Category Archives: Radio Memories

Cold War DX and Tactical Callsigns

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by Dan Greenall

During the Cold War years, many different signals could be found on shortwave that cannot be heard today. For example, there were two Germanys, several broadcasters from the USSR not including Radio Moscow, Radio Free Europe and others.

I have uploaded audio clips of these stations and others to the InternetArchive.

Here are a few of the links.

https://archive.org/details/rbi-berlin-gdr-1970
https://archive.org/details/radio-rodina
https://archive.org/details/radio-free-europe-1971

If you were adventurous like me, willing to tune outside of the regular assigned broadcast bands, and flip the BFO switch “on”, stations with odd sounding names like Giant Step, Sky King, Fanfare or Ivanhoe could sometimes be heard. These were typically tactical calls used by the U.S. military.

I recently dusted off an old 3-ring binder to look up what were some of the tactical callsigns that I was able to log from my southern Ontario listening post. They included Missionary, Toreador, Democrat, Retail, and Capsule.

My old recordings of stations “Pawnee” and “Fanfare” can be found on the Internet Archive here:

https://archive.org/details/u.-s.-navcomsta-aok-rota-spain-pawnee

Pawnee:

Fanfare:

Information about these stations was hard to find, however, radio hobby magazines and SW club monthly bulletins were a good place to look. I have reprinted (below) some related material from Communications World magazine, which ran from 1971 to 1981.

If you would like to browse through all of their publications, follow this link:

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Communications_World.htm

CW Fall-Winter 1973 pages 32-3

“The Navy also has its point-to-pointers, including NSS, Washington D.C.; NPM, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and NPG, San Francisco. Overseas there are Navy stations in many locations, such as Naples, Italy (NNI), Londonderry, Northern Ireland (NST), Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico (NRR), San Miguel, Philippines (NPO), and elsewhere. Some military stations use tactical call names, rather than call letters, which makes the DXer’s hopes of identifying them rather slim. For security reasons these stations identify with names such as Overland, Kingfisher and the like. These call names are changed frequently and seldom is the hobby listener able to figure out just where the station he’s hearing is located. Some of these identifiers have been used so consistently, over the years. that DXers have managed to figure out their real identities. Toreador, for instance, is a name used by Navy Operational Radio, San Francisco; Pacific Radio is at Pearl Harbor; Ivanhoe is the U.S. Naval Communications Station, Norfolk, Virginia; and a whole series of stations using the code name Raspberry (as in Raspberry Jax, located at the Naval Air Station, Jacksonville”

CW Spring-Summer 1975 page 36

“SWLs will soon note that the armed forces don’t always use call letters. Instead, tactical call signs may be used to identify the station. You might, for instance, hear a station calling itself Ivanhoe or Capsule. Looking Glass or Migraine. Some tactical calls are changed frequently, others are used year after year and, as a result, no longer pose identification problems for the utility SWL. “Ivanhoe” is the identifier used by the Navy’s important Norfolk, VA base. Navy installations in Morocco. Iceland and Spain identify as “Fanfare,” “Port Call,” and “Pawnee,” respectively. The U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) has for years maintained a regular airborne alert. It is no military secret that at any time, day or night, SAC has jumbo bombers aloft—supposedly loaded with nuclear armaments—in readiness to retaliate should this country ever come under attack from an enemy. Clearly it is essential that these planes keep in continuous contact with ground command stations. Shortwave radio is one of the means employed. This SAC radio network is known as Sky King. Coded communications pass between SAC bases and the jets probably several times each hour. SWLs who stumble on these transmissions will hear, as part of the routine radio traffic, authenticator codes, usually two phonetic letters such as “Alfa-Tango.” The purpose of these codes is to assure plane commanders that the rest of the message is genuine. Various Air Force bases identify themselves in radio communications either by base name, such as “Hickam” (Hawaii’s Hickam Air Force Base), or by tactical calls. “Democrat” is used by March AFB, CA, and “Retail” is the call of Barksdale AFB, LA. SAC also has a flying command post, a back-up measure that supposedly would take command of SAC forces should “a nuclear attack wipe out the headquarters at Offutt AFB, NE. The command post in the sky uses the tactical call “Looking Glass.” Some SAC frequencies to watch are 6,762, 9,027, 11,220, 13,245, 14,744 and 17,875 kHz. There are other Air Force frequencies to watch for plane-to-ground. and vice versa, transmissions. Among them are 6,738, 8,764, 8,988, 9,020, 11,200. 13,201 and 17,993 kHz. “Raspberry” is a network tactical call used by naval air stations. “Raspberry Miramar” is the station at Miramar NAS, CA, and “Raspberry Jax” is Jacksonville, NASFL. You can find naval air communications in the 6.7, 8.7, 8.9, 11.2, 13.2 and 15.0 MHz frequency areas.”

CW (Fall-Winter 1976) pages 19-20

“The list of tactical calls is as long as your arm and most DXers find it very tough to connect a certain call with a particular service or military base. But here is a partial list of calls used by Air Force, Navy and a few Army operations. (Bergstrom AFB, TX), “Condor” (land mobile units), “Raymond 6” (George AFB, CA), “Raymond 24” (Little Rock AFB, 4LR). Pacific Missile Firing Range Network: “Plead Control” (Pt. Mugu, CA), “Outrider Control” (Barking Sands, HI). Strategic Air Command: “Skyking” (general call for airborne aircraft), “Outway” (Offutt AFB, NE), “Retail” (Barksdale AFB, LA), “Democrat” (March AFB, CA). Other Air Force “tacticals”: “Beaver Operations” (Ellsworth AFB, SD), “Letterman” (Hickam AFB, HI), “Hornpipe” (Cannon AFB, NM), Air Force Tactical Air Command: “Mainsail” (general call), “Fireside 1” (Langley AFB, VA), “Fireside 5”  “Glucose” (Seymour -Johnson AFB, NC), “Lactose” (Shaw AFB, NC), “Fertile” (Homestead AFB, FL), “Acrobat” (Andrews AFB, MD), “Ringmaster” (NORAD Hq, Cheyenne Mt., CO), “Gull Monitor” (Keesler AFB, MS), “Format” (McGuire AFB, NJ). Navy Atlantic Command: “Ivanhoe” (Norfolk, VA), “Hampshire” (Ft. Allen, Puerto Rico), “Sheriff” (Bermuda) “Phenomenon” (Jacksonville, FL). Navy Pacific Command: “Butterfield” (San Diego, CA), “Dunkirk” (Honolulu) Other Navy “tacticals”: “Climax” (USS Enterprise), “Eagle Cliff” (USS .John F. Kennedy), “Jitterbug” (Balboa, Canal Zone), “Artesia” (Keflavik, Iceland) “Orange Juice” (Guam), “Missionary” (Norfolk, VA), “Top – hand” (Chief of Naval Operations), “T – Bone” (Adak, AK), “Sleepy Hollow” (Cutler, ME). Army “tacticals”: “Agitator” (Ft. Bliss, TX), “Civil Genius” (Ft. Huachuca AZ), “Popeye” (Ft. Bragg, NC), “Avon Studio” (Ohio National Guard), “Contact Tippic” (Indiana National Guard), “Flame Ivory” (Pennsylvania National Guard).”

I wonder if anyone else recalls hearing these? Please comment!

Bob’s Radio Corner: What Is It About Radio Dials?

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– Recollections of Bob Colegrove

In the late ‘60s, I worked as a mechanical assembler at Communications, Electronics Inc. (CEI) in Rockville, Maryland (acquired by Watkins-Johnson Company).  We produced military-grade receivers, mainly for the military (whom else?).  These covered the spectrum from VLF through microwave.  It was the early days of electronic digital readouts.  There were no LEDs or LCDs.  Instead, some of our models featured the Numeric Indicator eXperimental, or “nixie” tubes.  These were glass tubes filled with low-pressure neon/argon gas, featuring stacked wire cathodes shaped like numerals (0-9) and a mesh anode.  An analog-to-digital circuit encoded the frequency to illuminate the correct digits.

Below is shown a DRO-50 Digital Readout from the 1968 CEI catalog.  It contained 6 nixie tubes for the frequency display, and the unit had an accuracy of ±100 Hz.  Interestingly, this frequency display was designed specifically for the Hammarlund SP-600 Receivers (R-274A/FRR (Army), R-274B/FRR (Navy)).  I never saw a DRO-50 come across our line and suspect it may not have gone beyond the prototype.  About that time, the SP-600s were ending their military service, so there wasn’t much of a market for upgrades.  It would still be a few years before I owned an SP-600 of my own, but how would I love to have one fitted with a DRO-50.

What I had instead of nixie tubes were variable capacitors or inductors, which changed the tuned frequency through a kluge of pulleys and strings, all these hidden behind a Raymond-Loewy-designed bezel and operated by the tuning knob.

What was visible on the front of the radio was an irregular representation of frequencies covering the tuning range of the radio, in other words, the dial.  As you rotated the tuning knob, you set the whole tuning mechanism in motion.  Signals were progressively tuned, processed, and reported through the speaker or headset as you advanced higher or lower.

Somehow the frequencies never quite agreed with the numbers or divisions on the dial.  It could be that the circuits inside the radio were out of alignment.  Just as likely, the design of the dial was determined using a preproduction prototype which could not possibly account for the tolerances of the components used on the assembly line.

Consider the figure at the beginning of this posting.  It is a portion of the dial on a Hallicrafters S-38E – magnified somewhat.  The full dial on the E model was big and bright.  It extended across the front panel of the radio and presented frequency readout about as well as was possible.  Nevertheless, there were real shortcomings.

The figure is not only typical if communication receivers of the time but also living room console radios of an earlier period.  Take the 31-meter band as an example.  Broadcast stations were bunched roughly between 9400 kHz and 9800 kHz.  At 5-kHz channel spacing, this resulted in roughly 80 channels.  Of course, not all were in use at any given time, but still a smidgeon turn of the knob could traverse two or three stations.

This situation was relieved somewhat on communication receivers by the addition of a bandspread – a separate tuning mechanism which could effectively magnify a small portion of the main dial.  The idea was to place the main tuning dial at the high end of the desired band and the bandspread at 0.  Then, by tuning the bandspread toward the other end, lower frequencies could be tuned with greater separation.

Since the bandspread could be used at any place within the tuning range of the radio, a separate dial became a problem, so it was usually annotated with a simple logging scale incremented linearly from 0 to 100.  Thus, one had to compile a log-to-frequency conversion table or graph to interpret the frequency.  More sophisticated receivers could display the 80- through 10-meter ham bands on the bandspread dials.

As an example, I located some notes made in 1959 using the S-38E.  The table shows the frequency, bandspread reading, station and country.  Thirty-one meters was an easy match for the bandspread, as WWV on 10000 kHz was a steady marker which you could use to calibrate the bandspread with the main tuning.  For all practical purposes, the band was bounded by the Voice of Spain on 9360 kHz and R. Budapest on 9833 kHz.  For many years, Tel Aviv was an outlier on 9009 kHz.

Alternately, one could construct a graph as shown below.  Unfortunately, most inexpensive radios did not produce linear tuning, so you couldn’t simply draw a straight line between two points on a graph and expect to interpolate the intermediate frequencies with accuracy.  Instead, graphs were constructed laboriously by hand adding intermediate points for known frequencies.  The figure shows the resulting parabolic function where the slope is greater on higher frequencies and gradually levels off as the bandspread is tuned lower.  Notice that most of the activity was mashed between 40 and 60 on the bandspread, then compare this with the picture of the bandspread above.

On the S-38E a bandspread was something of an improvement, but not the complete answer.  The problem only got worse as you went higher in frequency.  At 19 and 16 meters the band compression became quite severe.

Our esteemed leader, Thomas, occasionally uses a picture of the dial shown below as a lead figure of a posting.  It is possibly an RCA Victor Model 110k console radio.  When I see this, I think, who wouldn’t give a king’s ransom to own that radio in its fully restored condition?  Note the 31-meter band has been magnified as its own separate band and appears in a near linear progression.  Thirty-one meters was arguably the center of international shortwave broadcasting in the golden age.

Have you ever wondered what the rest of that radio looks like?  Here’s one in sore need of some Pledge.  Now imagine yourself, perhaps 11 or 12 years old, perched in front of it on your grandmother’s needlepoint stool tweaking the dial.  If you have experienced this, no explanation is necessary.  If you haven’t, none is possible.

So, as it turns out, I have tempered my earlier conviction that a digital frequency readout is necessarily better than a classic dial.  Not to say you can easily pry the PL-880 with 10-Hz resolution from my cold, stiff hands, but I have come to realize that intrigue and mystery of shortwave listening rested in the uncertainty of knowing exactly what frequency you were on.  There was always the possibility that the elusive Nibi Nibi Islands lay somewhere near the shadow cast by the dial pointer.  It was a land of enchantment, and once you left its borders, you could never return again.

A DXer Looks Back at the Voice of America

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by Dan Greenall

50 years ago, Voice of America broadcasts could be found all over the shortwave dial.

In addition to a number of transmitter sites located stateside, the VOA used to broadcast from a number of other facilities located in overseas countries in order to help get its signal into all corners of the globe.  Many of these “relay” stations made for challenging DX catches and there was even an award offered by NASWA to those providing sufficient proof of reception of them all.  An example of this can be found on this link: https://k5nd.net/2011/06/voice-of-america/

The familiar tune of Yankee Doodle (heard at the beginning and end of a transmission) along with station ID in English would often include the particular transmitter site in use.  Several old recordings of these can be found on my links to these on the Internet Archive.

Technical staff hired to help maintain equipment at overseas facilities were often licensed amateur radio operators. See the attached scans of two QSL cards from amateurs who worked at the station near Monrovia, Liberia.

Most of the various VOA transmitter sites are listed below. Some include links that will lead to related historical information, articles and/or photographs and are well worth exploring.

VOA Greenville NC  

VOA Bethany OH

VOA Dixon/Delano CA

VOA Marathon, FL

VOA Wooferton UK

VOA Kavala Greece

VOA Thessaloniki Greece

VOA Rhodes, Dodecanese Islands

VOA Monrovia, Liberia

VOA Tangier, Morocco

VOA Okinawa, Ryuku Islands

VOA Poro/Tinang, Philippines

VOA Udon Thani, Thailand

VOA, Sri Lanka

VOA Sao Tome

VOA Botswana

A year ago, in January 2025, I made a couple of recordings, using remote SDR receivers, of some Voice of America programs being broadcast from their Botswana transmitter site.  These have been uploaded to archive.org and can be found here: https://archive.org/details/voa-africa-via-botswana-relay-january-19-2025

Since March 16, 2025, it seems the only former VOA transmitters being used are Greenville, NC (Radio Marti), Tinang, Philippines (Radyo Pilipinas world service), and Wooferton, UK (BBC and others).

Some holiday reading for shortwave listeners

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by Dan Greenall

Attention all SWL’s!   For those of you with a little extra free time over the holiday season, I would highly recommend having a look at two books that were written by a couple of very respected DXer’s from the past.  They are both available on the Internet Archive and their respective links can be found below.

Shortwave Voices of the World by Dr. Richard E. Wood   (1969)

I have mentioned this one before, but in case you missed it, you will find it here.

https://archive.org/details/shortwave-voices-of-the-world-richard-wood-ed-1-pr-1-1969

The World in My Ears by Arthur T. Cushen   (1979)

Newly uploaded, this one comes in two parts.  Part One describes his early days and how his listening began, while Part 2 gets into the hobby in general.

https://archive.org/details/the-world-in-my-ears-part-1/the%20world%20in%20my%20ears%20part%201/

Happy reading!

The 90 metre band – Then and Now

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who shares the following guest post:

The 90 metre band – Then and Now

by Dan Greenall

A few decades ago, the 90 metre shortwave broadcast band used to be full of interesting and challenging-to-hear DX signals. In the 1974 edition of The Complete Shortwave Listener’s Handbook, author Hank Bennett reports on what you might expect to hear on these frequencies. There is a copy of this book on the Internet Archive.  Here is a link to that specific page.

Also, this sample page from White’s Radio Log in the 1972 Communications World magazine shows a number of stations that could be logged in 90 metre band.

Here are a few links to recordings from my personal collection that have survived through the many years.  These were all made between 3200 and 3400 kHz from my listening post in southern Ontario, Canada.

[Note: Click on each broadcast link to open the associated Internet Archive page with more info.]

Radio Bougainville, PNG 1971

Radio Rabaul, PNG  1971

Radio Santiago, Dominican Republic 1971

Radio Libertad, Santiago, Dominican Republic  1971

Action Radio, Guyana Broadcasting Service  1972

Radio Christian Voice, Zambia  1996

Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC)  1997

Radio Maya TGBA, Guatemala  early 1970’s

Radio Exitos, Dominican Republic  1971

Today, it seems that only a handful of stations can be found broadcasting in the 90 metre band.  These would include WWCR in Nashville, the Voice of Indonesia, KCBS Pyongyang and Radio Mosoj Chaski in Cochabamba, Bolivia.  As well, the Canadian time signal station CHU still continues to use 3330 kHz.

A recent recording of Mosoj Chaski Radio, a Christian broadcaster logged using a remote SDR in Lima, Peru, is presented here.

Although not in English, listen carefully and you can hear them give their frequency of 3310 kHz in the 90 metre band as well as their location of Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Preserving Radio History in Your Community

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

I have lived in southern Ontario, Canada my entire life, have been DXing since the late 1960’s and have held the amateur radio call sign VE3HLC for over 50 years.  Most of this area’s AM broadcast stations had been considered “pests” over the years as I searched for more distant targets, until recently, when many of these began quietly slipping from the airwaves.  While this opened up some new frequencies to DX, I soon began to feel that I had lost some old friends, many that I had known since childhood.

When I retired in 2018, I decided to spend a little time trying to preserve some radio history of stations in southern Ontario communities that have played a part in my life. This might include audio clips, QSLs, station booklets, and other types of ephemera, and I would try to place this information where it could be easily accessed by future historians or anyone else who is interested.  In the end, I chose to use the Internet Archive (archive.org), where most uploaded information can be viewed (or heard) and downloaded for free.

CFPL, London, Ontario   980 kHz (still on the air)

“Communications in the Community” is a hardcover limited edition (2000 copies) souvenir book printed in 1966 by the Special Printing Unit of The London Free Press in London, Ontario, Canada.  It includes historical information about the London Free Press (newspaper) and CFPL radio and television.  I was lucky to find this item at a church rummage sale nearly 20 years ago.

CFPL began its life as CJGC in 1922. I acquired one of their QSL cards from 1925 through an eBay purchase a few years ago.

The above and more can be found by clicking on this link.

https://archive.org/details/page-16

CKOC, Hamilton, Ontario 1150 kHz (still on the air)

CKOC radio in Hamilton also started up in 1922.  My parents met while working at the station in the late 1940’s.  My brother and I (both radio amateurs), along with a few friends were given permission to operate on “Field Day” weekend in 1985 from their old abandoned transmitter site at Elfrida, Ontario.

This area has long since been developed to build homes and shopping areas.

“This is Hamilton, Ontario and the story of broadcasting station CKOC” is an undated booklet (I am guessing circa 1950) that I was able to purchase on eBay.  Also found on eBay were two verifications, one from 1931 and the other from 1983.

You can find these scans and more by following this link.

https://archive.org/details/page-13_202209

CKNX, Wingham, Ontario 920 kHz (still on the air)

This station began in 1926 using the unusual call sign 10BP.  It would remain that way until 1935.  I managed to secure this QSL from 1932 through eBay, signed by its founder W.T. “Doc” Cruickshank.

Interesting stories of how the station began can be found at this link.

https://www.communitystories.ca/v1/pm_v2.php?id=story_line&lg=English&fl=0&ex=386&sl=2541&pos=1&pf=1

CKCR, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario 1510 kHz  (no longer on the air)

In 1924, this station began briefly in nearby Brantford, Ontario. It quickly moved to Kitchener-Waterloo and existed until 1965 when it became CKGL.  The CKCR call sign was picked up later in 1965 by a station in Revelstoke, BC.

Another eBay purchase, I found this QSL with a not-to-scale map of southern Ontario from 1934.

More Ontario QSL’s can be found in my broadcast band gallery at this link: https://archive.org/details/ckoc-hamilton-on-1983

I would encourage others to save parts of the local radio history in their city, state, province or country and give back to the hobby that we have enjoyed for so many years.   I would also be happy to hear about any efforts you have made!

Bob’s Radio Corner: Uncle Clayton and His National NC-188

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National NC-188

As recalled by Bob Colegrove

Uncle Clayton was my very first SWLing buddy.  In the late ‘50s there was no Internet – very few ways for SWLs to interact with one another.  There were clubs that published mimeograph bulletins every month or so.  These were mailed to SWLs across the country and around the world.  To come across a fellow SWL in your own town was rare.  As chance would have it, Uncle Clayton and I quite independently discovered our interest in SWLing about the same time, and then only after knowing one another for several years.

Uncle Clayton was not my real uncle.  He and his wife, Evelyn, were dear friends of my mother and father.  You see, there was a social decorum at that time which frowned upon members of the younger generation from referring to members of an older generation by their first name.  At the same time, “Mr. Smith” and “Mrs. Smith” (not their real surname) were regarded as unnecessarily formal; so, for this situation “Uncle Clayton” and “Aunt Evelyn” became the accepted form of address.

My story begins with television, not radio.  By mid-1950 both the Smiths and the Colegroves had acquired their first black and white TV “sets,” theirs a 12-inch RCA and ours a 12-inch Arvin.  Each of these occupied 8 to 12 cubic feet of space and required two well-fit individuals to move them.  Ironically, they were termed “portable” in that they required a low table or stand for proper positioning.  This contrasted with “console” models which incorporated the stand and the TV in a single cabinet.

One must understand that television at that time was what computers would become a generation later.  The nation was on the cusp of a TV frenzy.  My dad and Uncle Clayton jumped into it with both feet.  They couldn’t let the darn things alone.  Antennas were the most obvious source of tinkering.  “Rabbit ears” were the customary solution but adjusting them was a skill rivaling that of playing a cello.  Later, attic designs were fabricated for the new channel in Bloomington, Indiana.

Vaccum tubes, both necessarily and unnecessarily, became questionable components, and Uncle Clayton and my dad developed well-stocked arsenals of spares.  In retrospect the pair were, well…a couple of hacks, and I say that lovingly.  Picture two large, middle-aged men behind the RCA with the back cover off alternately trying to get a 9-pin peanut tube aligned and reinserted into its socket in the very front of the chassis – all this while trying to avoid the high-voltage discharge from the picture tube.  I still recall the looks of frustration and muffled puffs of blue air.  After some time, Aunt Evelyn appeared, looked over the dilemma, grabbed the tube, and jabbed it into the socket on the first try.

SWLing came along several years later.  I discovered it in the fall of 1958 while idly tinkering with the Howard Radio Co. Model 308 radio-phonograph console, which by that time had been relegated to the basement.  After moving it to my room and stringing up a long wire I was forever captivated.  The single SW band covered 5.5 MHz through 18 MHz across a dial a mere four inches long.  I milked that old radio relentlessly finally coming up with about 20 or 30 SW broadcast stations, all in English.

I have no recollection of how Uncle Clayton and I discovered we were going down the same path.  He had already purchased his National NC-188 with a matching speaker and set up his shack in an unused upstairs bedroom.  How I envied him.  His NC-188 was everything I envisioned in a SW radio. I was still earning my way towards purchasing a Hallicrafters S-38E.

National NTS-1 Speaker for the NC-188 and NC-109.
Better radios had separate external speakers, the claim being that there was insufficient space in such feature-packed units

Uncle Clayton’s NC-188 was my first encounter with a bandspread – a term which has virtually gone out of existence.  I immediately knew what it did, but it would take me a while to understand just how it worked.  On my old Howard console, the dial pointer travelling less than a 16th inch could cover 100 kHz or more, conceivably containing 10 or 20 stations.  Furthermore, this range was traversed by a nearly imperceptible rotation of a small knob.  Conversely, the NC-188 might cover the same tuning range over a space two inches long and require four full rotations of a 2-in diameter knob.  That was an incredible mechanical advantage.

For SWLs, there was a restriction on the use of the bandspread.  Most receivers had scales neatly calibrated for the 10-, 15-,20-, 40-, and 80-meter ham bands.  This provided reasonable frequency readout – not the precision we have with today’s digital radios, but close enough.  For international broadcast bands, the listener had to rely on a 0 to 100 linear logging scale which bore no relation to frequency.  This required the listener to generate several lists or graphs translating log readings to frequency.

The NC-188 and -109 had 4.5” bandspreads, not as long as some, but the 2” knob required 9 full rotations to traverse end-to-end.

Everything I have described so far depended on the position of the main tuning dial.  The bandspread operated electronically in parallel with the main tuning.  In short, the main tuning dial had to be positioned precisely at the high end of the tuned band for the bandspread to produce the same results.  Within these restrictions, a bandspread was still a marvelous device.

Uncle Clayton and I were still in our formative SWLing period when our family would visit him and Aunt Evelyn.  I remember him patiently tuning across portions of the SW spectrum oblivious of the international band boundaries slowly rotating the main tuning dial and stopping at points that interested him.  When my turn at the helm came, I would often seek out the General Overseas Service of the BBC and listen to the football scores or Victor Sylvester and his Ballroom Orchestra.

Victor Silvester conducting his Ballroom Orchestra in 1938. His orchestra was still a fixture on the BBC in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Source:  Victor Silvester and His Orchestra – You’re Dancing on My Heart

Neither Uncle Clayton nor I set the bar very high in terms of DXing prowess.  We had fun and made a lot of interesting discoveries.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Some years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a fairly clean National NC-109.  The -109 is an upscale version of the -188.  It has a crystal filter, an early SSB product detector and a voltage regulator.  Otherwise, the two radios are virtually identical.  I did all the usual things, cleaned it up, performed an alignment, and restrung the main tuning and bandspread dial cords.  Later I found a matching speaker.  When I was finished, I had what I regard as a museum-quality radio.  It occupies a prominent corner of the shack, but I don’t operate it that much.  Sometimes I just sit in front of it, spin the dials and remember Uncle Clayton and how it all started.

National NC-109