Automatic Radio - 8 Tracks

WA1ZYX / KA1QFA

Automatic Radio

8-Track Players

I remember back in the late 60's while living in Northern NH, of riding the school bus for just about an hour each way. The owner of the bus company (Ham Ford), thought of this wonderful idea of installing stereos in the busses to keep us kids quiet.

The make of choice seemed to be Automatic Radio. I remember at least 3 different models with the largest bus being the one that you really wanted to ride, because it had 4 speakers!!

Most of the earlier models only had a blue power indicator light and the later models used green to actually indicate the channel. As far as I know, the exception was the 811, which used a white back-lit rotating wheel to indicate the channel.

I'm still looking for images of AR players, so if you happen to have one, please let me know!! Thanks....

AR206

The majority of the busses had the model above.

The largest bus had one of these, pictured above, for a while.

Another photo with the AC Power Supply for home use. The AC supply also supports the 4 speaker outputs from the 811.

I know at some point, at least one of the busses had one of these.

4 Track Players

RAL530 Quad - Not positive about this one, it claims to be made by "Rally", but notice the "AR" logo in the center of the name along the top center edge.