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by MRAM 1500
Hello. My name is Bob, and I’m a Part 15 Radio Junkie.
I guess it all started when I was a little kid. I was always fascinated by radio. Mom said when I was a toddler I got behind the Hi-Fi and pulled out all the little wires. We had this old floor model AM-SW radio. I used to listen to it for hours, peeking inside the radio to see the glowing tubes. Dad said maybe we could take it out of the case sometime.
by MRAM 1500
Hello. My name is Bob, and I’m a Part 15 Radio Junkie.
I guess it all started when I was a little kid. I was always fascinated by radio. Mom said when I was a toddler I got behind the Hi-Fi and pulled out all the little wires. We had this old floor model AM-SW radio. I used to listen to it for hours, peeking inside the radio to see the glowing tubes. Dad said maybe we could take it out of the case sometime.
Dad got me a Remco Tiny Tim crystal radio. I must have been about five years old. It was cool! A fancy little yellow plastic box about the size of a pack of Camels. Dad was a heavy smoker. Had a three section folding antenna and a little rod that slid in and out for tuning. No batteries and it worked under the covers too! Had to hook the ground wire to the bed springs. I saw one on Ebay the other day. Got out-bid…
After the Tiny Tim, Dad got me a Cub Scout crystal radio. I must have been about seven then. He put up an outside wire antenna. Ran from my second floor bedroom window to a stick he nailed to the fence. We made insulators out of Plexiglas to hang it. Picked up three local stations; WHLO, WAKR and WADC (now WTOU.) Used to scare the be-jeebers outa me at night. The loudest station was WADC and they ran the Catharine Coulman show every night. She always preached about the end of the world! I’d fall asleep with the earphone on my pillow. Saw one on Ebay last week. Got out-bid…
Dad passed away when I was nine years old. My sister realized I needed something to help me with that. She bought me a Remco Caravelle Radio Broadcaster. It was cool! Not only was it a real radio, it was a transmitter too! Had a microphone and Morse code key. My buddy was very envious of that thing. His dad helped him build a radio.
The Caravelle was really neat but I could only transmit around the house. My buddy lived across the street and three doors up, he couldn’t hear me. I just needed to transmit a little farther. But how? I saw one on Ebay last year. I got out-bid…
I read every radio book the library had. One day, there it was. The schematic that I still have scribbled on the back of an envelope. The book was “Harry Zarchy – Using Transistors.” Harry had all kinds of simple little gadgets in there. But, the one transistor AM transmitter caught my eye. Wow! A transistor, a capacitor, a couple resistors, an oscillator coil and a tuning cap. I could do this!
The oscillator coil was hard to obtain at the tender age of ten. I called the local radio shop, the original Falls Radio Shack. The guy said, “Sure, we can fix you up.” I scooped up my allowance, got mom to loan me a dollar, I still had to take some empty pop bottles to the local mom-and-pop grocery to get the deposit for the rest of the cash.
By today’s standards, it was a very long walk to the radio shop. But, it gave me time to go over that circuit in my head. I knew it by heart. I wouldn’t dream of letting my kid walk that far today but it’s a very different world today. I ran most of the way home. Grabbed a piece of scrap wood out of the garage. My dad had been a carpenter. Even though he was gone now, pieces of wood that he had put back were still out there.
Anyway, I carefully drew the circuit on the board. Pounded some strategically located nails into the board and got the old fellow that lived next door to help me solder the wires. Mr. Withem was his name. He had stories for me from when he was in the Navy. He said Marconi’s radio apparatus was brand new then. He got picked to be a Radio Man. Later in life he worked for KDKA when they were relatively new on the air. By now I had a Hallicrafters S-120. Mom got it for me for Christmas. Mr. Withem would come over and listen to the Morse and tell me what they were saying. I was never quite sure if he was really reading the code or just faking it, but it was fun.
Well, the oscillator worked. It worked so well that not only could my buddy hear it, you could hear it all over the neighborhood! We’d ride our bikes around while listening on a transistor radio, checking the range.
The next years went much faster. My buddy and I got walkie-talkies. Then we moved up to real CB radios. I always wanted to get a Ham radio but just didn’t have the discipline at that age to learn the Morse by myself. Maybe if dad were still here… I’d satisfy my “desire” with more walkie-talkies and CB radios.
I got married at nineteen years of age. I’m still married after 34 years. My wife puts up with my radio obsession. I have a drawer full of FRS radios, Walkmans, a crank-up AM-FM-SW, and about a half dozen CB walkie-talkies. I did get my Ham license a couple years after we married but I got three great children also. You figure it out.
The kids got older, two moved out. I saw a Caravelle on Ebay again. This time, I got it. And I got the next two also. Then, I bought a Metzo transmitter. Then I bought a Radio Systems Phase II 20 watt AM transmitter. That one scared me. I told myself I’d just use it as a carrier current station. Ran a dummy load for a while, then I just shut it off…
I have a home brew transmitter now. It’ll crank up to about three watts but I keep it throttled down. It’s a good thing my antenna is so inefficient. I keep the station running 24/7. Even webcast it. I spent three or four days and nights translating the ZaraRadio manual into English. I was off work as I had a heart attack. I tinker with the transmitter occasionally, trying to improve the modulation. I fall asleep with my earphones on, making sure that I’m still on the air.
My kids were never particularly interested in radio. Maybe I’ll buy my grand daughter a radio.
My name is Bob, and I’m a Part 15 Radio Junkie.
Total posts : 45366Today, my kids are as passionate about their computers as I was about radio when I was a kid. And I have been a “radio junkie” ever since.
I started out with a homebrew low power transmitter when I was about 7, built by a friend of the family who was retired Navy. By Junior High I had progressed to a junked out and abondoned old General Radio tube-type CB. The antenna was my bedroom’s aluminum windown frame. My bedroom was wired to the hilt. My mother was afraid to go into the room for fear of being shocked.
After High School, I went to college to learn the radio/television broadcast business. I started my broadcast career the same year; 1967. 4 years later, I passed the exam and got my First Class Radiotelephone operators license. I was finally able to operate the big transmitters and directional antenna systems. I was playin’ the the big boys. 39 years later, I still build and engineer radio stations throughout the Pacific Northwest.
In 1978, I studied for my ham license and got it. I let it lapse in 1988. And in 1997 went back and took all of the exams again including Morse Code finally ending up with Amateur Extra Class license in 2000. Since then, I have taught hundreds of folks how to get their first ham license and been a volunteer FCC examiner.
I still work with the local emergency manager and participate in emergency communications exercises and training.
To say I’m a radio junkie is probably an understatement. And none of my kids are the least bit interested in radio or television. My youngest is now studying to be recording engineer. That’s sort of close.
And in my opinion, the reason most of us are Part 15 folks is our passion for the medium and everything connected with it. But, let us not forget the dimension that makes all the effort worthwhile…serving people.
Marshall Johnson, Sr.
Rhema Radio – The Word In Worship
http://www.rhemaradio.org
Total posts : 45366Bob and Marshall,
Thanks for the stories. I enjoyed reading them. My background is similar in that I started with a crystal set in about 1951. We lived in a rural area and had wall crank phones. The phones used #6 cells and the phone repair people would replace them once a year. They discarded the old ones which still had plenty of life in drainage ditches. I had an inexhaustable supply! They also discarded phone line. I built telegraphs, flashing lights, buzzers and the like with the junk. I learned to solder when I was 8 years old. Used a wood burning pencil.
During my high school years I took on more challenging projects and made pretty good money repairing radios and televisions. I connected with a wholesale distributor and got parts at wholesale. The markup on tubes was about 100%. Nice for me! The local radio repairman who did it part time became nasty when he found out that I was his competition and I had to get a vendor’s license to stay out of trouble because he threatened to report me for not collecting state sales tax. I headed him off because my father played poker with the local tax examiner and we knew about the complaint before it was filed. I learned about taxes at a tender age.
I went on to graduate from engineering college, got my ham license, am married, kids gone, and still like to build electronic things.
You probably remember Popular Electronics. Here is a link to the Carl and Jerry stories. I always looked forward to reading them. If you both did, this will bring back memories.
http://home.gwi.net/~jdebell/pe/cj/cnjindex.htm
Neil
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