Category Archives: Radio History

A timeline of radio in the UK

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Daniel, who shares a link to this article on the BT website:

From Marconi and the transistor radio to DAB: the history of radio in the UK

93 years ago this week, the BBC made its first radio broadcast. We look back at some of the most significant events in radio’s history.

On November 14, 1922 the British Broadcasting Company began its first radio broadcast. Since then the radio landscape has changed dramatically.

Radio is still an incredibly popular medium. According to Ofcom’s 2015 Communications Market Report, nine in ten UK adults listen to the radio each week. We listen for an average of 21.4 hours a week, but the way we do this has changed.

Families had to huddle around the radio in the 1930s, but now we can listen to the radio anywhere, anytime using our smartphones. We look at some of the most significant milestones of British radio over the last 93 years[…]

Click here to read through the entire article and timeline at BT.com.

AFVN: The GI’s Companion — A Tribute To Our Vietnam Veterans

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley for the following guest post:

AFVN: The GI’s Companion — A Tribute To Our Vietnam Veterans

Radio station WEBY on 1330 kHz in Milton, Florida (near Pensacola and Elgin Air Force Base), has produced a 10-hour documentary on the American Forces Vietnam Network. This documentary aired in two-hour segments in the afternoons of 26 through 30 October 2015. But it is being repeated in its entirety between 8:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. CST (14:00 to 24:00 UTC) on Veterans Day (known as Remembrance Day in Canada and elsewhere), 11 November.

The WEBY website is http://www.1330weby.com/ and a backgrounder on the documentary can be found here: http://www.1330weby.com/images/afvn/AFVN_Documentary_on_WEBY.pdf and a timeline of U.S. broadcasting in South Vietnam here:
https://www.afvnvets.net/hist—timeline.html

WEBY runs 25 kW during daytime hours (and a puny 79 watts at night) and can be heard in parts of four states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana) but it also streams its programs on the Internet and so can be heard around the world. I’ll try to record some of the streamed audio in case the documentary is not available after the broadcast.

I was alerted to this documentary by a recent episode of PCJ Radio International’s Media Network Plus (24 October) during which Keith Perron interviewed the producer. That interview is worth listening to, too.

AFVN transmitted on AM and FM throughout South Vietnam. I never had the opportunity to listen to AFVN personally, but as a high school student, I did use to listen to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) on shortwave from time to time. AFVN received some of their broadcast material via AFRTS broadcasts from Voice of America transmitters in Delano, California, and the Philippines. A scan of a QSL card I received for a broadcast from AFRTS Los Angeles via Delano in April 1964 [see below].

A.V.Club reviews “The Russian Woodpecker”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Charles, who writes:

Thomas, you might find this movie review of “The Russian Woodpecker” interesting. Looks like the film is more conspiracy than investigative reporting. Too bad. Having dealt with Woodpecker noise during my ham radio career, it would have been fun to know more about the motivation behind building that enormous OTH radar:

http://www.avclub.com/review/russian-woodpecker-offers-plenty-conspiracy-little-226743

Tom’s 1981 off-air recording of RCI’s Shortwave Listener’s Digest hosted by Ian McFarland

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I snapped a photo of this propagation poster in RCI's Sackville, NB transmitter site only months befor ethe site was closed.

A propagation poster in the foyer of RCI’s Sackville, NB, transmitter site only months before the site was closed. (Photo: Thomas Witherspoon)

Tom Laskowski, has been generously contributing a number of off-air shortwave radio recordings to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA).

Recently, he shared a series I’m sure many of you remember. Tom writes:

“My first contribution of many recordings I have of Radio Canada International’s Shortwave Listener’s Digest hosted by Ian McFarland.”

“The first 12 1/2 minutes is Bonsoir Africa. The recording was made using a cheap GE portable. The audio quality isn’t great but it’s still very nostalgic listening to a program I recorded 34 years ago.”

This brings back many memories of one of my favorite shortwave programs–thank you, Tom!

The audio quality actually reminds me of one of my first analog portables, Tom! Nostalgia at its best.

Check out all Tom’s SRAA contributions by clicking here. While you’re at it, bookmark the SRAA!

Anniversary of Sputnik I Launch & Radio Moscow

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who writes:

Yesterday, 4 October, was the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial Earth satellite. The launch heralded the beginning of the space age. Sputnik I’s Doppler-shifted radio transmissions on 20.005 and 40.002 MHz led to the development of the U.S. Navy Navigation Satellite System (Transit) and the equivalent Soviet system (Tsikada) and, eventually, to GPS and GLONASS and the other modern global navigation satellite systems.

The Sputnik I radio signals were picked up by many shortwave listeners. The 20 MHz signal was close to that of WWV and so was easy to find. And, apparently, WWV turned off its 20 MHz transmitter during some of Sputnik I’s passes over the U.S. so as not to interfere with reception.

There are several good sites on the Web with information about Sputnik I and its radio signals including:

http://www.amsat.org/amsat/features/sounds/firstsat.html

http://online.sfsu.edu/hl/Explorer1958.html

http://sjhrc.org/sputnik.html

http://sjhrc.org/beeps.html

http://web.archive.org/web…arrl.org/news/features/2007/09/28/03/

(Click to enlarge)

Sometime in high school, I received a card from Radio Moscow celebrating the launch of Sputnik I [see above]. Perhaps it was issued in 1967 for the 10th anniversary of the launch.

Richard: You never cease to amaze me! Thank you so much for sharing all of this Sputnik I information and resources! That gorgeous QSL Card is perhaps my favorite design from Radio Moscow.

Dan spots an extremely rare HRO-600 on eBay

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SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, writes:

Wow . . . a huge, amazing rarity…this is perhaps the rarest of radios, the HRO-600.

It is almost never seen on the used market and when it is, it is usually in non-operational condition. In its day it was quite advanced, though now, a Tecsun could run rings around it, and it uses NIXIE tubes…good luck obtaining those…anyway for anyone who has never seen one in this condition, and for everybody, here it is…

Click here to view on eBay.

Wow–I thought that receiver might sit on eBay for a while, but it sold for $3,895 US only moments after Dan spotted it.

Assuming this listing will eventually disappear from eBay, I downloaded a few more photos:

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I really enjoy tips like this from Dan. While rare radios like the HRO 600 are well beyond my budget, it’s so much fun to learn about them. Indeed, I had no idea HRO made a receiver that used Nixie tubes!

What is a Nixie tube you ask? Per Wikipedia:

“A Nixie tube, or cold cathode display, is an electronic device for displaying numerals or other information using glow discharge.

The glass tube contains a wire-mesh anode and multiple cathodes, shaped like numerals or other symbols. Applying power to one cathode surrounds it with an orange glow discharge. The tube is filled with a gas at low pressure, usually mostly neon and often a little mercury or argon, in a Penning mixture.

Although it resembles a vacuum tube in appearance, its operation does not depend on thermionic emission of electrons from a heated cathode. It is therefore called a cold-cathode tube (a form of gas-filled tube), or a variant of neon lamp. Such tubes rarely exceed 40 °C (104 °F) even under the most severe of operating conditions in a room at ambient temperature. Vacuum fluorescent displays from the same era use completely different technology—they have a heated cathode together with a control grid and shaped phosphor anodes; Nixies have no heater or control grid, typically a single anode, and shaped bare metal cathodes.”

As Dan states, Nixie tubes can be very difficult to source these days. I’m sure the radio collector that purchased this HRO 600 is well aware.

Update: While I don’t know what Nixie tubes the HRO-600 takes, Leeds Radio, has a substantial collection of Nixie tubes at reasonable prices. Click here to browse through the collection. Leeds, by the way, is a fantastic resource for pretty much any sort of tube/valve you may need. Check out this piece on Leeds Radio from WNYC.

I hope someone uploads a video of the HRO-600 in operation; I’ve never seen one in action.

Dan, thanks again for sharing your eBay finds!

Aircraft Communications in 1915

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A French communication system for use by airplane pilots in 1915: black powder could be puffed out into a Morse code message.
(Image: Scientific American, September 25, 1915)

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Robert Gulley, who notes the following on his blog:

I found this interesting post from Scientific American concerning the lack of reliable wireless communication in aircraft in 1915 – just one of those fascinating historical tidbits.

You can read the full post on Robert’s website or Scientific American.

It is fascinating to see “old school” innovations that made long distance communications possible in 1915; before wireless technology became as practical and accessible as it was even only a decade later.