Not sure how I found this site, but it looked pretty interesting. Radio has been part of my life since I was an 8 year old growing up in New Jersey, just west of New York City. Bear with me, and I will give you a bit of a background on me below!
It was a cold March day and I was home sick with a flu bug or some such thing. My trusty RCA 8 transistor radio batteries died on me, so I went downstairs to retrieve our trusty Emerson family kitchen radio. Unplugged it and trotted back to my room. Plugged it in, and realized something was wrong. We always listened to 77 WABC in New York, but when I plugged it in, there was no Herb Oscar Anderson, the morning mayor of New York. Uh oh, I broke the only family radio. I turned the only two knobs; one for power and volume and the other for tuning. But, I was 8, I had no idea about frequencies or such things. We only listened to 770 WABC. I did realize that by twisting the tuning knob that I did hear other sounds, music, talk, commercials. But no clue where WABC went.
Dad came home later in the day and came up to check on me. I had to admit that I broke the radio!! He asked what happened and I explained it all to him. He figured that on the way back to my room, I must have bumped the dial. Dad explained that while we listened to AM 770 WABC, that there were many other stations in New York and other areas. I told him how I was hearing weather for Boston, sports for Philly and some strange language, that was French as I later learned.
Relieved that I did not send the Emerson to radio graveyard, I realized that I discovered a new toy! A box that could take me around the country. Even though I was 8, I did realize that as it got darker in New Jersey that it let more distant stations come in. I started to hear Cleveland, Chicago, Toronto and even St. Louis. I started to keep a log and jotted down all these stations. I had no log or any idea of what else was out there.
When I mentioned this toy to my cousins and friends, none of them knew what I was talking about. And some probably , said, "so what!" WABC is fine. Every day when I came home from school I would listen even on my transistor radio which was pretty good at pulling in stations. I realized that every day, the conditions were different. My new hobby was intoxicating because of how it changed. When you collect stamps, or coins, it is pretty much the same, you look for new and rare items. But with radio, every day was a new canvas.
One Sunday morning I was reading our local paper, the Newark Sunday News. There in black and white, I read a column that was written by someone in the Newark News Radio Club and what the article laid out was that there other people out there listening to distant stations like me! Wow! I thought I was the only one! Not so.
The article gave information about how to join this club, which I did. It would include a weekly newsletter or bulletin that would come during peak DX season in fall and winter, and then less so in spring and summer when conditions were not so favorable. I now eagerly waited for my newsletters to come and gobbled up the information like a sponge!
I learned that an outside antenna would give me more signals, so I tried some random length wires and tried to hook it to my transistor radio, but it did not really help much. So, I hooked it up to the little piece of wire that came out of the back of the Emerson radio. OMG, when I hooked up the wire to the back of the plug in radio, it really juiced up my radio and I was hearing a lot of new stuff. Only problem was that I had no clue about "grounding" and I would roll out this piece of copper wire that I got at my local Lafayette Radio store that preceded Radio Shack. Yikes, I had about 300 feet of copper wire strung in our backyard. One bolt of lightning would have fried me and the radio.
As time went on, I got more and more sophisticated and even though I was 9, 10 and 11 years old, dad would drop me off on Saturdays at the homes of nearby adult DXers who had get togethers. I was always the youngest member but they were very free to share what they knew and let me play with their gear which was much advanced compared to my Emerson radio and RCA transistor.
When I was 11, I got a Heathkit GR-91 shortwave radio. It was 39.95 and I had to build it myself! Every day, I would race home from school and hit the basement and continue the construction of this 4 tube, superhet radio! It had shortwave bands, but I was specifically interested in the AM bands. Surely, this radio would bring in really distant stations.
The day came when it was time to plug it in! Dad insisted that I don't check it out unless he was there. I plugged it in and the front panel lit up. Luckily nothing else lit up, like the circuit board in flames! So far, so good. But I heard nothing! Just dead air. Oh no, what is wrong. I switched the band selector from AM to Long Wave to Shortwave and nothing.
Dad could feel my disappointment and offered some ideas, like probably unplug and replug! That did not work. Then he asked if it needed an external antenna? Ouch, my transistor and even the Emerson had an internal antenna, this one had none, only some screws in the back panel where I was to hook something up. I raced upstairs to get my wire antenna that was using with the Emerson and hooked it up to the Heathkit! Like magic, as soon as I attached the wire antenna, the radio came alive!! There were stations on every channel of that analog tuner! Dad stayed with me until we were sure that the radio was not going to explode. Convinced that I must have done a good job building the radio, he left me in the basement. From that day, I was hooked on radio. I think later that night I was hauling in many new stations from more distant locations.
Even though I was 11 at the time, I knew my career path would be in radio and in later stories I can pick up where this introduction message leaves off. I did work in commerical radio, went to Journalism school and eventually got into television. Stay tuned!
It was a cold March day and I was home sick with a flu bug or some such thing. My trusty RCA 8 transistor radio batteries died on me, so I went downstairs to retrieve our trusty Emerson family kitchen radio. Unplugged it and trotted back to my room. Plugged it in, and realized something was wrong. We always listened to 77 WABC in New York, but when I plugged it in, there was no Herb Oscar Anderson, the morning mayor of New York. Uh oh, I broke the only family radio. I turned the only two knobs; one for power and volume and the other for tuning. But, I was 8, I had no idea about frequencies or such things. We only listened to 770 WABC. I did realize that by twisting the tuning knob that I did hear other sounds, music, talk, commercials. But no clue where WABC went.
Dad came home later in the day and came up to check on me. I had to admit that I broke the radio!! He asked what happened and I explained it all to him. He figured that on the way back to my room, I must have bumped the dial. Dad explained that while we listened to AM 770 WABC, that there were many other stations in New York and other areas. I told him how I was hearing weather for Boston, sports for Philly and some strange language, that was French as I later learned.
Relieved that I did not send the Emerson to radio graveyard, I realized that I discovered a new toy! A box that could take me around the country. Even though I was 8, I did realize that as it got darker in New Jersey that it let more distant stations come in. I started to hear Cleveland, Chicago, Toronto and even St. Louis. I started to keep a log and jotted down all these stations. I had no log or any idea of what else was out there.
When I mentioned this toy to my cousins and friends, none of them knew what I was talking about. And some probably , said, "so what!" WABC is fine. Every day when I came home from school I would listen even on my transistor radio which was pretty good at pulling in stations. I realized that every day, the conditions were different. My new hobby was intoxicating because of how it changed. When you collect stamps, or coins, it is pretty much the same, you look for new and rare items. But with radio, every day was a new canvas.
One Sunday morning I was reading our local paper, the Newark Sunday News. There in black and white, I read a column that was written by someone in the Newark News Radio Club and what the article laid out was that there other people out there listening to distant stations like me! Wow! I thought I was the only one! Not so.
The article gave information about how to join this club, which I did. It would include a weekly newsletter or bulletin that would come during peak DX season in fall and winter, and then less so in spring and summer when conditions were not so favorable. I now eagerly waited for my newsletters to come and gobbled up the information like a sponge!
I learned that an outside antenna would give me more signals, so I tried some random length wires and tried to hook it to my transistor radio, but it did not really help much. So, I hooked it up to the little piece of wire that came out of the back of the Emerson radio. OMG, when I hooked up the wire to the back of the plug in radio, it really juiced up my radio and I was hearing a lot of new stuff. Only problem was that I had no clue about "grounding" and I would roll out this piece of copper wire that I got at my local Lafayette Radio store that preceded Radio Shack. Yikes, I had about 300 feet of copper wire strung in our backyard. One bolt of lightning would have fried me and the radio.
As time went on, I got more and more sophisticated and even though I was 9, 10 and 11 years old, dad would drop me off on Saturdays at the homes of nearby adult DXers who had get togethers. I was always the youngest member but they were very free to share what they knew and let me play with their gear which was much advanced compared to my Emerson radio and RCA transistor.
When I was 11, I got a Heathkit GR-91 shortwave radio. It was 39.95 and I had to build it myself! Every day, I would race home from school and hit the basement and continue the construction of this 4 tube, superhet radio! It had shortwave bands, but I was specifically interested in the AM bands. Surely, this radio would bring in really distant stations.
The day came when it was time to plug it in! Dad insisted that I don't check it out unless he was there. I plugged it in and the front panel lit up. Luckily nothing else lit up, like the circuit board in flames! So far, so good. But I heard nothing! Just dead air. Oh no, what is wrong. I switched the band selector from AM to Long Wave to Shortwave and nothing.
Dad could feel my disappointment and offered some ideas, like probably unplug and replug! That did not work. Then he asked if it needed an external antenna? Ouch, my transistor and even the Emerson had an internal antenna, this one had none, only some screws in the back panel where I was to hook something up. I raced upstairs to get my wire antenna that was using with the Emerson and hooked it up to the Heathkit! Like magic, as soon as I attached the wire antenna, the radio came alive!! There were stations on every channel of that analog tuner! Dad stayed with me until we were sure that the radio was not going to explode. Convinced that I must have done a good job building the radio, he left me in the basement. From that day, I was hooked on radio. I think later that night I was hauling in many new stations from more distant locations.
Even though I was 11 at the time, I knew my career path would be in radio and in later stories I can pick up where this introduction message leaves off. I did work in commerical radio, went to Journalism school and eventually got into television. Stay tuned!
