Back on the air
Mend tube radios, tune them in
$4.99
iPad
Sixteen radios nobody came back for, in a shop on a street in old Quito. Find the fault, mend it, clean the cabinet, and hear the station come in through the static.
A storeroom of radios nobody came back for, and a bench to bring them back on.
In a radio shop on a street in Quito's old town, sixteen sets were left for repair and never
collected. Each one hangs from its claim ticket, with what its owner said was wrong: it hums
like the refrigerator, it goes putt-putt like a motorboat, it plays but sounds like someone
talking through a sock.
Every set is a real circuit, simulated as it runs.
Six chassis, each built to its real design: a 1950 five-tube table set with its heaters in
series and its chassis on the mains, a 1933 cathedral with a field-coil speaker, a 1939
console with push-pull output and a green tuning eye, a 1949 battery portable, a 1953 car
radio with its buzzing vibrator, and a 1946 communications receiver for Morse and the short
waves. The tubes follow their data sheets; the voltages are solved, not looked up.
Work the way a restorer does. Power it up through the dim-bulb tester first. Measure against
the service chart. Trace the signal stage by stage until it stops. Draw the solder off with
the iron, lift the part, choose its replacement, and solder it back. Align the IF cans with
the signal generator. Try the tubes in the tube tester. Knock the chassis and listen for the
tube that rings.
Faults are parts gone wrong, never scripts, so they combine the way they do in real sets: a
dried filter capacitor hums at the mains frequency, a leaky coupling capacitor drags the
output grid positive, a tired oscillator leaves nothing but hiss, a worn vibrator starves the
whole set.
Then the cabinet: wash it, polish the Bakelite, flow the crazed lacquer back together, brush
the dial glass. Each material wants its own care, and the wrong one does real harm.
The sets whose owners never come stand on the shelf and keep playing. Switch one on, wait for
the tubes to warm, and Radio La Ronda is on the air by your clock: the morning news, the
pasillo hour at noon, the radionovela at seven, the match on Sunday afternoons. After dark,
distant stations drift in on the sky wave.
Across the street is Relojería Arroyo, the watch shop from Tick Again.
The voltages in these sets are lethal. Back on the Air is a game, not a repair guide.
One purchase, everything in it: all sixteen sets and every free update. No ads, no in-app
purchases, no accounts, no tracking, and nothing leaves your device. Your shelf follows you
between iPads through iCloud.
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The developer, Pablo Miranda, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
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Information
- Seller
- Pablo Miranda
- Size
- 2.3 MB
- Category
- Simulation
- Compatibility
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
- iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later.
- iPad
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Pablo Miranda
