Fall Back Down Memory Lane

[Jeff K1NSS]

I associate radio with fall more than any other season, especially in my early ham years. Wonder if others do the same?

As an EOM (Extra Old Man) the feeling is a more complicated mix of melancholies, some less comfortable than I remember as kid. Radio was a part of the mix and remains so, such that I enjoy woolgathering about it, just looking up at antennas against the autumn sky. They bring back memories of going to the small town library in lengthening after school shadows, straight to good old Dewey Decimal section 621.384, where the same old books, and I mean do mean old, fit right in with the mood. I always stopped by the Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves too, where I discovered Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, a profoundly spooky October tale that became part of my old mix as well. If this sort of rumination strikes a chord, I do go on a bit more, currently at www.dashtoons.com.

RUB-flat.jpg

[N8YX]

Spring brings back more SWL and ham memories for me than any other time of the year.

While a sophomore in high school I was given one of these as a Christmas present:

dx160.jpg

There's only so much one can do with an indoor antenna. Springtime saw the snow and ice disappear, allowing me to get onto my roof safely and establish anchor points for several random wires which would soon fill the back yard.

Learned a good bit about homebrewing antenna matchers, switches and other station peripherals - including an RF-sensed mute switch which I used in conjunction with a later arrival, a Royce 1-641 CB rig. The DX160 allowed for receiver muting when run with a transmitter and this proved to be a neat combination - one of the scales on the receiver's Bandspread dial was even marked with 11M nomenclature.

Rainy - not stormy - summer days were another favorite, especially if I didn't have to work: Pull the dark drapes closed and pull the day bed close to the operating desk, flip on the radio room's night-time lighting and spend a relaxing day tuning the bands while the rain kept nearby power-line transformers from arcing.

[KK4AMI]

Spring brings back more SWL and ham memories for me than any other time of the year.

While a sophomore in high school I was given one of these as a Christmas present:

dx160.jpg

There's only so much one can do with an indoor antenna. Springtime saw the snow and ice disappear, allowing me to get onto my roof safely and establish anchor points for several random wires which would soon fill the back yard.

Learned a good bit about homebrewing antenna matchers, switches and other station peripherals - including an RF-sensed mute switch which I used in conjunction with a later arrival, a Royce 1-641 CB rig. The DX160 allowed for receiver muting when run with a transmitter and this proved to be a neat combination - one of the scales on the receiver's Bandspread dial was even marked with 11M nomenclature.

Rainy - not stormy - summer days were another favorite, especially if I didn't have to work: Pull the dark drapes closed and pull the day bed close to the operating desk, flip on the radio room's night-time lighting and spend a relaxing day tuning the bands while the rain kept nearby power-line transformers from arcing.

It was spring for me as well. I started listening to an old console radio with shortwave bands at my Uncles hunting camp. My father figured out I liked listening to SW, so I got a Realistic DX-150A for my birthday (Generation Gap before the DX-160). I tried listening to it all winter with an indoor antenna, but KDKA was my best bet. By spring, my father and I put up a long wire antenna that fed into my bedroom window, with the radio on my nightstand. I had to use headphones because my parents were just down the hall.That was it, I was off and running listening to the whole world. The lights were kinda bright on that damn thing, my Mom said she knew most of the time when I was listening, just from the light under my bedroom door.

[Jeff K1NSS]

That's the stuff. Enjoyed your recollections. Mighty nice ways to start out too. I actually got my Ocean Hopper in spring as well, as a birthday present. The antenna thing was a bit mysterious. I got the official Allied Radio SW Antenna Kit just to be sure I had all the proper gear, including two huge porcelain stand off insulators and a "lightning arrestor" that never found their way into my installation. Did use the flexible conductive strip with a Fahnestock clip on each end to pass through the window. Messed around with goofball tuners with variable caps torn from old radios. Experimented adding antenna wire extensions with wire stripped out of junkbox transformers. Set up the OH with an old Majestic AM/SW as backup, plus an outboard speaker cabinet on a card table next to my lower bunk. Waited till my brother was asleep and got up and DXed with phones, while contemplating my Poptronics SWL call WPE2GEP, painted on a masonite board above the radios. Heaven.

[W3WN]

I first got interested in SWL when I was over at a friend's house, he had (IIRC) a Lafayette receiver similar to the DX160 (much older and full of tubes, of course), and he tuned in Radio Moscow, BBC, Kol Yisrael and all the rest. Hooked almost instantly.

Saved up my money for over a year, Dad took me down to the local Lafayette store (I was about 11). Wouldn't let me buy the receiver I wanted (General Coverage with a "fine tuning" section for the Amateur bands), had to settle for "saving my money" and buying a receiver called the "Starfire VI" 6 band solid-state unit, that included a VHF-HI band segment.

He thought I wouldn't last with the hobby, and didn't want me "wasting" my money.

I'm still here. And I still have the receiver. (Still works, too)

[KG4NEL]

I'll be the young whippersnapper that ruins the fun, but no, radio doesn't particularly have anything seasonal with it for me. Some of my best, earliest experiences were during the winter 6M F2-skip season of the last solar cycle, but summer belongs to Field Day :)

[W2NAP]

always been winter around here for me. winter time radio is super active. spring radio dies off as it warms, summer radio is all but dead, fall the slow move to radio starts. (course were talking VHF 2m but it was also the case on 11m back in the day)

Nothing really to do in Indiana in winter BUT talk on a radio.

[kb2vxa]

"Did use the flexible conductive strip with a Fahnestock clip on each end to pass through the window."
So you had one of them too! Mine came with the crystal radio kit an uncle gave me for Christmas and spring brought copper to the trees in the back yard. SOOOooo... for me spring began my radio hobby listening to the one station I could receive, WOR with the tower lights visible at night from my bedroom window. Naturally I got quite a few ideas from Jean after the last strains of the Bahn Frei Polka died. Next came a Sonomatic from a '56 Buick, then the radio chassis from a TV/radio/record player combo and, and, AND... SHORTWAVE! That put me on the bahn frei and I'm still running.

"Nothing really to do in Indiana in winter BUT talk on a radio."
Funny I can say the same thing about winter in this shore resort town where they roll up the boardwalk and put it in storage until spring. Just a bit farther south on Long Beach Island or simply LBI they turn off the traffic lights, kid thee not.

[W2NAP]

"Nothing really to do in Indiana in winter BUT talk on a radio."
Funny I can say the same thing about winter in this shore resort town where they roll up the boardwalk and put it in storage until spring. Just a bit farther south on Long Beach Island or simply LBI they turn off the traffic lights, kid thee not.

aye, but at least in general. where you are dont generally get below zero with a strong NW wind at 30MPH. so winter would be a tad bit tolerable even with the nor'easter (nothing worse then minus 10 or 20 with 30mph winds....)

[Jeff K1NSS]

I'll be the young whippersnapper that ruins the fun, but no, radio doesn't particularly have anything seasonal with it for me. Some of my best, earliest experiences were during the winter 6M F2-skip season of the last solar cycle, but summer belongs to Field Day :)

No fun ruined, all good, just stirring the pot. I have recollections linked to all seasons, like tuning a Gotham vertical on a snowy evening in my pajamas and as a lid, kid, space cadet operating Field Day hours scorned by beer drinking club members, even as I was locked in a death struggle with an iambic paddled keyer, until that night having only operated a bug. My thing with fall is probably more linked to the earliest radio years and more about setting a theme for the gathering of wool.

Wow Warren, WOR tower light visible from your bedroom? Remember Shep telling stories about some chicken farmer near the towers whose coop lights were lit (pulsed?) by the signal. Must have been able to listen to John Gambling and Carlton Fredericks on your teeth. Good thing all that Clear Channel RF never affected you one bit, although I think all my RF burns made me smart.