height is 185 feet. So if you have a large open room, we will be there
- flying. Great. You guys could use a new hobby.
- like cut up in the shirt like oh it's gonna hit me in the face