Category: broadcast radio

QRP Trigger Warning! 500 kW from WLW (great video)

Wow, this video will make you appreciate the simplicity of QRP!

My favorite part was when they required the use of “dark welding goggles” for whoever was charged with a visual check of the tube filaments.

Thanks to Hack-A-Day for alerting me to this wonderful video.

Early Radio in New Zealand, and “The Knack”

Thanks to Thomas K4SWL of the SWLing Post for alerting us to this gem. Listen to Sarah Johnston’s program describing the origins and early years of broadcast radio in New Zealand.

This wonderful recording and article reminded me of a bit of ham radio history involving New Zealand, and someone who was involved who had a surname similar to mine. The ARRL book “200 Meters and Down” by Clinton DeSoto reports on page 91 that on May 22, 1924, radio amateurs for the first time made a contact between New Zealand and South America. Carlos Braggio operated rCB8 in Buenos Aires. In New Zealand, J.H. O’Meara was at the key in Gisborne.

Writing of the early amateurs, DeSoto wrote (on page 92):

“Why did they do it? None but one of them can know, and only he would know the feeling of driving ambition, the relentless call of work to be done, the gnawing discontent that hungers for accomplishment; it would be hard to put into words. The strange thing is that there were folk, everywhere on earth it seemed, who had that urge.”

“The gnawing discontent…” That is what Jean Shepherd had when he couldn’t get his Heising Modulator to work properly. We’ve all been there.

The last line in the quote from DeSoto’s book speaks to one of the major themes of this blog and of the SolderSmoke podcast: the way in which people all around the world got interested in radio in much the same way. So many of us, all around the world, often at age 13 or 14, suddenly got interested in radio. We all had (and have!) “The Knack.” This is really very nice — it is something that we have in common, something that pulls us together.

Video: E. Howard Armstrong and Early Radio

This is a really wonderful video. It might seem slow to those accustomed to faster-paced YouTube videos, but the information content is very high — it contains a lot of pictures I hadn’t seen before and audio of Howard Armstrong.

I never knew that the name of the radio company Zenith was derived from the early callsign “9ZN.”

As a Northern Virginian, I like the reference to NAA Arlington.

I used to live near Yonkers, N.Y. I remember Warburton Ave. What a fine shack young Howard had up in that cupola attic.

The photo of Armstrong’s breadboard was very nice. My Mythbuster is in good company.

QRPers will get a kick out of the newspaper headline “New Radio Marvel Revealed!” (They cut the power out from 20kW to 5 watts!)

Thanks again to Dave Bamford W2DAB for sending me the book about Armstrong, “Man of High Fidelity” by Lawrence Lessing.

Finally, I remember talking to Bruce Kelley W2ICE at hamfests. He was a great radio amateur:

Be sure to check out the Antique Wireless Museum’s YouTube Channel. Lots of good stuff there:
We have the famous photo of Major Armstrong,
but this is the first one I’ve seen of a slightly younger Captain E. Howard Armstrong.


Stop what you are doing! Go to the Radio Garden!

This is really fantastic. The screen display is like Google Earth, but all the green dots are local broadcast radio stations. Put your cursor on the dot and listen to that radio station live. And it works very well. If there are several stations in the same town, just zoom in.

In the course of a few minutes this morning I was listening to stations in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Getxo Spain, and Bengaluru India.

Go to the radio garden:

https://radio.garden/