Most of us have heard of New York City’s famous and now gone Radio Row.The electronics bazaar sat on thirteen acres of lower Manhattan now occupied by the site of the world trade center, this hodge-podge of family businesses held a treasure of old radios and old radio parts. It’s gone now, a victim of changing times and progressive development projects.

There aren’t many purely electronic supply stores left anywhere. When I was a teenager I worked in my father’s TV and radio repair business in San Bernardino, California. Every day after school I made a parts run in the company truck to Hurley’s Electronic Supply. It was much like an auto parts store and always busy.

I don’t know if it is still in business. Then there was Radio Shack, the victim now of completely inept corporate leadership that thinks a 400 square foot store front can compete with big box stores selling flat screen TV's, entertainment systems, computers, cd’s and DVD's. The last time I visited a Radio Shack, excuse me, The Shack, wanting to buy some parts for some components I was building, I discovered that there was almost nothing left. The wide shallow drawers of switches, fuses, capacitors, and everything else had been reduced by closeout sales to nothing else.

There is the internet, of course. Guys like Dan’s Small Parts has a lot of stuff. There’s a place in south Phoenix that carries a large selection of vacuum tubes, but you can’t really browse through shelves and stacks of goodies. You have to give your request to a clerk who disappears into a warehouse and comes out with the stuff.

I am putting together a battery/battery charger combination to keep a QRP beacon on the air in my absence. This is the radio supplied by Gernot Frauscher I wrote about in a previous post. I told my driver I needed to go to Modern Electronics or Master Electronics on Bomba Road in Kampala. The traffic was typically chaotic and he, my driver, never did find a parking place. He deposited me on the street in  front of the two stores and in I went.

It is the closest I have found to the classic radio supply shop. There are no used items, all new stuff and most of it from China. But they have thousands and thousands of pieces. It was a hoot. Up and down the street are dozens more shops selling electrical supplies, appliances, computers, computer supplies, and telephones. It is the type of place you either love or hate. The businesses are chaotic and pandemonium rules. Mostly owned by Pakistanis and Indians, they know their stuff.

There are no microprocessors for sale, no pieces to make PCB’s, but there’s just about everything else. Uganda, and probably most of Africa still have TV and radio repair shops. There are few left in the US, but here you can still take in your set for repair. There are two reasons why televisions, CD and DVD players are still repaired here rather than replaced. One is the initial relatively high cost. In the US, a new unit is usually a small portion of a person’s income. Here it is a significant portion and just buying another is often out of the question. One would have saved a very long time to get enough money to buy one to begin with. This reason gives rise to the next reason. Labor charges are very cheap here. Materials will cost a good deal more than the labor to repair something and even then it is comparatively low. Someone will work on a TV all day and the labor charge will be under $20. Not so in the US. Repair costs there will easily exceed the price of a new unit. Here, repair is much cheaper. So places like Masters and Modern Electronics stock lots of parts.

These are the only two electronics parts stores I know of. Up and down Bomba Road are dozens of computer stores and electrical supply stores as well. If it is powered by electricity, chances are good you will find it or parts for it on Bomba Road. I tell you, if you come to Kampala, go to our Radio Row.