[Radio Wrangler]

It's a nice little transistor radio with RF stages and what looks like several IF stages (hence Batterymaker's comment)

The big lump of a handle houses a ferrite rod antenna, connected straight down through the pivot axle to the variable capacitor below. There is a signal strength meter in the top plate.

Rotate the antenna to find a null and read the angle from the scale.

The problem is that there are two nulls if done simply. However, the little whip antenna receives a bit of (mostly) the E-field of the incoming signal, and adding its contribution to the ferrite rod makes the two nulls unequal, so there is only one good null and the ambiguity is resolved.

The scale is only good, of course, if the orientation of the box is controlled with respect to your boat.

Tuning range will be long, medium, probably the LF aviation beacons, and maybe the lower marine band.

It should work as a basic marine band RX with the adventage that you can take a bearing on the transmitter.... very handy if you hear a call for help.

Electronically, it looks pretty good. But from a point of surviving on, say, a yacht, the weatherproofing is non existant. It needs to be kept in a protected place.

If it's been restored, it looks almost like new.

David