Oh Lord, I grew up with a corn field on one side and tobacco field on the other. We listened to country music. There were no cool DJ's.
XERF was 250,000 watts AM with super powerful antenna and at night could be heard in Europe. You probably didn't have a radio with headphones so you could listen in bed after lights out. I know about cotton and corn fields from spending time on my Grandpa's Texas farm, but nothing about tobacco.
@Bess Barber -- I remember my older brother tuning in to WAPE, "The Big Ape", the "mighty 690" in Jacksonville in the late '60's. We lived on a tobacco farm in south GA and could barely pick up the static-filled signal.
KRKD Disk Jockey Dick Hugg (aka "Huggy Boy") used to broadcast from "Dolphins of Hollywood", a music store in downtown L A, at Vernon & Central. His nightly spiel was: "Sending our Power from the Top of our Tower at Vernon & Central, Central & Vernon, Los Angeles, 1150 on your dial or 2 notches down on that Crystal Set of yours if you happen to have one lying around!" Hal Those were the nights!
Awesome! What year was this? Did he say 50 KW also? If listening on a crystal set, that wouldn't require any tuning at 50KW.
Faye, you excite and impress me with what you remember! It wasn't FM, because we kids didn't have FM in our mostly 1940's era Cars. Hal
Faye, this was in the 1954-57 era. Huggy Boy never said 50kW... it was probably around 5 KW or less. Harold.. (Here's a crystal set I built...I used a tapped coil for better selectivity)
What are your memories of AM radio? The days before FM was widespread and TV was limited. Remember the transistor radios? What an invention and we could carry it around and listen with an earphone. Anyone remember having a crystal set? What about all the old tube radios that required warm up time? Anyone remember shortwave radio with Voice of American and Shortwave stations broadcasting in languages other than English? Times when teens cruised and had their car radios blaring. My family never had a TV, only radios of all kinds including home built amateur radios.
I started a new thread about AM radio in reminiscing. Maybe this post will be moved to there. Nice xtal set!
I went to school and had a 1st Class Radiotelephone FCC license. Worked as a broadcast engineer until automation and FM took over. I hated FM and TV.
There were several 50,000 watt clear channel AM stations in the '50's and 60's. WHO Des Moines IA, WWVA Wheeling WVA and one in Del Rio, TX. I'm sure there were others.
The one in Del Rio,Tx had its transmitter across the border and was XERF 250,000 watts AM with a horizontal phased antenna. It could be heard in Europe.
@Hal Pollner Very nice job on that crystal set with tapped coil!!! A couple of old glow in the dark photos from my yesteryear projects.