Ham Radio Outlet (HRO) opened its latest Amateur Radio retail outlet at the site of the former Amateur Electronic Supply (AES) headquarters store at 5710 West Good Hope Road in Milwaukee on August 27. AES closed its Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Cleveland, and Orlando outlets on July 28, following a surprise announcement 4 weeks earlier that it was going out of business after 59 years as a ham radio equipment supplier. A couple of weeks later, HRO announced plans to make over the Milwaukee outlet and reopen it as its “superstore” — now HRO’s largest. Several former AES Milwaukee employees now are working for HRO, which undertook a rapid remodeling project to make the store over in its own brand. Dan Vanevenhoven, N9LVS, visited the HRO Milwaukee location on opening day, camera in hand, and he posted video of his brief tour on YouTube.

“One of the first things that caught my eye was the radio demo area,” Vanevenhoven says in his video. “They’ve actually got radios that you can try out.” A row of eight carrels, each with a different piece of gear ready to use, stretches along part of one wall in the store.

The Milwaukee store in 5000 square feet of Amateur Radio equipment, antennas, books, and accessories.

A family-owned business, HRO is the world’s largest Amateur Radio dealership, with 14 locations from New England to the West Coast. It opened a new outlet in Plano, Texas, in early 2015 and relocated and expanded its Portland, Oregon, store, which opened in late July.

HRO has planned the weekends of September 10, 17, 24 and October 1 for the grand opening of its Portland store, and October 1, 8, 15, and 22 for the grand opening of the new Milwaukee outlet.