Category Archives: Nostalgia

99% Invisible: “Voices on the Wire”

Many of you know that I’m a huge fan of 99% Invisible–a podcast and radio show about “design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.”

This past week, 99% Invisible’s episode, Voices on the Wire, featured Tony Schwartz, a recording pioneer, and Frank Conrad, a broadcasting pioneer. While not specifically about shortwave radio, you’ll hear how the ether weaved its way through both of their histories.

I should mention that Roman Mars, creator of 99% Invisible, is quite a fan of shortwave radio. Indeed, in the past, he’s featured our friend, David Goren, of Shortwaveology.net.

You can listen to Voices on the Wire and read the show notes on 99% Invisible’s website. Click here to download the episode as an MP3 file, or simply listen via the embedded SoundCloud player below:

Note that the Tony Swartz segment was originally produced by The Kitchen Sisters, Nikki Silva and Davia Nelson, from their series Lost and Found Sound; the segment on Frank Conrad was originally produced by Radio Diaries.

And, hey…if you happen to be chatting with Roman Mars anytime soon, ask him to do more shows on shortwave radio: a technology I consider to be the ultimate invisible medium!

Hamvention find: the Arvin 68R58 AM transistor radio

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Though I believe I spent more money at the Dayton Hamvention this year than I have in all previous years, I only purchased one radio: the Arvin 68R58 eight-transistor.

I spent a whopping $5 on the little Arvin in the Hamvention fleamarket. To be fair, the seller sold it for this modest price because he was not sure if the radio worked. But when I unsnapped the back leather cover, peered inside, and found the works remarkably clean, I suspected it might…

No original power supply was included, of course, and I was a bit concerned when I saw the somewhat out-of-character plastic battery holder. In the filtered fleamarket light, it appeared to me as if it required proprietary batteries–the holder appeared too small for C cells, and too large for AAs. There was no indication of the type of batteries it used, but since the spec read “6 volts,” I knew I could build a small AA battery holder, if need be.

So, at $5 (I bargained him down from $10, based on the doubt of operation) it was a very low risk purchase, and a potentially a fun project.

Back at home, I popped open the battery holder and looked inside…And I discovered the Arvin did, indeed, take four C cells. Simple enough! After inserting fresh batteries, I turned on the radio via the tone pot, and instantly heard beautiful, rich audio.

What I thought would be a project radio ended up being fully functional, and was, moreover, in tip-top shape.

So far, I’ve been very impressed with the Arvin’s AM sensitivity and audio fidelity. No doubt the generous ferrite rod antenna is doing the trick on medium wave.

Last night, as I tuned through the AM broadcast band, I was able to null out unwanted stations and noise amazingly well. There is something to be said of transistor radios from this era–let’s just say, they’re classics.

The Arvin has a simple set of controls: tone, tuning, and volume. There are no filter selections, of course, but I can tell that it’s quite wide; perhaps 8 or 9 kHz.

All in all, I’m very pleased with my little purchase, and the Arvin has become my new (vintage) bedside radio. Last night, I tuned in one of my favorite AM stations on 740 kHz, CFZM in Toronto, Canada. CFZM (a.k.a. “Zoomer Radio”) is not only a benchmark, but a right of passage for any worthy AM radio in my household. The Arvin passed the Zoomer test with colors flying.

And, yes, it even soothed me to sleep.

Now I only need to properly clean and restore the Arvin’s leather chassis and perhaps build a 6V-regulated linear power supply.

Next time you pass by a 1960s/70s vintage transistor, grab it! I’m certainly happy I did.

Now, I think I’ll turn on the Arvin, sip some dark beans, and put up my feet in the Pawley’s Island hammock…Cheers! Summer’s on the way.

Want one of your own? A quick search reveals that the Arvin 68R58 can be found on eBay for quite reasonable prices. Click here to search eBay for an Arvin.

Listening to an AM broadcast station on the BC-348Q

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I listen to my BC-348Q most days; in fact, it’s my preferred way of receiving my morning dose of Radio Australia on 9,580 kHz. And although you won’t find any medium-wave DXers endorsing this beefy antique rig, the BC-348, with its warm tone, has turned out to be a great shortwave receiver for casual listening.

When the armed forces commissioned the Signal Corps BC348 during WWII, the last thing they wanted was to have on-duty personnel listening to AM broadcast bands during, say, bombing sorties––so they purposefully omitted the medium-wave band. The band selections in the BC-348 are as follows:

200-500 KC.
1.5-3.5 MC.
3.5-6.0 MC.
6.0-9.5 MC.
9.5-13.5 MC.
13.5-18.0 MC.

But here in the comfort of my radio digs three-quarters of a century after WWII, I recently discovered that this classic “hot war” receiver does, indeed, pick up one of my local AM broadcast stations: WTZQ, and on 1,600 kHz. WTZQ has become one of my favorite stations; it’s one of the few in this region that’s still actually independently owned. The station’s playlist spans the decades, including, as they say, “everything from Glenn Miller to Steve Miller.” And, since they’re on “1.6 MC” they make the cut on the ‘348’s second-band selection. How cool is that?

WTZQ’s station is a good thirty miles from here as the crow flies, so reception usually includes a little static on the wire antenna I’ve connected to the BC-348. Still, you might enjoy this short audio clip of WTZQ via the BC-348Q:

You can stream WTZQ, by the way, via their website. Enjoy!

Photos from the VOA Bethany Museum

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Immediately after packing up our table at the Dayton Hamvention, my buddies Eric (WD8RIF), Miles (KD8KNC), and I made the 30 minute journey to Bethany, Ohio, to visit the VOA Bethany museum.

Main entrance and front lobby (above).

Entering the transmitter control room.

Eric pointed out an article on the future of shortwave radio I published last year that the museum has posted in the hallway next to the control room (above). What an honor!

The antenna switching array behind the main building (following four photos).

WLW (700 kHz) 800′ tower in the distance (above).

The satellite dish (above) was once used for VOA’s downlink/feed–now the West Chester Amateur Radio Association (WC8VOA) uses the dish for EME (Earth Moon Earth) contacts.

Back inside, WC8VOA has four full amateur radio operating locations stocked with Icom, Yaesu and Kenwood gear. The club president told us that an antique amateur radio station will soon be added.

Our docent took us on a tour of two vaults filled with vintage radio equipment and then a museum devoted to the legacy of WLW. The item in the photo above is a corona ball from one of the original towers–notice the holes from lightning strikes.

Example of an early radio kit (above).

A rare Third Reich radio (above).

When Ohio-based R.L. Drake Company stopped manufacturing amateur radio equipment, samples of their full product line were donated to the museum.

The Museum is planning substantial renovations to restore the VOA Bethany Station and become a first class institution. During the restoration, the Museum is only open one day per month to the public: The third Saturday of each month from 1:00 PM – 4:00.

Click here to view the museum’s new website.

Jeffrey re-caps his Hallicrafters SX-110

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The restored SX-110 sitting on the bookshelf in the shack.

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Jeffrey Fritz, writes:

During the summer of 2012 you were nice enough to run an article in your blog about my reviving a 1961 Hallicrafters SX-110 General Coverage receiver. The radio has continued to perform reasonably well during the last few years. However, recently I acquired several pieces of professional test equipment. That encouraged me to delve even deeper into the restoration of my old receiver from my novice ham radio days.

Over the past week, I completely recapped the SX-110 (except, of course, for the mica and ceramic caps as they still good, and the electrolytic caps as they were replaced in 2012.)

The SX-110 isn’t a complex receiver, but there are quite a few caps, so I worked methodically and carefully. I started working from the audio amp stage and continued working back through the IF stages and the BFO to the RF stage. I recapped each stage replacing the old caps with new Orange Drop caps. Each stage was tested before I moved on to the next stage. Here’s a photo of the recapped chassis:

Here are the capacitors that were removed from the receiver. Most are the old Bumble Bee caps–called that because of the color stripes that mark their value:

Virtually every Bumble Bee cap tested leaky and out of tolerance.

Next, I tested every tube replacing the weak or bad ones with NOS (New Old Stock) tubes. Every pot and switch was cleaned with DeOxit and moving parts were lubricated where appropriate. Finally, I did a complete re-alignment following the instructions in the Service Manual.

As with all vintage tube gear, restorations require patience, care and a decent knowledge of electronics. It’s easy to make a fair radio–even a good radio–into a disaster if you are not careful. Also there is enough voltage and current inside of the chassis of a tube radio to toss you across the room. So care is always the order of the day as is a VARIAC to bring the radio up to AC line voltage slowly.

The receiver now sounds as good as ever–perhaps even better than ever. It has marvelous AM audio and can pick up ham and broadcast stations on all bands with nothing more than a wire in my basement. It even does a decent job on SSB–something that I don’t recall it ever bring adept at in the past.

That say that you can’t keep a good man down. Similarly an old radio, with some new parts and some TLC, can run virtually forever.

I agree with you: you can’t keep a good radio down! Repair work is certainly the commitment we make when we fall in love with these old rigs. It’s a good thing that almost all of the parts are still available and relatively affordable.

Thanks again, Jeffrey!

NHK Radio Japan’s 80th Anniversary

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who reminds us that 2015 is the 80th anniversary year of NHK Radio Japan.

David shares the following link to NHK’s anniversary website:

http://www.nhk.or.jp/intl80th/

When WLW was the one and only “Super Station”

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WLW’s diamond-shaped Blaw-Knox radio tower at night (Original photo by RP Piper via Creative Commons 2.0)

(Source: National Endowment for the Humanities)

For a Brief Time in the 1930s, Radio Station WLW in Ohio Became America’s One and Only “Super Station”

by Katy June-Friesen

When President Franklin Roosevelt, sitting in the White House, pushed a ceremonial button on his desk in May 1934, a five hundred thousand-watt (500 kW) behemoth stirred in a field outside Cincinnati. Rows of five-foot glass tubes warmed. Water flowed around them at more than six hundred gallons per minute. Dozens of engineers lit filaments and flipped switches, and, within the hour, enough power to supply a town of one hundred thousand coursed through an 831-foot tower.

Thus began WLW’s five-year, twenty-four-hour-a-day experiment: a radio station that used more power and transmitted more miles than any station in the United States had or would. The so-called super station—licensed by the new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on a temporary basis—amped up the debate among broadcasters, government regulators, and listeners about how radio should be delivered to serve the “public interest,” a mandate laid out in the Radio Act of 1927, and influenced legal, programming, and technical decisions that shape the broadcast system we know today.

Since radio’s beginnings in the early 1920s, industry and government leaders promoted it as the great homogenizer, a cultural uplift project that could, among other things, help modernize and acculturate rural areas. The challenge was how to reach these areas, many of which received few or no radio signals in the mid-1930s. One solution was high-powered, clear-channel stations that could blanket large swaths of the country with a strong signal. These stations operated on “cleared” frequencies that the government assigned to only one station to prevent interference.

WLW had operated on one of forty designated clear channels since 1928. The station’s creator and owner, an entrepreneur, inventor, and manufacturer named Powel Crosley Jr. frequently increased the station’s wattage as technology and regulation allowed. In 1934, when WLW increased its power from 50 kW to 500 kW, all other clear-channel stations were operating at 50 kW or less. Now, WLW had the ability to reach most of the country, especially at night, when AM radio waves interact differently with the earth’s ionosphere and become “skywaves.” People living near the transmitter site often got better reception than they wanted; some lights would not turn off until WLW engineers helped rewire houses. Gutters rattled loose from buildings. A neon hotel sign near the transmitter never went dark. Farmers reported hearing WLW through their barbed-wire fences.

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