Category Archives: Radio History

Guest Post: Brian’s 1974 mix tape of off-air shortwave radio recordings

Many thanks to SWLing Post and Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Brian Smith, for the following guest post and vintage recording:

Shortwave Radio 1974: Canada, Argentina, Spain, West Germany, Albania, utility stations

-Brian Smith (W9IND)

Want to know what shortwave radio sounded like in 1974? This 55-minute recording, recovered from a cassette, was never intended to be anything but “audio notes”: I was an 18-year-old shortwave listener who collected QSL cards from international stations, and I was tired of using a pen and a notepad to copy down details of the broadcasts. I wanted an easier way to record what I heard, and my cassette tape recorder seemed like the perfect means to accomplish that goal.

But it wasn’t. I soon discovered that it was simpler to just edit my notes as I was jotting them down — not spend time on endless searches for specific information located all over on the tape. To make a long story shorter, I abandoned my “audio notes” plan after a single shortwave recording: This one.

Hallicrafters S-108 (Image source: DXing.com)

Still, for those who want to experience the feel of sitting at a shortwave radio in the mid-1970s and slowly spinning the dial, this tape delivers. Nothing great in terms of sound quality; I was using a Hallicrafters S-108 that was outdated even at the time. And my recording “technique” involved placing the cassette microphone next to the radio speaker.

Thus, what you’ll hear is a grab bag of randomness: Major shortwave broadcasting stations from Canada, Argentina, Spain, Germany and Albania; maritime CW and other utility stations; and even a one-sided conversation involving a mobile phone, apparently located at sea. There are lengthy (even boring) programs, theme songs and interval signals, and brief IDs, one in Morse code from an Italian Navy station and another from a Department of Energy station used to track shipments of nuclear materials. And I can’t even identify the station behind every recording, including several Spanish broadcasts (I don’t speak the language) and an interview in English with a UFO book author.

The following is a guide, with approximate Windows Media Player starting times, of the signals on this recording. (Incidentally, the CBC recording was from July 11, 1974 — a date I deduced by researching the Major League Baseball scores of the previous day.)

Guide To The Recording

00:00 — CBC (Radio Canada) Northern and Armed Forces Service: News and sports.
07:51 — RAE (Radio Argentina): Sign-off with closing theme
09:14 — Department of Energy station in Belton, Missouri: “This is KRF-265 clear.”
09:17 — Interval signal: Radio Spain.
09:40 — New York Radio, WSY-70 (aviation weather broadcast)
10:22 — Unidentified station (Spanish?): Music.
10:51— Unidentified station (English): Historic drama with mention of Vice President John Adams, plus bell-heavy closing theme.
14:12 — Unidentified station (Spanish?): Male announcer, poor signal strength.
14:20 — Unidentified station (Spanish): Theme music and apparent ID, good signal strength.
15:16 — Unidentified station (foreign-speaking, possibly Spanish): Song, “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.”
17:00 — Deutsche Welle (The Voice of West Germany): Announcement of frequencies, theme song.
17:39 — Unidentified station (English): Interview with the Rev. Barry Downing, author of “The Bible and Flying Saucers.”
24:36 — One side of mobile telephone conversation in SSB, possibly from maritime location.
30:37 — Radio Tirana (Albania): Lengthy economic and geopolitical talk (female announcer); bad audio. Theme and ID at 36:23, sign-off at 55:03.
55:11 — Italian Navy, Rome: “VVV IDR3 (and long tone)” in Morse code.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded audio player below:

Brian, this is a brilliant recording–regardless of audio quality–and we’re very thankful you took the time to share it. Propagation has left something to be desired as of late, so time traveling back to 1974 has been incredibly fun.

Post Readers: If, like Brian, you have off-air recordings on tape that you’d like to share, please contact me! Even if you don’t have the means to transfer your tapes to a digital format, I’m a part of a small community of shortwave radio archivists who would be quite willing to help.

Moshe restores a Ben-Gal “Duet-Stereo”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Moshe, who writes:

About 2 weeks ago, a very good friend called me and exclaimed, “you just have to see this radio…I’m keeping it for you!”–so, I drove to his aunt’s house and saw this beauty.

After hauling the radio to my place, I started to check it out, to see what would be needed for restoration; it was working, with bad contacts, poor frequency response and low output.

I took hi-res pictures of this radio, some during restoration. Now the radio sounds great. It has been recapped, a couple of bad resistors and bad wires replaced, contacts have been cleaned, and some good cleaning for the chassis as well.

As I wanted to keep the original appearance of the chassis, I kept the original filter capacitors on board, but disconnected them from the circuit, added terminal strips and new capacitors from underneath.

The radio uses an EF85 tube as the RF stage. With the addition of a grounding connection and random wire antenna, it’s very sensitive on shortwave.

About the Ben-Gal Duet-Stereo:

It was made in Israel by Ben-Gal, a label inside shows it was made at 12th of December, 1965.

It is a console model with record player. As the model name suggests, the amplifier and record player are stereo (though the tuner is not…).

The radio has longwave (marked in meters), mediumwave (marked in meters) and 3 shortwave bands (with megacycle and meter band marks).

The shortwave bands overlaps with each other, so cover is continuous:

SW3 2.3MHz to 6MHz,

SW2 5.5MHz to 15.5MHz,

and SW1 14.5MHz to 23MHz.

Many thanks, Moshe, for sharing photos and this description of this beautiful Ben-Gal Duet-Stereo. I bet the audio fidelity is amazing. My father has a 1960’s console–with a similar configuration–made by Admiral, though it was limited to mediumwave and FM reception. Some day, I will try to restore it to its former glory!

Thanks for the inspiration, Moshe!

Rhode Island’s WWII farmhouse monitoring station

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Mike (AC4NS), who shares a link to this fascinating article by Tom Mooney? in the TheProvidence Journal. Here’s an excerpt:

“There was nothing remarkable to see on Chopmist Hill in 1940 when, a year before the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor and bring America into the war, a Boston radio technician by the name of Thomas B. Cave drove up Darby Road.

[…]Cave worked for the Intelligence Division of the Federal Communications Commission, charged with finding a hilltop in southern New England that could serve as one of several listening posts to detect radio transmissions from German spies in the United States.

What he discovered up at William Suddard’s 183-acre farm was nothing short of miraculous.

Because of some geographic and atmospheric anomalies, Cave reported he could clearly intercept radio transmissions coming from Europe — even South America.

As a Providence Journal story revealed after the war, military officials were initially skeptical. They wanted Cave to prove his remarkable claims that from Chopmist Hill he could pinpoint the location of any radio transmission in the country within 15 minutes.

The Army set up a test. Without telling the FCC, it began broadcasting a signal from the Pentagon. From atop the 730-foot hill in the rural corner of Scituate, it took Cave all of seven minutes to zero in on the signal’s origin.

In March 1941, the Suddards obligingly moved out of their 14-room farmhouse, leasing the property to the FCC.

Workers set off erecting scores of telephone poles across the properly, purposely sinking them deep to keep them below the tree line. They strung 85,000 feet of antenna wire — the equivalent of 16 miles — around the poles and wired it into the house.[…]”

Click here to read the full article in the The Providence Journal.

If you find this fascinating, you might also read this article about the Radio Secret Service in England.

Radio Caroline and a crystal radio: “The making of a rebel”

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Radio Caroline circa 1960’s.

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader Mike, who shares a link to this story from the blog
République No.6:

Growing up in Piennes Lorraine, Radio Caroline the making of a rebel

[A]t night with my younger brother we would listen to a “pirate radio station” on a boat that would put real good music on, crusing the international waters between England and France. He burst in laughter and told me: That’s Radio Caroline“. That was it. My brother and I would listen to that station nearly every night on an old “galena radio receiver” with a huge antenna hidden in the attic built with copper wire we stole at the mine. I mean we didn’t really steal it, it was everywhere. It was the wires used by miners to connect detonators to batteries when blowing new tunnels and locals were using it for all sorts of things, like holding parts in chicken coop to tie tomato or green bean plants to stakes and could be found everywhere.

Actually at first we set the antenna in our bedroom but somehow it wasn’t long enough not to mention mom who saw it and tore it down giving her an other excuse to punish us. So we decide it to place it in the attic where no one ever went.

The most difficult part was going to the attic, there wasn’t any stairs. We had to bring a ladder to the trap leading to it. Mom was watching us like a hawk, looking for any excuses to punish us.[…]

Read the full story at République No.6.

Radio Serbia International recording and final farewell

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, “Mutezone,” who writes:

“I want to share a link to a video of Radio Serbia International’s English service recorded on the 4th of July 2015…

[…]I have been monitoring for RSI during the last week of July but got nothing. I have also been monitoring 6100 kHz after the July final date of transmission as according to RSI’s website, there are “Pirates stalking Serbian short wave” due to the termination of the station. However I have not received any odd transmissions on this frequency at the moment.”

Thanks for sharing this recording/video and, especially, for capturing RSI’s interval signal.

I was unable to hear RSI’s final broadcast on July 31, 2015.

If any SWLing Post readers managed to record RSI’s final broadcast–in any language–please contact me so we can add it to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

Regarding the end of Radio Serbia International (or International Radio Serbia), the following final post was published on their website. I’ve included the full note, for archival purposes, in case the RSI website goes offline in the future:

The End of Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia

Thanks for sharing the recording and for including a few minutes of the RSI interval signal. RSI was always a difficult broadcaster for me to catch here in North America, though I heard them a number of times via the University Twente Web SDR.

Dear friends, Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia, ceases to exist on 31 July 2015. For you, our faithful listeners from all over the world, and also for us who have worked on this radio, the only consolation would be the fact that this only state short-wave station in Serbia, which has existed for 79 years, will be remembered as an efficient and reliable promoter of Serbia worldwide. No one has ever presented valid reasons why this media, of rich tradition, range and staff potentials, and with big plans until yesterday, should cease to exist. Unfortunately, the assessments not based on arguments were louder than serious analyses and recommendations of experts, professionals and numerous listeners that the world radio service is necessary for Serbia, that it presents the country worldwide in the best manner possible and that no serious state will renounce such an effective diplomacy.

Our significance has been confirmed by the letters of thousands of listeners from all over the world. Some listened to us because of our information programmes, some because of economic topics, while many got to love our country, Serbia, because of its tradition, beautiful and interesting landmarks and the rich heritage they were acquainted with by listening to International Radio Serbia. Regardless of your affinities, you have all told us that you were listening to us because of our objectivity and the possibility of hearing us at any time and everywhere, for such is the power of short waves.

The Serbian government, however, believes that the closing down of Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia – is a justified move. Regardless of the fact that the state of Serbia is in an economic crisis, that each saved penny is precious, that many citizens have been rendered jobless, that new work positions should be opened, it has become unclear to the very end why the only state short-wave station has suddenly become too expensive after 80 years. We are, however, certain, that Serbian citizens, taxpayers, who have financed us for all these years, would have decided differently had they been asked to.

What remains, after all, is the pride we feel because of the history of our radio as well as the hope that the voice of Serbia will reach our listeners wherever they are.

Thank you, dear listeners from all over the world, for having trusted us all these years! Radio Yugoslavia – International Radio Serbia now greets you and signs off.

Source: http://voiceofserbia.org/content/end-radio-yugoslavia-%E2%80%93-international-radio-serbia#sthash.rvvWUjgx.dpuf

Tuning in to AM broadcast history and the venerable RF-2200

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Eric (WD8RIF), for sharing a link to this excellent article in the Illinois Times by James Krohe Jr. Here’s an excerpt:

Tuning in: Making a small world bigger and the big one smaller

So much of happiness, I’ve realized, depends on getting tuned in. When he was a young married, my father used to tune in the console radio in the living room of the Krohe family mansion on Manor Avenue to the live broadcasts of big-band music “from the beautiful Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel” in downtown New Orleans. He was able to be in two places at once thanks to WWL-AM, whose 50,000-watt clear channel signal was beamed north. For all I know, while he tapped his toe on the sofa in Springfield, Inuit couples were jitterbugging on the tundra.

For Springfield teens in the 1950s and ’60s, getting a chance to listen to what kids in bigger cities had already decided they liked was important. WCVS-AM was just crawling out of its cocoon, having crawled into it as a country station and emerging as a rock station – although in the late ’50s there wasn’t that much difference. “Rock ’n’ roll” was, in stations like WVCS that catered to mostly white markets, rockabilly and pop-ish country ballads. (Geezers will recall when Brenda Lee was, briefly and laughably, marketed as a rock artist.)

For Top 40 music, as for so many other things, if you wanted to get the really good stuff you had to go to the big city. Around here that meant WLS-AM, WCFL-AM out of Chicago (whose Ron Britain made Soupy Sales look, or rather sound, like Noel Coward), and KXOK-AM out of St. Louis. George Lucas’s American Graffiti brilliantly captured the ways that car radios, transistors, radio stations blaring over PAs in drive-ins, permeated the bubble in which teenagers then lived.

Later I learned I could hear WBZ out of Boston if I acted as the antenna on my transistor. (“Turn on, tune in, drop out” to me meant losing the signal when I lighted a smoke.) WBZ was one of the first stations with the newest 45s from Britain, which allowed us yokels to hear The Yardbirds while the records were still on their way to Midwest stations by stagecoach from Boston harbor.

Continue reading…

Krohe also mentions the virtues of the Panasonic RF-2200 which is, in my opinion, one of the best AM broadcast portable receivers ever.

Click here to read the full article at the Illinois Times website.

Side note: The Panasonic RF-2200 still has a loyal following among mediumwave DXers of the world. The RF-2200 can be found on sites like eBay (click here to search), but make sure you’re purchasing from a reputable seller and not over-paying.

The WSJ features Willis Conover

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(Source: Wall Street Journal via Any Sennitt)

The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home

By DOUG RAMSEY

During the Cold War, listeners in captive nations behind the Iron Curtain huddled around radios in basements and attics listening to the imposing bass-baritone voice of the man who sent them American music. His greeting—“Good evening, Willis Conover in Washington, D.C., with Music U.S.A.”—was familiar to millions around the world. At home, relatively few people knew him or his work. A proposal for a postage stamp honoring Conover may give hope to those who want the late Voice of America broadcaster to be awarded a larger mark of distinction.

For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. Never a government employee, to maintain his independence he worked as a freelance contractor. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no tinge of politics, he introduced his listeners to jazz and American popular music. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century. His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.

Countless musicians from former Iron Curtain countries have credited Conover with attracting them to jazz, among them the Czech bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous, the Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. On the Conover Facebook page established in 2010, Ponomarev wrote that Conover had done as much for jazz “as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.” Conover’s New York Times obituary said, “In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who went on the air in 1955 . . . proved more effective than a fleet of B-29’s.” In his publication Gene Lees Jazzletter, the influential critic wrote, “Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin Wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.”[…]

Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal…

Regular SWLing Post readers know that I’m a huge fan of Willis Conover. Much like VOA’s Leo Sarkisian, Conover represented some of the best diplomacy this country has had to offer. [I’ve actually had the honor of meeting and interviewing Leo Sarkisian at his home in Maryland, a few years ago–one of the highlights of my career.]

Are there any SWLing Post readers out there who listened to Willis Conover from behind the “Iron Curtain?” Please comment!