The building on Redwood Road doesn’t advertise itself. There’s no marquee, no sandwich board, no Instagram-optimized mural. What’s inside, though, is approximately four thousand square feet of radios, which is either your dream afternoon or a useful piece of trivia about what other people spend their retirements doing.
Lon Gibby is seventy-something, a licensed ham radio operator since he was a teenager, and the kind of collector who cannot walk past a garage sale without checking whether anyone’s throwing out a 1939 Zenith console. Over several decades, he accumulated enough vintage radios, transmitters, amplifiers, and related broadcasting ephemera to fill a small warehouse — so he did exactly that. The museum opened quietly in the Millcreek area, costs nothing to enter, and is open by appointment, which keeps the crowds manageable (meaning: there aren’t any).
The collection runs from the earliest crystal sets of the 1920s up through Cold War-era military transceivers and mid-century living room consoles the size of armoires. Gibby restored most of them himself. He’ll tell you that, not to brag, but because the restoration process is genuinely the point — figuring out what failed, sourcing period-correct capacitors, getting a needle to swing on a dial that hasn’t moved in sixty years. A working Atwater Kent from 1925 sits next to a rack of broadcast transmitters that once ran actual radio stations. Several of them still power up.
What makes a visit here different from wandering through a conventional museum is that Gibby tends to be there. He’s not a docent following a script; he’s the guy who knows where every piece came from and what it took to get it running again. He’ll pull you toward a 1940s RCA console and explain, in more detail than you asked for, exactly how superheterodyne circuitry changed everything. You’ll find yourself nodding along and, somewhere around the third explanation, actually interested.
The ham radio station in the back — his callsign is KA7T, hence the museum’s secondary name — is operational. On certain days he works contacts from it, which means you might walk in and find him in a decades-old ergonomic chair talking to someone in New Zealand via Morse code or voice, depending on band conditions. This is a niche pleasure, but it is a genuine one.
Salt Lake has no shortage of museums with bigger budgets, better lighting, and gift shops selling refrigerator magnets. This isn’t that. It’s a serious private collection maintained by one person who happens to know more about the history of radio broadcasting than most university departments. The breadth is real — AM, shortwave, military surplus, broadcast studio gear, amateur radio equipment across six decades — and it’s arranged with care, even if the arrangement is more “enthusiast’s workshop” than “curated gallery.”
Admission is free, which feels almost implausible given the scale. Call or email ahead; Gibby schedules visits individually, and showing up unannounced is a gamble. Groups are welcome, and he’s done tours for engineering classes and vintage electronics clubs alike. Figure a couple of hours if you let him talk, which you should.
It’s the kind of place that reminds you that some of the most specific, deeply knowledgeable experiences in any city live completely outside the tourist infrastructure. Nobody’s putting this on a listicle. Lon Gibby seems fine with that.
