At last I thought I was hearing an actual Part 15 station other than my own. The radio was still set to AM 1680 hours after KDX, my toy station, had left the air. Like probably most of true radio types I enjoy hearing that background garble during odd hours. All of a sudden words started jumping out from “Public Reality Radio” WPRR 1680 AM. They gave a website, publicrealityradio.org and the website could easily be taken for a Part 15 operation, especially the program schedule, containing many of the exact programs carried by a whole lot of Part 15ers and streaming internet stations. But radio-locator.com actually lists a WPRR, 1680 KHz in Ada, Michigan, with 10 kw day and 680 watts night. How unusual.
Background Garble
Hi Carl:
I like listening to the “background garble” too. It started
when I was a teenager. Sitting at my AM DX listening
post one night in Hartford, Connecticut, I was tuned to
850 kHz. It was crowded with noise that night. Usually,
WHDH in Boston (then) was dominant on the channel. After a lot of
unintelligible noise went by, suddenly, KOA in Denver came
up out of the mess with a perfect ID, and then sank back
down into the noise.
I think a very large percentage of Part 15 “broadcast” enthusiasts
are broadcast engineers, recording studio owners, hams, radio
listeners (AM, FM, SW, whatever) and also broadcast historians.
I note the historians because they are keeping alive vintage
broadcast equipment, and the sounds of radio as far back as the
1920s. They have pictures of old stations, and recordings, and
really cool old radios. They also broadcast through the old radios.
There is knowledge there that should be passed on, and
Part 15 people like those on this board are doing that.
I knew an engineer who just restored old studio mixing boards.
Although he wasn’t transmitting on any frequency, he did have
a studio that was wired up all over his house where he played
all kinds of great things from the past. That’s not too different
from the yardcasting people.
WPPR sounds like a really interesting station. I’ll have to look
for it on 1680.
Thanks for the cool story, Carl!
Best Regards, Bruce MICRO1690/1700
BCB and Other DXing as a Kid
Here are some rambling reminiscences from a BCB DXer.
One never knows what one will hear on the radio. Those of us who wandered off of our favorite station by tuning around found neat things, especially in the olden days when there were half the stations we have today and there were truly clear channel stations. Living in rural Ohio at the time it was easy to pull in stations all the way from Texas and beyond on AM BCB. No light dimmers, florescents, IBOC, or other trash generators we cope with today.
When I was still in single digit age I used our family’s console radio to listen to broadcasts and shortwave. On shortwave it was easy to find the teletype (RTTY) signals and to hear the Russian jammers. I asked my dad about these weird sounds and he told me the RTTY noise was from a station in the jungle and those were the birds. The jammer was from a station in a sawmill. I believed him! When I found out the truth, it took me years to forgive him. I also recall that I found watching the glowing tubes was a treat. Some of them would glow blue and this strange light would change with the sounds. I think I spent more time in back of the radio than in the front, and though we had a TV I preferred “watching” radio.
At around age 10 I purchased my very own radio at an auction for 25 cents which I had earned drying the dishes for Mom (a whole week’s pay). It was a Crosley 1936 vintage tombstone dual band radio but it didn’t work. By age ten I had gained enough electrical experience from playing with light bulbs, switches, and discarded #6 telephone cells recovered from the ditches that I could diagnose and repair the broken power switch. (We had wall crank phones and they used two #6 cells. Once a year the phone company replaced these cells and the phone men pitched them in the ditch but they had plenty of juice left.) I learned to solder using a woodburning pencil iron and got the thing working again. This radio has an antenna connection designed for either a dipole or long wire and with a simple long wire indoors it is a really sensitive receiver. Selectivity was not the best but with the relatively uncrowded band back then a lot of stations could be heard from distant states.
I saw an ad in a magazine for a microphone which could be connected to a radio so you could have “your own broadcast station”. It was just a carbon button microphone with instructions on how to connect it to a tube receiver. Simply find the #42 tube and wrap two wires around the designated base pins and you are on the air. Of course this was nothing more than a PA system but it was fun. I also learned how a high voltage DC shock felt. (I already knew how an AC shock felt…another story involving a screwdriver in an outlet)
I used this radio from then through high school along with a junkyard car radio converted to work from the mains power for my radio adventures. I still have both radios and the Crosley still works but the Buick doesn’t.
During these early years someone gave me an old 78 phonograph that “wouldn’t work”. No speaker or controls. It turns out that this phono had a one tube AC/DC line powered phono oscillator in its base and when I figured this out I was truly on the air with a real radio signal. The quality was lousy and limited to 78 records so it wasn’t much fun. I knew better than to try to attach the metal cased carbon mic. to this AC/DC line powered unit. (For those curious, AC/DC units had no transformer and were not isolated from the AC mains.)
In my later teens I obtained a KnightKit Broadcaster and had a phonograph, amplifier, and a reel to reel tape recorder available and was on the air for real. My family had moved into town where the homes are close together so I actually had some neighborhood friends and businesses listening now and then. One kid was so interested in this that, with my help, he put his own part 15 station on the air. Other kids would sometimes “spin some” on my station.
I now use solid state receivers and still enjoy snooping around the bands but the LEDs on the new radios just don’t match the fascinating glow of vacuum tubes for me. I used to warm a bags of cashews with the tube sets…can’t do that with transistor receivers.
So, thanks for the chance to recall some personal history. I know some of us here share similar experiences and thought sharing this would stir some memories.
Neil
AM band listening, sparks, and other stuff
Hi Neil and Carl and everybody!
I know a lot of us did many interesting and sometimes
dangerous experiments in radio back then.
The idea of wiring a microphone into a radio by just
wrapping the wires around the tube pins reminds
me of when I tried to make an AM transmitter with
one of those “All American Five Tube Radios.” (For
other people who are reading this and haven’t heard
of that term, it just means this): Millions and millions
of these radios were made from roughly the 1930s
to the 1960s because they all had the same five vacuum
tubes inside. (There were variations, but that’s
out of the scope of this little note.) Anyway, I wired
(soldered) an audio connection into the local oscillator
tube and it worked for a while. Then, one day –
POOF!!!! Something in it blew up with a big bang! It
went into the trash, and I went on to the next wacky
experiment. This was not necessarily what you would
call a good thing, but I survived, and so did my close
friends who were all trying to do the same thing!
Most of my friends from childhood are RF engineers
now!
I also remember desperately trying to hear the west
coast on the AM broadcast band as a teenager in
Connecticut. The radio was just another “All American
Five!” It was a good radio, but not quite good enough!
I tried every frequency in my “White’s Radio Log,”
which was a popular directory of stations on the air at
the time. I listened (without success) to just about every
west coast frequency that
had a 50,000 watt station on it, and I did this on Monday
mornings when the big “locals” on the east coast had shut
down for repairs or adjustments.
I think most people at that time had the best luck with either KFI (640 kHz) or KNX (1070 kHz), both in California,
both 50,000 watts, both omnidirectional. KNX was no good
for me. I was 3 miles from WTIC’s 50KW blowtorch on 1080.
KFI’s frequency had a Cuban signal on it that never seemed to
go away. I found out many years later that KFI on 640 was
occasionally and briefly audible in Connecticut just before
sunrise on a radio/antenna combination a few grades above
what I was struggling with. I was also trying to hear stations
that were not omnidirectional. A lot of 50,000 watt stations
on the west coast then and now have an energy pattern that
is shaped like a figure 8, which made sense because of where
the population areas were (and still are.) So, THOSE stations
were running with 50,000 watts, but very little of the energy
was coming across the country toward Connecticut; probably none.
I eventually did log some California stations here, a relatively
easy feat, because they were new stations at the time that had
come on the air in the late 1990s on 1640 and 1650 kHz. They,
as many know, were 1000 watts at night, but the frequencies
at the time were very open, and they were being heard all over
the world. My receiver was, and still is, a Sony 2010, which I
bought in 1991. I have not had any trouble with it in all these
years. Although it is not one of the very best radios for distant
AM band listening, it still is very good. When I am not using it,
I keep it in a padded case with the batteries out. I hope it lasts
a long time, because I am not currently in a position to replace it.
I have other radios on my “radio desk” that are fine for casual
AM band listening. If I really want to reach out, I bring out the
Sony. (I have a friend in town who bought a Sony 2010 in
1990, and just lost it to battery leakage.) (My brother dropped
his, which he bought in about 1993, and it broke. Sometime
after, a guy in a weird obscure local repair shop (a real old tired
guy, I think) was able to fix it. My brother still uses it today.)
One last ramble, because I didn’t mean to go on this long.
Neil, if you are out there somewhere and you happen to come
back to this blog and read this note, can you tell me what
kind of reel to reel tape machine you had? I used a Sony
(wow another Sony) TC-350 tape deck from 1967. I still
have it and it still works, but it is really beat up. When I
turn it on now, I never leave it unattended, because
sometimes it dumps tape all over the floor. The TC-350
was the main audio source and mixer (a very limited mixer,
but still a mixer) for my 1969 part 15 station.
Wow! To be out in my Dad’s smelly garage in 1969 (smelly
because the metal trash cans in there didn’t seal right),
with the Sony tape deck, a battery powered home built
FM transmitter that drifted when you looked at it wrong,
a Knight Kit regenerative shortwave receiver, and a Korsonic
(from Korvette’s department store) four band shortwave
portable. My brother and I grew up in a small house, but
out there in that garage, that operating space was MINE.
And it was a place where magic was made.
Thanks everybody!
Bruce, MICRO 1690/1700
My Old Reel to Reel
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the nice post. I believe many of us have some good memories of the “good ole days” and it is nice to share some war stories.
One of my radios which worked well is a GE clock radio all American five which I received as a HS graduation gift from my parents. That thing actually did a good job of pulling in the big stations around the Midwest. Just last year I replaced the PS filter capacitor and it is as good as new with the original tubes. I had read a tip in Popular Electronics where a diode across the power switch with the right polarity would keep the filaments on at reduced power without running the radio. I did this and it gives instant on and I believe this is why the radio tubes survived tens of years of use and still work to this day.
Someone told me, and I don’t know if it is true, but the story goes that there are massive deposits of lead ore along the Mississippi river or there abouts which block AM signals from the west. Seems plausible for ground wave but not for sky wave. Anyone know about this?
Bruce, my reel to reel was a Voice of Music 714 and I still have it and it still works though since the brake pads have become very brittle it snaps tapes upon rewind and fast forward so it is just taking up space right now. In the late sixties I taught electronics in night school and accumulated enough money to buy a Sony TC 366 model. It works and I use it to digitize my old VM tapes.
Anyway, thanks for the memories.
Neil
A few comments on old equipment
Hi Neil and everybody!
Neil, I really enjoyed your note, here’s a few items
you might find interesting.
The Sony TC-366 is a beautiful machine. I had seen it
in the past but I looked for it on google and found a
great picture. I also did a google search for your
Voice of Music 714 tape deck and received two interesting
hits. The very first one on top of the list talks about
parts for the machine. If you hit the button marked,
“home,” you will see a web page that is devoted to
Voice of Music products. It looks like the person in
charge of this is about to expand the page. The second
hit was a discussion group about Voice of Music product
restoration.
I think it’s great you have that GE clock radio and that
you were able to recap it. The diode across the power
switch – what a neat trick! I have never heard of that.
Regarding the lead ore deposits near the Mississippi
river, well, that’s a new one to me, too. Years ago,
here in Connecticut,
a radio engineer published a gigantic paper about ground
waves on the AM band and the actual mechanisms which
allow them to travel. He passed on many years ago,
but I know another engineer who is familiar with the
paper. I’ll ask him if he has heard about the lead ore
deposit question. If he has any meaningful feedback, I’ll
let you know.
Although I have some tube and modern radios, the only
radio I have from childhood is a Heathkit CR-1 crystal set.
It isn’t mint. It doesn’t have the original knobs or the
original headphones. My dad gave it to me when I was
seven. It is a good crystal radio, and it still works. In fact,
with a 150 foot wire in my backyard, I have been able to
hear DX on it at night. I have heard that there is a lot
of interest in this radio today. Some collectors have paid
a lot for it, and other people have built CR-1 “clones.”
The rumor is that Heathkit marketed it in 1962 as a
bomb shelter radio. I don’t know if that is really true or
not. But it was 1962 when my dad built it and gave it to me.
Briefly going back to tape decks; my brother and I share
a huge AKAI deck from about 1982 that goes back and
forth between his house and mine. I can’t remember
the model number because he has actually had it for
a couple of years. He has TONS of old reel to reel tapes
which he is transferring to CD. Way before that, in 1980,
he and I were involved with a part 15 station we had on in our
parent’s house. The lifetime of the station was about
a week. It had a really really good Shure mixing board, a
really good mike, and a transmitter that went about 30 feet.
We still laugh about that set-up sometimes.
Anyway, when I get this AKAI deck back someday – I hope
the heads are clean!
Best Wishes everybody!
Bruce, MICRO 1690/1700