Your 'Last' Frequency?

[Steve Green NEPA]

Your 'Last' Frequency?

Your last frequency logged, that is, to complete the whole dial .....

It's somewhat amazing how DXing can pull you into it all at an early age. No doubt the music of the era was a big chunk of the mystique for those of us from the Sixties. And you could kind of 'evolve' with the chaging music scenes plus even sample earlier stuff in seconds with just a tweak of the tuning knob, like Dolly Holiday's overnight show and the endless racks of Nat King Cole records in the library. And you didn't even need a *good* radio to get enmeshed in DXing once and for all.

My 'rig' was a small GE AM clock radio exactly like the one that sat atop the Cunningham home of 'Happy Days'. The only 'source' of available DX stations back then was a section of a magazine called 'Radio/TV Experimenter' where every month something called The White's Radio Log would appear in its back pages. And the store that sold it in our Queens NYC neighborhood -- Optimo's newsstand on Liberty and Lefferts, right where the elevated 'A' train ended/began -- after a while, quite often had sold out the puppies by the time we got there. DX fever was a growth industry, apparently. Sometimes we'd have to scuffle a bit to get our update every month. A few times we got up early on a SCHOOL DAY and waited for the place to open and the truck to arrive with all the periodicals and newspapers bundled in twine. I believe that this one monthly publication might have saved the DXing group hundreds of thousands of dollars and attention eras as a substitute for comic books.

Anyhow ...1060 was my 107th and final frequency logged. 10 PM or so. Neighboring WHN 1050 was a sedate MoR at the time, and so was WRCV Philly. WHN had a few moments of silence or low modulation, and a 'WRCV in Philadelphia' ID came through.

Your own final frequency milestone, anyone?

And didja ever think you'd be able to do it back then? Huh? Huh?

 

[radioman148]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

I'll have to think a little about that "last frequency" but I sure remember Radio TV Experimenter. I loved that magazine.

 

[gr8oldies]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

That's a difficult one because I can't remember anyplace where every frequency didn't have something at least some time of the day. Maybe growing up 540 until I heard CBEF.

 

[gar hi]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

If we're talking about "back in the day" only, mine would be the one and only time I received KFI in South Jersey in the 70s. I think I mentioned this when I first joined this forum and that's what had me looking to get KFI all these years I've been down in Florida. So, I had returned back east from visiting my brother who lived in the San Francisco area at the time. At night out there, KFI was a power house on the dial and they played top 40 back then. The signal sometimes seemed to rival the strength of the then 610 KFRC which was about 30 miles away.

So when I returned home to New Jersey at the end of that summer, I spent many a night attempting to catch stations like KNBR 680, KCBS 740, KGO 810, as well as KFI. I just wanted to hear a station from California. At the time, I had the latest version of the radio frequency hand book and knew which stations were directional or not but I could have saved myself a lot of time if I knew then that KCBC and KGO were directional in a way they probably couldn't travel cross country. So where I was, 640 was a fairly empty frequency and what I usually heard was a station from Ohio, a 1kw station, I think. I could hear something else in the background but not good enough to hear what they were saying.

The radio I had back then was a portable Panasonic AM/FM stereo. The FM had something called "stereo spacer". How modern, huh? LOL The AM had decent reception with a good solid sound to it. Anyway, I had figured that if I had a shot at getting anything ftom California, KFI was my best hope. I figured that if I was able to get WCBS and the then WCAU out there (which I did but it was a rare thing), I should be able to hear one of their 50kw ND stations back home. I would listen for weeks and weeks with no luck at all.

Then the night came where I tuned to 640 and I still remember hearing the song "I go Crazy" by Paul Davis. It was a fairly good signal too. Right as the song is ending, I hear "Sixty four KFI!" They did some commercials and the station slowly faded away. I was never able to hear it again, including all the years I've been down fere in Florida.

That was until that one memorable night earlier this year.

 

[radioman148]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

KFI was a very tough one for me too back in the 60s until I finally got it in the midwest.
Later I found the best time to listen was before midwest sunrise. It would often come in very well at that time.
Now with all the clutter on 640, I can't get it at all.

 

[trusty]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

...640 was a fairly empty frequency and what I usually heard was a station from Ohio, a 1kw station, I think. I could hear something else in the background but not good enough to hear what they were saying.

I believe the 640 freq. developed late because of CONLERAD; the only stations on 640 then were KFI, WHLO in Akron, another small one in Oklahoma, and a Cuban blaster. I finally picked up KFI in Atlanta in '64 at 2AM - not a chance now.

 

[cyberdad]

Re: Your 'Last' Frequency?

Not counting the X band, for me, it would've been 530 as the last 540 as next to last and 640 third from last. CIAO, CBK, and KFI respectively. The latter two in the early or mid '60s.