Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who writes:
Did anyone ever notice this [in The Shape of Water]?
I have not seen the film yet, but how could we miss that classic Cold War rig?! Very cool–thanks for sharing, Dan!
I’ll add this post to our archive of radios in film.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Porter (G4OYX), who shares the following:
Enclosed is a book review of a recent one published in the UK.
Click here to download PDF copy of review.
I wrote it for Signal the quarterly journal of the Vintage Military Amateur Radio Society.
I also write a column in Signal called Tricks of the Trade and many of those are here:
https://www.bbceng.info/Technical%20Reviews/tott/tott.htm
There is more about the Rugby book in article ToTT for Signal issue 50.
Thanks so much for sharing this, Dave! Sounds like a fascinating read!
I should also note that you can feel good about your purchase of this book as all proceeds benefit the Air ambulance. Click here to purchase.
Foxhall Towers (Source: Steve from geograph.org.uk via Wikimedia Commons)
(Source: Southgate ARC)
John Norman writes in the East Anglia Daily Times about the Foxhall transmission site just outside Ipswich which played a key role in WW2 and the Cold War
Getting a coded signal back to the States, both during the Second World War and the Cold War, proved incredibly difficult. The solution was Operation Tea Bag: a scheme to connect telephone switching stations from across Europe, as far south as Italy, to Foxhall for forward transmission across the Atlantic.
Read the article at
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/ipswich-icons-when-the-cold-war-was-played-out-right-on-our-doorsteps-in-suffolk-1-4947730
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who shares the following:
I’m sending you two interesting articles from the renewed website of Radio Bulgaria:
The Bulgarian National Radio has changed its home four times (01/25/19):
Many attempts have been made to tell the story of the Bulgarian National Radio but usually, in an effort to present a concise version, we fail to mention some curious details that would sparkle the interest of anyone keen on the history of this country. Over the course of its existence, the Bulgarian National Radio has resisted many changes that transformed Bulgaria over the past eight decades.
What is considered to be the official start of radio broadcasting in Bulgaria? It happened in the remote 1929 and consisted in the construction of a 60-watt radio transmitter by a group of engineers. The desire of the enthusiastic members of the radio amateurs club called Rodno Radio (Native Radio) to create a radio program was supported by the state authorities, which allowed them to use a small building on the corner of the central Sofia streets Moskovska and Benkovski.
Soon, however, it became clear that the available equipment was insufficient to reach a larger audience, and a team of local engineers took up the challenging task to build a more powerful transmitter. Another problem arose as the people working on the radio programs increased and the building soon turned out to be too small to accommodate all. Therefore, with the permission of the state, the amateurs moved and occupied an entire floor of a building on 19 Moskovska Street. After radio broadcasting was made a state monopoly with the decree of Tsar Boris III in 1935, the Bulgarian radio began developing at a rapid pace. In addition to the Bulgarian language broadcasts, the year 1936 saw the start of overseas emissions – first in Esperanto, and several months later, also in French, German, English and Italian, the foreign service department of the radio known today as Radio Bulgaria. […]
Read the full story at Radio Bulgaria.
BNR marks its 84 the birthday and 90 years since first radio broadcast in Bulgaria (01/25/19):
Radio Bulgaria reaches users in more than 150 countries through its internet pages in Bulgarian and nine foreign languages, which is an excellent achievement, Boyko Stankushev who works as analysts at the Programme Department of the Bulgarian National Radio pointed out.
Highest number of people using Radio Bulgaria’s web sites is registered in Germany. The users in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Hessen are most active. In the United Kingdom highest number of users is registered in London, followed by Manchester-apparently the people living in these two British cities show specific interest in the information published on the web sites of Radio Bulgaria’s foreign language sections. When it comes to Bulgaria’s neighboring countries Turkey is the undisputed leader in terms of the number of visitors in Radio Bulgaria’s site. I would underline that many people in this country visit the Bulgarian pages of the Bulgarian National Radio, including the Bulgarian web page of Radio Bulgaria. Istanbul is the leader in this ranking, followed by Ankara, Bursa and Izmir. Radio Bulgaria has users in some smaller Turkish towns such as Mu?la and Tekirda?. I believe that the Bulgarians studying at the local universities are regular users of Radio Bulgaria’s content and read both in Bulgarian and Turkish.
In 2018 the interest in Radio Bulgaria’s content by US users increased. The number of visits in publications in English was very high, followed by visits in Radio Bulgaria’s Greek and Spanish page from North and Latin America. In the USA the highest number of visits was registered in Illinois, which is not surprising, because of the huge Bulgarian community living in Chicago. In California huge internet activity was registered in areas with large technological parks and highly-educated people, i.e. we are talking in this case about a very high-quality audience.[…]
Click here to continue reading this full article at Radio Bulgaria.
Thank you, David!
Your message prompted me to find a recording I made of the final Radio Bulgaria broadcast on shortwave which, coincidentally, happened seven years ago today!
Click here to listen to Radio Bulgaria’s final shortwave broadcast.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Emilio Ruiz, who writes:
I [note you] have published movies scenes with radios and I remember one of my favorite movies about nature, science, silence, wolves and Inuit culture called “Never Cry Wolf” I’m sharing with you and all readers of SWLing Post blog a radio (I don’t know what brand is, I think is military radio) appear in Never Cry Wolf movie.
I love this scene because the heterodyne sound is a particular sound that drives us crazy to everyone who loves radio!! jaja 😛
The video was extracted from the original Beta format movie, sorry for
the quality.
Thank you for sharing, Emilio!
That heterodyne sound leads me to believe they obtained it using a regenerative receiver. I’ve heard that squeal so many times tuning regen receivers!
I’ll add this post to our ever growing archive of radios in film!
HCJB, 1987 (click to enlarge)
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Doug Evans, who shares the following radio memory:
I have been an SWL on and off for the past 30+ years, listening from New York, North Dakota, Texas, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and now from Denver and loving my Tecsun PL-660. Back in the 80’s and early 90’s the SWL waves were full of awesome. It was huge fun to dial up Radio Saigon or Radio Pyongyang and listen to their opinions, in return the USA fired back with Rush Limbaugh on WRNO
Through my early years in SWLing I would always find HCJB in Quito Ecuador “The Voice of the Andes” I loved their shows especially “DX Party Line” but I’d settle for the other programming, “HAM Radio Today”, “The Music of the Andes”, “Tips For Real Living”… I always had a SW radio and a longwire where ever we went and especially on camping trips, and HCJB could always be found.
Job changes caused me to box up my radios for several years, but around 2010 I broke out the radios and found that HCJB was nowhere to be found. The hobby lost a lot of it’s attraction because of that. Not long after that my future wife asked me to drive with her from our home in Denver down to Colorado Springs to visit her relative, her mother’s cousin Tommy. She said he was a missionary in South America and handed me a book he wrote. In the preface he mentioned radio station HCJB.
Her mother’s cousin Tommy lived near the HCJB work headquarters in Colorado springs and I asked him about HCJB, he told me he was an engineer there for over 30 years and spent the afternoon telling me glory days of the largest radio stations on earth, and eventually having to take down the huge antenna farm to make room for the Quito airport. I wish I had taken notes, and I wish I had a chance to meet with him again, but like HCJB Tommy is no longer with us.
What an amazing coincidence it was to meet one of the men who kept HCJB on the air.
What a coincidence indeed! Thanks for sharing your memory, Douglas!
Post readers: Do you have a radio memory you’d like to share? Please contact me with your story!
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Robert Yowell, who writes:
I walked into an awesome store today in Manhattan which specializes in vintage radios and ephemera. He had these two small lucite paperweights which I bought – one from KDKA the other from WOWO – two historic AM stations. The WOWO one contains a piece of the “world famous fire escape” [see above] which was from the original studio building on Washington Blvd in Ft Wayne Indiana.
The other lucite is a mystery that I hope your readers might help with. It was issued in 1995 for the 75th anniversary of KDKA. It appears to be a silver disc sandwiched with something orange colored in the center. Could it be from the transmitter site? I have attached photos here.
Thanks so much for maintaining such a great Blog site for SWL and other radio listeners ! I hope someone out there can help with my question – thank you!
A few hours later, Robert wrote this follow-up message:
Thomas – I just found the answer to my question. I now own a piece of the original KDKA transmitter tower!
What a great piece of history you have there, Robert. Both WOWO and KDKA are legendary! Thanks for sharing!
