Dave Zantow (N9EWO) was a contributing editor to Passport To World Band Radio from 2000-2009. You’ll find a number of in-depth shortwave radio reviews on his site.
I’ve just been notified by Dave Zantow (N9EWO) that he has moved his excellent receiver page to a new home on the web. For many years Dave has been using the free web host Anglefire, but a lack of reliability and invasive ads prompted him to move to a new host via Charter.
Jeff Zang’s radio story is the latest in our series called Listener Posts, where I place all of your personal radio histories. If you would like to add your story to the mix, simply send your story by email!
In the meantime, many thanks to Jeff for sharing his personal radio history:
I have enjoyed your blog…indeed it has been a major factor in my getting the bug again after being away from shortwave for about 20 years.
I had played around with DXing AM stations at night when I was around 10 or 11; I lived just outside of Washington DC and remember hearing WLS and WCFL at nighttime once WLMD went off the air (a daytime station only). Also WBZ in Boston and WBT in Charlotte were pretty easy to hear, as well as KMOX in St Louis.
The original Happy Station Show host, Edward “Eddie” Startz. Photo courtesy of RNW.
I first remember hearing shortwave on a trip to see my uncle circa 1973. He had a shortwave radio. I clicked it on and was fascinated to hear all the different languages and odd music coming from Middle Eastern stations. I also quite clearly remember stumbling on some bagpipe music; I first thought this must be from Scotland but it turned out to be the “Happy Station” show on Radio Netherlands. Straight away I was hooked.
My parents got me a cheap shortwave radio (can’t remember the make, it wasn’t very good). It did however pull in the BBC and Radio Australia well enough and I became a devoted fan of both stations. I quickly moved up to the Realistic DX 160 once I’d saved a bit of money. This was a great radio to do serious Dxing with; especially later in the ’70’s when the sunspot numbers really went through the roof during the solar max at that time. I remember hearing Uganda, All India Radio, Radio Cairo came in fairly well at the time…Plus I was able to hear some Pirates on the weekends and since it had a BFO I could listen to Hams for the first time.
Somewhere around the early 1990’s I fell out of the hobby; had to concentrate on other things for a while. About 3 or 4 months ago I came across your blog and found myself getting the itch again. I now have a Kaito KA1103; amazing such a little radio can pull so much in. I’ve been reading your tips on what to listen to, have managed to catch some pirates and have enjoyed hearing Radio New Zealand in the mornings along with Radio Australia. I am sorry that so many of the stations I heard when I was a kid are now gone, SRI, Radio Netherlands, Radio Sweden, Radio Finland (I used to be a big fan of the latter two). But I have made up for this by doing some more ham DXing and also checking the Utility stations more often than I did years ago.
I just wanted to say Thanks for getting me into SWLing again.
Many thanks, Jeff, for sharing your story! I’m honored the SWLing Post had a part in your re-discovery of shortwave radio.
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Source: Dashtoons.com
Among the fascinating people I met at the Dayton Hamvention this year was Jeff Murray, K1NSS. Though Jeff and I have communicated online, our paths had not yet crossed in real life; I was very pleased to finally meet him in person.
SWLing Post readers will have seen Jeff’s name before: he’s a talented graphic artist (and ham, obviously) whose work focuses on the radio community and culture.
You may recall that Jeff created the art for the the Shortwaveology website, not to mention the cool retro graphic you’ll find on the Shortwave Shindig tee.
Jeff also creates custom QSL cards, comic books, clip art, and promotional material for companies like Alpha Amplifiers…all of it inspired.
If Jeff designed a spaceship based on the aesthetics of the Hallicrafters S-38, it would not surprise me in the least.
Do yourself a favor and check out Jeff’s website at Dashtoon.com. It is chock-full of radio wackiness and whimsy. You can lose yourself there and thoroughly enjoy the scenery.
Jeff Murray (K1NSS), left, and me (K4SWL), right among the Dayton Hamvention tailgaters.
This year, at the 2014 Dayton Hamvention, I had the pleasure of meeting a number of SWLing Post readers–truly a highlight for me at the convention.
One of the readers I met was Mike Gualtieri (KB3TKG). Mike and I had a great conversation about pirate radio, ham radio and shortwave listening.
I also learned that, one year ago, Mike started MakeRF: a blog devoted to making radios and accessories. He has already documented several savvy projects:
I encourage you to bookmark MakeRF and even give one of these simple projects a go. Many thanks, Mike!
Andrea Borgnino, Journalist & RadioRai Internet Content Manager (T. Witherspoon, photo)
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Andrea Borgnino, journalist and Internet Content Manager for RAI (RadioTelevisione Italiana)…and, remarkably enough, reader of the SWLing Post.
(You’ve probably seen me refer to Andrea on the SWLing Post as I follow his Twitter feed @aborgnino. Andrea, it seems, follows us here at the SWLing Post because he’s quite a dedicated shortwave radio enthusiast.)
To my utter surprise, Andrea introduced himself to us at Ears To Our World last month during the Dayton, OH, Hamvention: you see, I’ve been in communication with Andrea for several years via email, and was simply not expecting to meet him in Dayton. It was a true pleasure to meet this fellow radio enthusiast–and talented journalist–in person.
At any rate, Andrea interviewed me (in the middle of a noisy Hamvention crowd) for the Radio3Mondo program, Interferenze. The show aired today, and Andrea kindly shared the audio, which I have posted below (or click here to download). If you speak Italian, you might just understand some of the interview:
Again, many thanks to Andrea Borgnino for interviewing me and giving me a chance to tell Italian listeners about the important work of Ears To Our World (ETOW). (Indeed, I understand ETOW has already received a donation from Italy as a result–on behalf of the organization, we thank you!)
Click here to follow Andrea on Twitter. You’ll find a full list of Radio3 Mondo podcasts by clicking here.
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing this article written by Bradley George of Nashville Public Radio:
“From ages 11 to 15, I spent hours hunched over a tiny Magnavox radio, straining to hear the world’s shortwave radio stations.
The big dogs of international broadcasting — BBC World Service, Voice of America, Radio Canada International, and Radio Netherlands were easy to pick up. Their signals were strong, and the cheap receiver I had would find them automatically.
Otherwise, listening to shortwave takes patience and lots of fine tuning. Signals bounce off the earth’s ionosphere, and travel further at night. Stations fade in and out. Imagine someone talking in a gigantic tin can on a beach — a hollow, static filled sound.
But through that static comes a grand, global audio bazaar.[…]”
And it still does today…! In fact, we just posted a recording of the Voice of Korea on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive; George mentions Radio Pyongyang as memorable QSL.
Click here to read Bradley George’s full post, with photos, at WPLN.
In an email last week, my good friend Eric McFadden (WD8RIF), mentioned the shortwave radio set-up he used while deployed in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates back in the early 1990’s. I asked Eric for permission to post his email notes–not only did he agree, but he also found photos he took at the time.
Eric notes:
[F]or the Desert Shield/Storm, aka the First Gulf War, I took my Sangean ATS-803A with a doublet fashioned from two Radio Shack audio cables. The doublet was an audio cable with an RCA on one end and lugs on the other; I split the conductors all the way down to the RCA connector and it was almost the right length for a proper 31m dipole.
The feedline was an audio extension (+/- 25′) with a male RCA on one end and a female on the other end. The ‘803A had a proper RCA antenna connector instead of a silly phone connector. I hung the doublet between the peaks of two of our 10-man tents, the front of our tent and the back of our neighbors’. When the UAE winds ultimately broke the doublet at the RCA connector, I stripped the ends and made a random-length end-fed wire out of it.
Our tents had AC-power (and A/C cooling and heat-pump heat) and I’m pretty sure I powered the ‘803A from the “mains” instead of stuffing D-cells into the radio. D-cells were available in the little BX on the base, of course.
The three photos [above] are of my installation in our tent-city at Al Dhafra Airbase near Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. I did deploy my 31m dipole here. These photos were from before the dipole broke and was replaced by an end-fed wire build from the pieces of the broken dipole.
![[This photo] was from inside our "hooch" on the Lockheed Compound near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.](https://swling.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Desert_Storm_SW_Jeddah_SA_01.jpg)
[This photo] was from inside our “hooch” on the Lockheed Compound near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Click to enlarge)
Here’s text from my journal I wrote shortly after returning stateside:
“I found many interesting and exotic stations on my shortwave radio, a Sangean ATS-803A and a simple dipole antenna, but as the war progressed,
I settled on the BBC for their award-winning news coverage.”
Many thanks, Eric! I’m happy to hear such a good report of the Sangean ATS-803A–there are still many 803A’s on the used market (click here to search eBay).
Indeed, I just realized that while you were deployed in the UAE, I used the Radio Shack branded version of the ATS-803A: the Radio Shack DX-440 while studying French and living in Grenoble, France. The DX-440 delivered my daily dose of the Voice of America (the only English language news I allowed myself to listen to at the time). Since the VOA broadcast often coincided with meal time at the Université Stendhal cafeteria, I left my voice-activated Micro Cassette recorder in front of the DX-440 which was, in turn, set to turn on one minute prior to the VOA broadcast. It was an amazingly reliable arrangement. (Hard to believe that was over 20 years ago!)
Come to think of it, I’ll have to dig up those micro cassettes and see if I still happen to have one with a recorded broadcast.