Category Archives: Nostalgia

Radio Waves: Dynamic GPS Tutorial, BBC’s First Female Employee, Rugby CW ID in Tubular Bells, and Roger Wallis Passes Away

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

GPS Tutorial by Bartosz Ciechanowski

Check out this amazing, dynamic deep-dive into the world of GPS.

The BBC’s First Female Employee: Isobel Shields (The British Broadcasting Century with Paul Kerensa)

Episode 41 (aka Season 3 episode 2):

On January 2nd 1923, John Reith interviewed Miss Frances Isobel Shields for a job at the BBC, to be his secretary. At the time the BBC had four or five male staff members. Miss Shields started work on January 8th, instantly making the BBC a 20% female organisation. It’s been greater than that ever since.

This episode’s fab guest is Dr Kate Murphy: academic, former producer of BBC’s Woman’s Hour and author of Behind the Wireless: A History of Early Women at the BBC. Her book is brilliant and highly recommended for a deep dive into the subject.

Hear Isobel Shields’ tale, plus the women who broadcast before her: Britain’s first DJ Gertrude Donisthorpe, 2LO’s first children’s presenter Vivienne Chatterton, and one of our first broadcast comedians Helena Millais. (You can hear their fuller tales if you go back to the earlier episodes on this podcast.)

And hear about some of the women who joined the BBC soon after Miss Shields, like telephonist Olive May and women’s staff supervisor Caroline Banks. Plus hear about some of John Reith’s unusual management practices, from taking his secretaries to the cinema to his brutal firing criteria.

But we dwell on his hiring not firing, as well tell the origin story of British broadcasting. [Continue reading…]

Hidden Morse Code in Tubular Bells (Madpsy’s Palace)

The link between The Exorcist, Amateur Radio and Alan Turing.

A quick look at how the movie The Exorcist from 1973 has links to the late great Alan Turing via Mike Oldfield’s album Tubular Bells, Scotland and Amateur Radio. It’s Halloween so figured why not throw some horror in the mix.

When Mike Oldfield recorded Tubular Bells in 1973 he had no idea his first album on Virgin Records would be chosen as the soundtrack to The Exorcist later that year. Neither did he know that recording with Virgin Records would have an unintended consequence of hiding a secret message which dates back to 1926, shortly after World War One.

Tubular Bells was famously recorded at The Manor Studio which was owned by Richard Branston and used as a recording studio for Virgin Records. The building is located in Shipton-on-Cherwell, England. Mike was given one week to record the album, on which he played almost all the instruments himself.

The album initially struggled to sell. Then, later the same year, it was chosen as the soundtrack for the movie The Exorcist. It then experienced massive success and has since sold over 15 million copies worldwide. [Continue reading…]

Roger Wallis from “The Saturday Show” on Radio Sweden passes away

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Lennart Wennberg, who notes:

Just got the news that Mr Roger Wallis has died at the age of 80.

I remember him from Radio Sweden’s Saturday Shows on MW in the 70s. He was “Big Bad Roger” and hosted together with Kangaroo Kim.

Lennart Wennberg
Sweden

From Wikipedia:

Roger Wallis (8 August 1941 – 22 January 2022) was a British-born Swedish musician, journalist and researcher.[1]. He was an adjunct professor of multimedia at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.[2]

Between 1967 and 1981, Wallis was the main presenter of the English language The Saturday Show on Radio Sweden. Wallis also co-wrote “Judy, min vän”.

Wallis died on 22 January 2022, at the age of 80.

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Mystery radio in “Orphan Black”

14 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan Lurie, who writes:

Hey, I’ve known your site for quite a while, ever since someone gave me Sony’s last portable world band radio, the ICF-SW7600 many years ago. Was wondering if maybe you or someone else who peruses your blog would recognize this set in the background of an episode of Orphan Black.

Hard to tell, but it appears to be a more conventional radio. Regardless, it is positively fierce! And since the imrdb seems to have died, I thought I’d ask you. Hope it’s not a bother. I’m still learning so please keep up the good work!

Alan

It’s not a bother at all, Alan! Indeed, many here in the SWLing Post community love solving our radio mysteries. Sadly, I can’t get enough detail from the image to determine the model, but I’m willing to bet someone else can! There are a couple good clues in there.

Readers: Please comment if you can ID this radio. Good luck!

Guest Post: Mark explores a 1983 Voice of America information pack

6 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who shares the following guest post:

VOA Information Pack 1983

by Mark Hirst

Introduction

A recent guest post on this blog by Jock Elliott asked the question, ‘Why Listen to Shortwave?’

The comment I left at the time was my interest in how nations view themselves, and how they project that view to the world. This might be in the form of cultural exports like music, or teaching us about famous people or revered institutions in their country.

When I first started listening to shortwave in the early eighties, I never got into the habit of asking for QSL cards, being quite thrilled enough to receive programme guides in envelopes stamped with the postmark of other countries.

At the time, the primary stations for me included Radio Netherlands, Radio Sweden, Swiss Radio International, and the Voice of America. While most might send a small leaflet about their country with a frequency schedule, the information pack I received from the Voice of America stands head and shoulders above the others.

I thought readers might be interested in a brief description of this pack and with it a glimpse back into the world of 1983.

Please note that as you read the following sections, you can click on the images to view a larger version.

Package Contents

The package arrived in a manila envelope, with the logo and address of the VOA printed in the top left corner. In the top right corner is the logo of US Mail, with a declaration that postage and fees where paid for by the US Information Agency.

Package contents included:

Compliments Card
VOA Sticker
Steering the Course Magazine
VOA Magazine
May-October 1983 Programme Schedule

VOA – The Voice of America

This guide begins by outlining the mission of the VOA, emphasising its aim to be an authoritative and reliable source of news. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Crystal Radios – Construction, Listening, and Contesting

13 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Day (N1DAY), for sharing the following guest post:

Crystal Radios – Construction, Listening, and Contesting

By David Day – N1DAY

The date was November 2, 1920 and the world was about to change forever when radio station KDKA out of Pittsburgh PA made its first broadcast of election results from the 1920 presidential election. For the first time in history people knew who won the election before reading about it the next day in the newspaper. Radio had arrived!

However, hearing the election results was not as easy as powering up an AM radio receiver because radio electron tubes had only been invented a few years earlier and they were still too expensive for most people to afford in a radio set. After KDKA’s historic broadcast, large 50,000 watt stations began popping up in all major cities around the world. Even though a tube-driven radio was not yet commonplace, many people listened to these stations on their crystal radios. The frenzy around radio in the 1920’s was not unlike the excitement around cell phones and the internet today. If you didn’t have one, you were simply living in the past.

A family listening to a crystal radio in the 1920’s

Fortunately, in the early 1920’s the crystal radio had been around for a while and it was easy to make or purchase a completed set on a limited budget. The beauty of the radio was that it was a passive device needing no power source other than the radio station’s broadcast that was received by a good antenna about 50 feet long and 15 or so feet above the ground. Crystal radios derived their name from use of galena crystals as detectors. Continue reading →

eBay find: A Sony PRO-80 receiver, new in unopened box

7 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes:

With still days to go before auction end, this Sony PRO-80 receiver is already above $700 U.S. This is new in unopened box, which explains the sharp price rise.

The seller notes that the unit up for auction has never been opened. The photos of the ICF-PRO80 interior in the auction come from one of their previous listings.

The PRO-80 was one of Sony’s technology showcase receivers, designed in the walkie talkie format. The radios are almost never seen NIB, but aging capacitors often cause audio problems and the tops mounted potentiometers often need cleaning or replacing.

I fully expect this PRO-80 to top $1,000 but the auction winner will have to be prepared for some refurbishing.

https://ebay.us/xgTHGu

Thank you, Dan! I always wanted an ICF-PRO80, but could never afford one back in the day. You’ve got a great point that the winner of this bid may have to re-cap it almost immediately. They’ll need Vlado on speed dial! It will be interesting to see the price this auction fetches.

CHU Time Station heard in “The Book of Boba Fett”

5 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Fred Waterer, who shares a link to the following video from the new series The Book of Boba Fett.

Note that the quality of this video is rather poor, no doubt to keep it from being pulled off of YouTube for copyright violation:

https://youtu.be/nNdmhpHSxvs

Click here to view on YouTube.

Not the first time CHU appeared in Star Wars!

You might recall that we first heard CHU in the “Battle of Hoth” scenes from The Empire Strikes Back!

In fact, Star Wars Sound Designer, Ben Burtt, gave us some proper insight in a post a few years ago. It was truly an honor corresponding with him directly and learning about his grandfather, Harold Burtt (W8CD).

Click here to read about Benn Burtt’s fascination with radio.

I’m looking forward to watching The Book of Boba Fett and hearing CHU for myself! Thanks for the tip, Fred!

Radio Waves: The Barbed Wire Comms Line, FCC Denies AM Appeal, Raspberry Pi Radio Astronomy, and Interview with Dick Smith

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Paul, Dennis Dura, Dan Van Hoy, Alokesh Gupta, and the Southgate ARC for the following tips:

Atrocious but efficient: How ranchers used barbed wire to make phone calls (Texas Standard)

A barbed wire telephone call didn’t sound great but could quickly warn others about something such as a wildfire.

Historian J. Evetts Haley wrote that, in its time, the old XIT Ranch up in the Texas Panhandle was “probably the largest fenced range in the world.” He recalled that its barbed wire enclosed over 3 million acres of land. At the north end alone, the fence ran for 162 miles. The unique enclosure helped keep in enormous cattle herds, keep out rustlers, and also gave rise to the creative use of a new technology: the telephone.

I’ll come back to the XIT in a moment, but first, consider these smattering of reports from that era. In 1897, The Electrical Review, reported that “on a ranch in California, telephone communication had been established between the various camps . . . by means of barbed wire fences.” The article says the novel use of the phone was a great success and was being used in Texas as well. That same year, the New England Journal of Agriculture was impressed that two Kansas farmers, living a mile apart, had attached fine telephone instruments to the barbed wire fence that connects their places and established easy communication. From the Butte Intermountain in 1902 we see this notice: “Fort Benton’s latest development is a barbed wire telephone communication.” The article points out that people of the range were not all that happy with barbed wire, which they thought was an “evil” that had arrived with the railroad, but they had decided to look at the practical side of its existence and use it to create a telephone exchange that would connect all the ranches to Fort Benton. [Continue reading…]

FCC Says No to Appeal for a New AM in L.A. (Radio World)

Schwab Multimedia has lost an appeal to the Federal Communications Commission in a case involving a planned AM station near Los Angeles for which it had a construction permit.

This is a “tolling” case, one that involves the FCC construction clock. The history is complex — the FCC’s summary is 2,500 words long, not counting many extended footnotes — but the upshot is that KWIF in Culver City was never built and, barring further developments, apparently will not be. Its call sign has now been deleted.

Levine/Schwab Partnership, which does business as Schwab Multimedia, had applied in 2004 to build a new AM station in the Los Angeles area. It eventually secured a CP in 2016 for the station at 1500 kHz. [Continue reading at Radio World…]

Radio Astronomy with Raspberry Operating System (Glen Langston)

Check out this fascinating radio astronomy project by Glen Langston that is not only affordable, but quite accessible. Thank you for the tip, Paul!

This article is in PDF form and can be downloaded from with this link.

Dick Smith Live: Adventuring, Electronics & Amateur Radio (Ham Radio DX on YouTube)

Dick Smith, VK2DIK has lived an adventurous and extraordinary life. He is a proud Australian, businessman, adventurer, entrepreneur and he single handedly changed electronics and CB/Amateur Radio in Australia.

Dick has recently released his autobiography titled, Dick Smith: My Adventurous Life and tonight we’re privileged to sit down live with Dick, speaking to him about his adventures, including the first solo helicopter flight around the world, his business ventures and being a pioneer for Amateur and CB radio.