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Anybody here a member of the National Radio Club?
- Thread starter kudzooter
- Start date
I was a member, as far back in the early Seventies, or whenever the time was when the entire gazette was typed on single sheets of 8 X 11 paper and mailed via the USPO. Was it 33 issues a year?
My loggings and contributions and inquiries were often so primitive and immature that I'd often get issues of DX News that were tattered and mangled in the mail, or with faded and illegible ink the last several pages. Sometimes the entire issue came that way, and sometimes with postage due. I wasn't exactly the Itzhak Perlman of the Loop Antenna and the sharpies on the NRC spotted that the first AQH.
Some names from the era are the late Ernie Cooper (who used to type the whole thing) ..... a guy named Hank Tyndall (who supposedly QSL'ed 6000 AM stations) .... Len Cruse (from the Midwest -- Iowa?) .... plus some other fellows who were in their teens and still liking AM radio enough to consider its magic relevant.
Cooper was the editor. He may have sired the first virtual web-site, only it wasn't on the web.
The NRC headquarters at the time were in Kittanning PA, a citadel chosen for reasons I'm sure were explained at the time. Kittanning is a smallish shire way west of here, about as close to Pittsburgh as I am to Philadelphia.
I may be wrong, but the full-fledged IRCA may have been sired later, in a contemporary sense, I mean. The up-and-coming West Coast DXers were three time-zones, fifty million neighborhoods and 106 channels different than we back in the elite East. (And didn;t the clubs merge for a while? If so, are they still merged, or it is a Coke-Pepsi thing?)
anyway, if they have the Baseball Hall of Fame in the improbable Cooperstown NY and the Football HOF in unlikely Canton, OH, then why not a future DX Hall Of Fame in Kittanning?
My loggings and contributions and inquiries were often so primitive and immature that I'd often get issues of DX News that were tattered and mangled in the mail, or with faded and illegible ink the last several pages. Sometimes the entire issue came that way, and sometimes with postage due. I wasn't exactly the Itzhak Perlman of the Loop Antenna and the sharpies on the NRC spotted that the first AQH.
Some names from the era are the late Ernie Cooper (who used to type the whole thing) ..... a guy named Hank Tyndall (who supposedly QSL'ed 6000 AM stations) .... Len Cruse (from the Midwest -- Iowa?) .... plus some other fellows who were in their teens and still liking AM radio enough to consider its magic relevant.
Cooper was the editor. He may have sired the first virtual web-site, only it wasn't on the web.
The NRC headquarters at the time were in Kittanning PA, a citadel chosen for reasons I'm sure were explained at the time. Kittanning is a smallish shire way west of here, about as close to Pittsburgh as I am to Philadelphia.
I may be wrong, but the full-fledged IRCA may have been sired later, in a contemporary sense, I mean. The up-and-coming West Coast DXers were three time-zones, fifty million neighborhoods and 106 channels different than we back in the elite East. (And didn;t the clubs merge for a while? If so, are they still merged, or it is a Coke-Pepsi thing?)
anyway, if they have the Baseball Hall of Fame in the improbable Cooperstown NY and the Football HOF in unlikely Canton, OH, then why not a future DX Hall Of Fame in Kittanning?
Steve Green NEPA said:
Ernie typed the Musings of the Members, but the sections like DX Down the Dial, the International section, DX Achievements, the verie signers, etc., were typed in that era on stencils by other editors and mimeoed in Buffalo by Ray Edge, the "head" of the very non-democratic NRC at that time.
IRCA was formed in 1963 by a group including Ed Krejny, Larry Godwin and yours truly to break the resistence to change of the NRC. The NRC dates back to the 40's. The two have not merged, but do cooperate.
Last I checked,, the publisher was in KS or somewhere in the plains states. I dropped membership when a significant and noisy group of NRC members became very anti-radio; I'm a broadcaster first and could no longer support the club I had been in for over 40 years.
During my active NRC years (1953-'58) Dick Cooper--no kin to Ernie/"Lefty"--was in Kittanning. Don't know if that was a coincidence, or the reason NRC HQ'd there. Back then, there were five very active guys, all about the same age as I (very early teens) in Croton-on-Hudson NY, thus my "CoHDXC" query. One of them, Alex McKenzie, took the train all the way from there to my home in southeast Arkansas, from whence he and I (and my Zenith Trans-Oceanic) bus-tripped to several Arkansas stations. One of the songs we heard on that trip was The Four Lads' "Gilly Gilly Ossenfeffer Katzen Ellen Bogen by the Sea," from which we cobbled together the mythical "GGOKetc DX Club." Recently re-established 55-years-ago contact with Ron Schiller, now in Florida but back then Avenel NJ ... and have heard from Stan Morss, Boxford (formerly Bradford) MA and Gerry Dexter, Waterloo IA. Kinda figured a few more of us 'young uns' from then would still be active, and would likely be on this board. But I appreciate the response so far...and will check back from time to time to see if there's more. 73.
Although not really all that active these days, I have been a member of the NRC for about 15-20 years. Their "DX News" newsletter has really gotten thin in recent years, but they do offer a great AM Logbook listing all AM stations, power, frequency, etc., along with many other informative publications. I was also a charter member of the IRCA back when it started around 1963 when I was a teenager. I stayed with them for about 5 or 10 years. I believe either of these clubs would still be an asset to any serious AM band DXer as much interesting information is available.
Tom, KR4BD
Tom, KR4BD
DavidEduardo said:
Topeka. He's trying to retire but not having much luck finding a successor.
IMHO it's a significant exaggeration to tag NRC members as being anti-radio. I don't think anyone in the club wants to see radio go away. Many do disagree (major understatement!) with the way the industry is trying to proceed.
Especially with regard to IBOC, where opposition might be reasonably described as hysterical, or frenzied. The truth is bad enough
, there is no need to invent charges that aren't true.
w9wi said:
Unfortunately, there is no understanding or interest in understanding of things so simple as why C2C is on 600 stations nationally... all the DXers see is duplication, while the listener in Bemidji only has concern if his local station, receivable on groundwave, stops carrying it.
Those clubs are populated by the biggest collection of Luddites and revisionists I've ever seen. I'm sorry to have ever been a member of either, and even thinking of it embarasses me.
David -- I've been to your site where pictures of the various radio station guides reside, and I recognize many of the covers since I used to own several.
Perhaps someone is on-board from the NRC days who can provide a sample sheet of those stenciled DX News days? A 'musing' from Ernie Cooper? An old DX down the Dial column? A verie-signers' list?
The Ernest-ness of the scene back in the Sixties and Seventies is much like what Allan Sniffen does on his New York Radio Message Board. His forum is a chat-room with a dump button or a two-hour delay button, whereas The NRC's virtual website had a week's delay button.
Reason I ask if such a replication is available is because I personally left the club because of the inundation of the more high-tech advances in listening and communications. Such things may have been necessary financially. But such drained a lot of the initial magic from me ; that of the basic Emerson and the loop. That's all I'd ever needed.
So my departure, which I'm certain left no void whatsoever, wasn't based on politics per se, or any hassle I had with whomevers the PTB were. My leaving *may* have been the end result of such politicking, but I was just a guy with an average radio who wasn't interested in building $300 devices so I could hear John Bohannon on yet another graveyard station. The basics that had lured me to the dial in the first place -- the terrific music ... the magic of distance ... the odd hours .... the comeraderie of others who liked music and travel and odd hours ... the innocence of a hobby -- all sort of fizzled out.
What I'm suggesting is that one of the newer pups to the DXing scene might very well take some interest in reading a page or two from the NRC or the IRCA, from back when there were more reasons to listen to the radio in the first place.
Are any such pages available?
Perhaps someone is on-board from the NRC days who can provide a sample sheet of those stenciled DX News days? A 'musing' from Ernie Cooper? An old DX down the Dial column? A verie-signers' list?
The Ernest-ness of the scene back in the Sixties and Seventies is much like what Allan Sniffen does on his New York Radio Message Board. His forum is a chat-room with a dump button or a two-hour delay button, whereas The NRC's virtual website had a week's delay button.
Reason I ask if such a replication is available is because I personally left the club because of the inundation of the more high-tech advances in listening and communications. Such things may have been necessary financially. But such drained a lot of the initial magic from me ; that of the basic Emerson and the loop. That's all I'd ever needed.
So my departure, which I'm certain left no void whatsoever, wasn't based on politics per se, or any hassle I had with whomevers the PTB were. My leaving *may* have been the end result of such politicking, but I was just a guy with an average radio who wasn't interested in building $300 devices so I could hear John Bohannon on yet another graveyard station. The basics that had lured me to the dial in the first place -- the terrific music ... the magic of distance ... the odd hours .... the comeraderie of others who liked music and travel and odd hours ... the innocence of a hobby -- all sort of fizzled out.
What I'm suggesting is that one of the newer pups to the DXing scene might very well take some interest in reading a page or two from the NRC or the IRCA, from back when there were more reasons to listen to the radio in the first place.
Are any such pages available?
Steve Green NEPA said:
Lee Freshwater who has http://www.amlogbook.com/ is the IRCA publications manager... he has the IRCA DX Monitor on CD, and they might sometime put them on the web. I have space on my server, and would be glad to host any of the sort of thing if I get the files.
Well, since we are talking a little nostalgia...whatever happened to Grant Manning, and Joe Worcester of SM-2 Space Magnet fame? As I recall, Worcester designed and built an AM receiver also. I have both a Grant Manning ferrite loop and a SM-2.
I still miss Radio West and Gilfer shortwave.
I was active in AM and shortwave DX from the late 50s right on through the early 80s and was a member of NRC, Long Wave Club of America and also IRCA for a while. Just returned to the scene in the last six months.
I still miss Radio West and Gilfer shortwave.
I was active in AM and shortwave DX from the late 50s right on through the early 80s and was a member of NRC, Long Wave Club of America and also IRCA for a while. Just returned to the scene in the last six months.
With the internet and o much DX and radio info freely available, I don't know why I would need to subscribe to a publication that would be at least a week old when I got it. I did enjoy the time; the Musings was a low-tech version of a message board like this. I stopped trying to QSL after about 1975. My favorite DX was sunset skip; getting daytimers at sign off time was always fun, and sometimes still is.
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