ALDA 103/105 info-history from someone who was there
I saw some posts on here from a couple years back about Alda. ALDA, as it actually was called, was a subsidiary of a company in Oceanside, CA called ALD Industries. ALD was a cut and strip business that made subassemblies for lots of So Cal defense and toy manufacturers, as well as some pre-computer people. My father, Anthony L Duchi, (ALD himself) decided in 1977 that he was going to go into the ham business because we were getting ready to go cruising on our sailboat and he wanted a compact, multiband ham radio to take with us. He had a guy who had some design affiliation with Kachina, I believe, put together a proto design for him. I remember going to his house in Sedona. But it was a straight ALDA unit. It was not affiliated with Swan, Atlas, or Cubic, although it seems to me my dad hired away some techs from Swan. The company was located at 215 Via El Centro in the Oceanside industrial park. It shared the facility with all the other ALD manufacturing. I personally used to put together kit packages for sale to DIY people. I was 11 at the time. The 105 came out shortly thereafter, it had 5 and 10 meter bands as well in the same chassis. The name ALDA stood for ALD Amateur. In 1979 Kenwood came out with a smaller radio that pretty much put ALDA out of business. But I find it interesting that the radios are still in use today.
