What would you get if you were DX'ing in 1935.

[Icangelp]

I very much appreciate DavidEduardo's wonderful site, and especially his American Radio History offshoot.

I was going through the January 1935 issue of Radio News and came across the "DX Corner".

Naturally, listeners on the coasts were hearing trans-oceanic signals, but the Midwest listeners were hearing what is impossible for us these days.

From and Ohio listening post -Australians 5CK 635 kc, 4QG 760 kc, 2BL 855 kc, 2CO 560 kc, 3AR 610 kc, 3LO 800 kc. Japan JOHK 770 kc, JOIK 830 kc, JOFK 850 kc, JOAK-1 870 kc.

A Michigan listener reported hearing 28 Japanese, 3 Chinese, 2 Hawaiian, and several South Americans. The Hawaiians he regularly heard were apparently KGU & KGMB. Australia & New Zealand were also mentioned.

TGW in Guatamala with 10 kw on 565 kc was widely heard at night throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Many of the Down Under stations appeared to be operating with powers as low as 100 watts.

The 1920's and 30's musf have been quite a DX ride.

 

[cd637299]

I myself have seen old radio sections of local newspapers, where a show would be listed, and dozens of station call letters would be listed, to let one know where to listen, for the show, even if the station seemed to be 1000 miles away.

I guess that back in the 20s & 30s, everybody who had a radio was a DXer.

Actually the late 1990s, for me, kinda hearkened back to those days of yesteryear, as I could catch X-banders out of California, from here in FL. That was, of course, before practically every X-band frequency was occupied by a TIS somewhere in this wonderful state.

This thread reminds me of the 1930 Laurel & Hardy short called "Hog Wild," available on YouTube.

cd

 

[kenglish]

Jerome Berg's books show some interesting diagrams of early home radio setups...Antennas strung inside of roof peaks, radio receivers wired to different rooms, patch panels for antennas and remote speakers.
It took some effort to partake of the Magic of wireless!

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I think you are looking back at the good old days that weren't in some cases. In the infancy of the power grid, interference was probably fierce on the AM band in populated areas. Add to that ungrounded, incompetently installed electrification in houses that were built long before electricity - and you have a recipe for severe electric shocks, electrocutions, fires - so interference was the least of the worries.

I visited such a house. My grandfather died in 1939, and my grandmother sort of froze the house in time. There was a single electrical drop in the middle of the kitchen ceiling, with separate drops draped across to numerous appliances - VERY unsafe, but it had worked for decades. Strangely, I have letters from that grandfather who was quite a DX'er, and reported hearing stations nationwide from Lubbock, even New York and Philadelphia - stations inaudible today in Lubbock. That was with a five stage tuned RF radio that had a two foot loop inside the cabinet. I had a chance to use that radio - it did extremely well on the low end of the band, easily netting daytime stations from Dallas. But the high end was a mess, as the radio (which hadn't been operated since 1939) had images where the alignment had changed. Every strong station appeared five closely spaced places on the dial - very understandable given the tuned RF architecture. The bandwidth of the stations also changed noticably across the band. Another reason why tuned RF radios were abandoned in favor of superheterodyne. I tried to snag that radio at the time, but my parents had little understanding of my hobby and wouldn't let me have it, even though the house had to be emptied.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I would rather have had a TRF radio with several tuning knobs than one with a ganged tuning capacitor. That multiple frequency appearance couldn't happen then, even if the components changed with time. With a superheterodyne, you could have had IF transformers that someone had messed with tuning at different frequencies. That was sometimes done deliberately to increase frequency response but only slightly and then the selectivity curve was bimodal, not two separate curves.

My father had a musical group that performed on several area radio stations in the 1920s and early 1930s. One was WREO Lansing, MI, which was owned by Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile and REO Motors fame. They were 500 watts fulltime, and they got letters from Montana. That was probably typical of the 500 and 1000 watt stations. He used to stay up to hear KFI in the early days of radio.

Presets on the 1938 Westinghouse that my Uncle (the one that later lived near the WJJD towers and told me about the tower near Greenwood) gave to my Grandmother were originally set to WJR 750 (50000), WWJ 920 (5000), CKLW 1030 (5000), WFDF 1310 (100), and WBCM 1410 (500). They had to switch the order of the presets around, as they didn't tune the whole band, when CKLW moved to 800 and WFDF moved to 910, and the rest moved up 10 kHz and 30 kHz.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Presets on the 1938 Westinghouse that my Uncle (the one that later lived near the WJJD towers and told me about the tower near Greenwood) gave to my Grandmother were originally set to WJR 750 (50000), WWJ 920 (5000), CKLW 1030 (5000), WFDF 1310 (100), and WBCM 1410 (500). They had to switch the order of the presets around, as they didn't tune the whole band, when CKLW moved to 800 and WFDF moved to 910, and the rest moved up 10 kHz and 30 kHz.

Yeah - my grandfather's radio stopped at 1500 kHz. I read about the great frequency swap when they extended the band to 1600.

 

[Dave-N2DS]

My father started his DX career in 1929 with a Majestic model 90 in Syracuse, NY.
Several years ago I scanned some of his QSL cards and logs and presented them
on my homemade radios website for all to see, download, etc. Here is the link:
http://makearadio.com/qsl/index.php

Enjoy.
73, Dave N2DS

 

[rbrucecarter5]

My father had a musical group that performed on several area radio stations in the 1920s and early 1930s. One was WREO Lansing, MI, which was owned by Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile and REO Motors fame. They were 500 watts fulltime, and they got letters from Montana. That was probably typical of the 500 and 1000 watt stations. He used to stay up to hear KFI in the early days of radio.

My other grandfather was supposedly a big deal on KMOX St. Louis in the 20's. I've never found out any more information on what he did, but it was almost certainly music of some sort.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Ok I don't know if radio existed back then, but if it did (and I'm guessing yes because of Ecclesiastes 1:9), I would have LOVED to DX before Noah's flood. From what I understand, the oceans may have been much smaller and not as salty, but there was no lightning, and I think more of the sun's radiation was filtered out by the water canopy, and I'd expect there was *NO* manmade noise. I imagine the noise levels were so low that even a cheaply-made pocket radio like a modern-day Coby, using only a built-in straight-wire antenna, could get crystal-clear blu-ray-quality reception on groundwave across the entire planet, and you could safely touch the antenna while the transmitter was on.

Now, though, I can't even hear the stations I want in the middle of the day, due to strong local first-adjacents splattering on their frequencies. Guess I need to find a better radio than my Tecsun PL-398mp.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

My father had a musical group that performed on several area radio stations in the 1920s and early 1930s. One was WREO Lansing, MI, which was owned by Ransom E. Olds of Oldsmobile and REO Motors fame. They were 500 watts fulltime, and they got letters from Montana. That was probably typical of the 500 and 1000 watt stations. He used to stay up to hear KFI in the early days of radio.

My other grandfather was supposedly a big deal on KMOX St. Louis in the 20's. I've never found out any more information on what he did, but it was almost certainly music of some sort.

 

[davideduardo]

I very much appreciate DavidEduardo's wonderful site, and especially his American Radio History offshoot.

Thanks. Take a look at the RadEx (Radio Index) section of the site... lots of DX reports and columns from the 20's up to 1942.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Radex_Master_Page.htm

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

My other grandfather was supposedly a big deal on KMOX St. Louis in the 20's. I've never found out any more information on what he did, but it was almost certainly music of some sort.

I have wanted to research the newspaper microfilm in the libraries to find out more information about my father's performances. He did have one newspaper clipping from May, 1927 where he played at the Fifth Anniversary Celebration of WFDF, but I haven't seen it in a while. I would have to research it in several towns to find all the performances. I approached the Historical Society in one small Michigan town to see if they had newspaper archives from the era when he performed there. They said they didn't have any archives. They gave me the name of the owner of the multigenerational family owned restaurant where he played, but said they didn't know if he would be able to help me, or if he would be willing to help.

He worked with some the radio pioneers who later managed and announced at Michigan's oldest radio stations, and knew a few of the songwriters who became well known from the 1920s to the 1950s. When I was young, I didn't take enough interest in what he had to say, and sadly I have forgotten much of it.

My father did mention listening to WPG Atlantic City, NJ, WJJD Mooseheart, IL, and WOR Newark, NJ, the WLS Barn Dance, and many others familiar to me, but it just seemed quaint at the time. My advice to younger people is to take more of an interest in those anachronistic things that your parents tell you about, because if you don't pay attention, you will regret it later when they are gone.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I've noticed the same thing with younger people on general non DX radio message boards when you mention stations and formats like The Big 8, Keener 13, and Big 10 WCFL. Some are surprised to hear a distant radio station, and think that AM has a naturally shorter range than FM, having grown up in the age of electrical interference. I emailed the young chief engineer of a TV station that was operating night light service on a Low VHF station in 2009, that I received over 1000 miles away. He asked me what Sporadic E was.

 

[Tincap]

I've just picked up a couple of old Radio TV magazines from the late '50s. One of them listed all the frequencies of all AM, FM & SW stations operating throughout North America, in 1958. At that time in Canada, we had more broadcasting on SW frequencies, than we had on FM (!). I was also surprised at the low power of many of the AM stations (besides the 'clear channels').

~BG

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Ok I don't know if radio existed back then, but if it did (and I'm guessing yes because of Ecclesiastes 1:9), I would have LOVED to DX before Noah's flood. From what I understand, the oceans may have been much smaller and not as salty, but there was no lightning, and I think more of the sun's radiation was filtered out by the water canopy, and I'd expect there was *NO* manmade noise. I imagine the noise levels were so low that even a cheaply-made pocket radio like a modern-day Coby, using only a built-in straight-wire antenna, could get crystal-clear blu-ray-quality reception on groundwave across the entire planet, and you could safely touch the antenna while the transmitter was on.

Now, though, I can't even hear the stations I want in the middle of the day, due to strong local first-adjacents splattering on their frequencies. Guess I need to find a better radio than my Tecsun PL-398mp.

It is fun to speculate about such things. I am a Christian believer myself, but take a very different view of Genesis and the flood than the creationist line. I'd go back much further in time, and see what the thermal inversion fro FM would be like on Pangaea, with the interior such a vast desert. Also, I'd very much like to investigate the changing AM daytime / nighttime reception patterns due to the gradual shortening of days from 6 to 24 hours as the action of the moon on tides slowed the earth's rotation. I can only imagine how much meteor skip one could get during the late heavy bombardment, but it would be extremely dangerous to DX during that era. For that matter, it would be interesting to see if the moon's closeness would reflect radio waves soon after its formation after the impact of Theia with the proto-earth. However, since the Theia impact reduced earth to a magma ocean, DX'ing would be impossible.

 

[Tincap]

Ok I don't know if radio existed back then, but if it did (and I'm guessing yes because of Ecclesiastes 1:9), I would have LOVED to DX before Noah's flood. From what I understand, the oceans may have been much smaller and not as salty, but there was no lightning, and I think more of the sun's radiation was filtered out by the water canopy, and I'd expect there was *NO* manmade noise. I imagine the noise levels were so low that even a cheaply-made pocket radio like a modern-day Coby, using only a built-in straight-wire antenna, could get crystal-clear blu-ray-quality reception on groundwave across the entire planet, and you could safely touch the antenna while the transmitter was on.

Now, though, I can't even hear the stations I want in the middle of the day, due to strong local first-adjacents splattering on their frequencies. Guess I need to find a better radio than my Tecsun PL-398mp.

It is fun to speculate about such things. I am a Christian believer myself, but take a very different view of Genesis and the flood than the creationist line. I'd go back much further in time, and see what the thermal inversion fro FM would be like on Pangaea, with the interior such a vast desert. Also, I'd very much like to investigate the changing AM daytime / nighttime reception patterns due to the gradual shortening of days from 6 to 24 hours as the action of the moon on tides slowed the earth's rotation. I can only imagine how much meteor skip one could get during the late heavy bombardment, but it would be extremely dangerous to DX during that era. For that matter, it would be interesting to see if the moon's closeness would reflect radio waves soon after its formation after the impact of Theia with the proto-earth. However, since the Theia impact reduced earth to a magma ocean, DX'ing would be impossible.

I wonder if FM would've been any good back then. A lot multi-paths, bouncing off of the dinosaurs, I suspect!

~BG

 

[crainbebo]

I'm sure, since "Jurassic Park" was set in Costa Rica, that KGOW 1560, WOAI, and WWL would have made it down there every night! With dinosaur strengthening!

-crainbebo

 

[cd637299]

I'm sure, since "Jurassic Park" was set in Costa Rica, that KGOW 1560, WOAI, and WWL would have made it down there every night! With dinosaur strengthening!

-crainbebo

I am sure that DavidEduardo can answer this, since you mention Costa Rica.

There was a project of a radio station in C.R., but I am not sure if it ever got off the ground. It was supposed to be Radio Milion (sp?), an AM with 1,000,000 watts, and if I recall reading the World Radio_TV Handbook correctly (c the 1976 edition), it was to be on 1560. Apparently there was a big nighttime void on that freq before KGOW got the go-ahead to operate at night.

If DavidE can elaborate on this station, it would be appreciated.

cd

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I wonder if FM would've been any good back then. A lot multi-paths, bouncing off of the dinosaurs, I suspect!

~BG

I suppose I could take an FM radio to the zoo and see if elephants have multipath. Although the science behind a large animal filled with slightly conductive fluid distorting signal paths would seem to be valid enough. This may be one for Mythbusters - if they ever do a DX special.

 

[cd637299]

Hey, let's all go on a "DX Safari" in Africa! Bring your radios & pith helmets.....

cd