Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Mark Hirst, who writes:

This gem arrived in the charity shop where I volunteer yesterday, a radio made in the USSR (Minsk) in around 1975.

It was in fantastic external condition, although after checking it out discovered that the band changing control on the right hand side had been disconnected.

I suspect something went wrong with the very mechanical way it switched frequencies (shown in the video below), which rotated individual circuit boards into play.

Somebody seems to have opened it up, set it permanently on VHF, and then disconnected the control to prevent any further changes.

It was evidently sold in the UK as it has BBC radio stations on the dial and I even found a UK service manual for it.

I was tempted for a while, but I’m learning these days that this sort of thing just ends up as clutter.

Hard to believe that only five years after this electro-mechanical radio was made, Sony would release the ICF-2001 !

Mark

Manual:
https://archive.org/download/Trader_ASTRAD_B205/b205_text.pdf

Radio Museum:
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/minsk_radi_astrad_f8_tr17_b205f8tr17.html#

YouTube – Astrad “Mikado” F8-TR17-B205:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osDxKNdun98