While reading The Winds of War, by Herman Wouk, I came across the description of Admiral Pug Henry rising from bed. It was 1939 and his first day on his new job - American Naval Attaché in Berlin, Germany. Hitler had invaded Poland, so the first thing he did was switch on the radio for some news and wait impatiently for the tubes to warm up. The vivid description struck a nerve, sending me hurtling back in time. My experience wasn't nearly so important as Pug’s, but for a 13-year-old it was critical. My grandfather had a new crop of Hampshire pigs. Nearly 400 of them. The feed mill had delivered several tons of a feed supplement, all in colorful 50 pound paper bags. My job was to make certain the feed bins were filled with the correct portion of nutrients. When I was finished the bags were to be burned. In the process of getting the job done I spotted a coupon on the back of each bag. Before setting them afire I paused to see what they were offering. A dozen or so prizes were listed but as is often the case, a staggering number of points were required, especially for the one that interested me - a white Arvin 5-tube radio. My first reaction was that earning the radio was impossible. On second thought, however, Grandpa would be purchasing additional tons of this supplement. There might be a chance. So I began clipping them. By early winter my stash filled a Wolverine shoe box and according to my calculations there were enough points to fetch my Arvin radio. I mailed the box to a Chicago address as instructed, and then impatiently waited the six weeks. The house in which I lived was old, as were the people who called it home. Heat was provided by a single living room fireplace. And there were two closed doors between the fireplace and my bedroom located on the northwest corner of the house. Before the six-week waiting period expired I moved my bed into the warmer basement. It was just as well for another reason, my grandparents would it have not appreciated the "noise" created by the Grand Ole Opry or The Louisiana Hayride. Three years later I enlisted in the air force. When I returned to the farm to collect my stuff the radio was gone, but not the memories of those joyful Saturday nights listening to Web Pierce, Ernest Tubb, Red Foley, Kitty Wells and the voices of many others. Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
Good story. I read , Winds of War and War and Rememberence. I think I can say Winds of War was one of my all time favorites and couldn't wait to find out what happened to Natalie after she left Polland and before she arrived in Italy. I think I could read it again and enjoy it almost as much. I thought the mini-series it birthed as good as any I have ever seen. I, too was a fan of both the GOOpery and the Louisiana Hay Ride.
My radio memories don't go back that far (I was born in '54), but I had a couple of those old tube sets in my early adult years. I had an end table with a Zenith radio in it where the outside metal scales would change when you changed bands. It had the cat's eye tuning. I still have an old upright with a 78RPM record player in it. I used to fire it up at nights and listen to shows broadcast by the BBC.
I just read that Herman Wouk, the author of Winds and War, passed away last year (May 17, 2019), only 10 days shy of his 104th birthday.
I had one of those little Arvin 4 tube metal case radios. Model 442. I sold it just 10 years ago. It was a black beauty and oh so sleek and shiny. It was given to me by an old guy at a swap meet when I was 10. He turned it on and it hummed loudly and he asked me to tell him what was wrong with it. I said it needed a new electrolytic filter capacitor. He said to take it home and fix it and it was mine, no charge. I carried it around cradling it like a baby doll. I always pulled around a wagon so my dad could fill it with radios and parts without going out to the pickup every time, but I wasn't letting go of my new baby so he ended up pulling the wagon. I always used magnetic headphones on my old Hallicrafters S-38A that was also a swap meet gift requiring a new filter cap, and fell asleep listening to Wolfman Jack and Brother Al on XERF the border blaster with 250.000 watt AM. Also VOA sometimes in languages I didn't understand. One of my favorites was a blues and Motown AM broadcast station out of Denver. I used the S-38A to learn Morse code listening to ARRL special CW broadcast on 40 meters. It was better than my homebrew 2 tube super-regenerative that required coils changes for band switching.
Yes, lots of radio activity in those days. Not so many appliances. Maybe you recall the oceangoing tug stories on 40m? They were sent a bit faster than I could copy. One afternoon in a rough sea a wave took out the pilothouse windows. I learn the outcome because the FCC accused them of broadcasting and yanked them off the air. bummer.
I have a vague memory of the tug stories. Lots of stations lost their licenses for broadcasting or commercial use back in the day. Missionaries would use 20 meters to order supplies. The FCC started overlooking this during the 1990s. The advent of the mass-produced transceiver brought so much deregulation that for me the hobby was ruined. Anybody can become a ham. No code required. No knowledge of radio engineering. I remember one guy using a big broadcast transmitter got tired of calling CQ early one morning, and he wanted to keep the frequency clear so he read an old ARRL radio book until a friend called him on the phone saying he was up and ready to chat. He got a warning from the FCC for a one-way communication which is defined as broadcasting. My favorite story is from the 1980s about a late-night AM roundtable. The guys would talk for 20-30 minutes each but would ID every 10 required by law. It was all engineering discussion laced with humor. I stayed up just to listen to it. I checked in just to let them know I was listening while doing some art since I had finished my double conversion receiver and it was my last project on my ham radio bucket list. One of the guys, old Joe, had a habit of starting to give the call sign of the next in line to key up for a lengthy rag chew and then would say, "Oh by the way I gotta tell you about this or that," and carry on for another 15 minutes. Well, I broke in and I made a brief statement about "just on the side listening" and I started to give the call of the next in line, and then I said, "Oh by the way I must give you the specs on this new homebrew." After a long dissertation on the basic design and design challenges, I got out my hand-drawn schematic and read every voltage, values of components, where I found the unused in box vintage parts, how I painted the old Bud cabinet, and the history of the old commercial receiver that it once housed. When I turned it back to the next in line I was awarded the title of the longest rag chew known to that group, 52 minutes. Well, this guy made a short one and then called the roll to see who had survived my rampage. Everyone was still up and laughing and when it came Joes turn he changed the subject to about how he was snowed in and ran out of food over a month ago and had been living on his dogs Alpo since he had a year's supply of it. He lectured us on the correct ratio of water to Alpo. He was on his last bottle of brandy and taking his last swallow and he gargled it for us and then started slurring his words and talking about how he was glad to have moved to the mountains and getting away from his neighbor lady in Portland that spoke English with a heavy French accent and was always threatening to call the FCC for destroying her TV, phones, and she claimed she could hear him on her toaster. Her name was also Fay and my long dissertation was bringing back memories of payback from the French lady. Suddenly nothing but a carrier then the snoring started. He fell asleep and since he used a footswitch to key up his big AM rig, he was still keyed down. My phone rang asking if I had Joe's phone number. I said he doesn't have a phone. It was now 1 AM. One of the guys that could link repeaters got on 2 meters and woke Joe up. Joe left his 2-meter transceiver on 24/7. It was his emergency link to the outside world. The next day a couple of hams in the area took him up some food on their snowcat. Sure enough, he wasn't lying, he had been living off Alpo, water, and brandy. Also, the story about shooting a spam was true. Sure enough, there was an empty can of Spam with a bullet hole in it. Joe died a month later from cancer. He had moved to the mountains to die after he got the diagnosis. He never told anyone. Having an extra class was once an honor, especially for a YL, but now it means nothing. Back in the day, one had to have a general for 5 years and show proof of operation without any citations before you could even take the Extra test which required 20 WPM random characters and the FCC jammed the characters together on purpose. I had to learn to copy 25 WPM before I finally passed it. I remember one time in Portland and they had us all in a big room and no headphones and the sound was bouncing off the walls and even the old navy operator that could copy 45 WPM and write it in longhand, didn't get as much as I did. I had no problem with the written test. Have you ever read about K7QQ? I met the guy at a swap once. 140 wpm. His story is online and an interesting read.
I've never achieved speeds in excess of 20 wpm. CW has always been my kickback, rag chew mode. Instead, my sights were running a QSO with low power. I seldom send more than 5 Watts with a wire. I don't always hit my mark. Last month I QSOed 1100 miles with 3 watts on 20m. Such exercises require close attention to details and good condtions and a lot of patience. There's nothing to waste. I owned a solar-powered station in Arizona. I had 4 - 75 watt panels and 8 deep cycle 12v batteries. During September 11 I relayed several messages from the Mexico border to Seattle and Chicago using 9 watts sideband with a MFJ-9420 and a dipole. We all have our nitches.
Those are QSO's to be proud of Scott! Very few have the patience or desire to work low power. Low power was fun especially when I had my vee beam that was one wavelength at 80 meters and 4 wavelengths at 20. Very directional and not rotatable but powerful with just 5 watts on CW. I would use one side of it as a long wire for omnidirectional. My station back then was battery powered by 2 large nickel-iron batteries and charged with solar cells and a small wind generator. My QRP homebrew rigs that were all-transistor would operate for weeks, but the QRP tube rigs using an inverter would last a several hours. It was fun making worldwide DX contacts on solar and wind charged batteries. Everyone wanted a QSL card.