Wow Colin,

This new topic really conjures up a lot of memories for me. After 40 years of radio hobby involvement, I have many fun radio memories.

Here's some random ones:

In the 1990s while stringing out a Beverage antenna at Midway Beach, WA under the light of the moon and the Milky Way, I crested the last dune facing the ocean. Greeting me was the spectacular sight of Comet Hale-Bopp setting over the Pacific, comet tail pointing straight up. It looked like a glowing missile heading for a crash landing in the ocean! I stood there and watched as the comet started to sink below the distant waves, and after a while the comet's tale reminded me of a fountain or a whale's spout on the horizon. It was very eerie and beautiful at the same time.

About 1989 when I was still heavily into tropical bands DXing, I spotted (on three different receivers) two severely distorted WWV signals in the middle of 60 meters (in addition to the normal WWV frequencies, which were not distorted). I called a DXer friend of mine who was 80 miles north of me, and he was hearing the spurious signals too on his communications receivers! What's more, we discovered another distorted WWV signal in the lower half of the 90 meter band. After three days of noting this, one of us called WWV in Ft. Collins to mention it. The engineer we spoke with denied any problems and was rather miffed that we would suggest such a thing. The phantom signals continued for two more days, and then they were gone, never to be heard again.

Many years ago, while the Cold War was still cool to the touch, I was on a vacation in Newport, Oregon. I had brought along a Sony ICF-2010 and a 500-ft. spool of wire in case I could squeeze in some DXing time without my wife protesting. One evening before sunset I drove by myself to the east-west access road of a jetty that extends a long distance out into the Pacific Ocean. I had gotten about 400 feet of the wire laid out along the roadside when I heard someone running towards me from behind, huffing and puffing all the way. Just as I turned around, a wild-eyed man got right in my face and said ominously "I know you're one of them! Don't think I don't know what you're up to!" I nervously asked what he was talking about, he muttered about Russian spies, the KGB, and "subs off the Oregon coast that listen to everything". Just as I was wondering what to say or do next, he turned around abruptly and ran back toward the main road. After he was out of sight, I rolled up the wire as quickly as I could, and got outta there! This summer on another vacation that took us through Newport I reminded my wife about what had happened there, and we had a good laugh over it.

I look forward to seeing what other DX "time tunnel memories" DXer.ca readers might share.

73,

Guy Atkins
Puyallup, WA
www.perseus-sdr.blogspot.com

Post edited by: 4nradio, at: 2008/12/05 20:27

Post edited by: 4nradio, at: 2008/12/05 20:28<br><br>Post edited by: 4nradio, at: 2008/12/05 20:29

Wow! That was an awesome series of short stories! It deserves a place in an actual article --

Well done.

My wife listened as I read it to her out loud.

Brilliant.

One of my first memories was going to Radio Shack back in 1983 and buying a DX-100 for about $100. This radio is on page 148 of 1983 catalog.

Here is page after page of Radio Shack catalog pages ,if you havent seen them.

www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html

Kim

One of my most vivid memories is being in the Canadian arctic sitting in my pickup and struggling to get a call out on an old XJ mobile phone while listening to a NASA launch on my 2010, which was propped on the dashboard. It was January of '86, and the launch was the ill fated shuttle Challenger.

The late sixties and early seventies were a great time for a teenage boy that liked radios and electronics. Imagine listening to WWV to set the time to the exact second on your LED (not LCD...) wristwatch that you bought with boxtops and your allowance. Seeing those little red numbers stay accurate to the second all day long.

Correlating the sunspot activity reports with your actual observations of the sun projecting on the bedroom ceiling out of your brothers reflector telescope.

Completing your Heathkit shortwave radio and having the thrill of turning it on being met by the disappointment of it not working the first time.

Hearing radio Cuba - "transmitiendo des de CUBA!" - and Radio Moscow and even Radio Peking long before the fall of the Berlin wall, and Radio South Africa long before the overdue end of apartheid. Getting pennants and QSL cards and even a really cool wall calendar for your efforts. By surface mail 2-3 months after you sent your report.

Being on your walkie talklie which used CB bands at the time an earthquake struck the New Madrid fault in southern Illinois and talking about it.

Getting a crystal set at an even earlier age and stringing a long wire from the upstairs window to the walnut tree and hearing stations. Lighting protection? What's that?

Going into the dusty attic under the upstairs eves and finding treasures like a Philco 60 and a Philco 70 and trying to figure out what was causing that loud buzz through the speaker when you plugged the 70 in, worrying all the time that you'd blow one of your house's TWO fuses downstairs by even trying it.

Making a guitar amplifier from the Sears Silvertone suit-case style stereo electronics because you figured out that the magnetic pickup on the tonearm worked the same way the magnetic pickup on the guitar did.

Learning all of the morse code alphabet but never getting better than about 2 words a minute.

And, since the subject line of this thread is "Time Tunnel Memories", I have to add the thrill of projecting the postcard ABC sent us of the Time Tunnel onto the bedroom wall with our Kenner Supershow opaque projector. The 'big brother' to the more popular Give-a-Show model.

It was a great time to be an inquisitive kid.

Brian

I can remember being 12 or 13 in 1970 and Dad was home from the war in Nam. He brought home a big radio that had some shortwave bands on it. I can't remember the name of the radio, but it was the size of it from a boy's perspective and it had a light in it. You could lay at night in the bed and use the radio because of the light.

It was my internet, I listened to the BBC, and to AFR on it. I caught a news report from the BBC that Hawker was selling Harrier Jets to the Marines. And two days later on the CBS news with walter Cronkite, came the news of Harrier sale to the Marines. It was like I was on the inside of the news with that Shortwave. That is what made me love to listen to the radio now, I love to DX with a AM radio and I love my Degen 1103 that brought the shortwave back to me inexpensively. Too bad that the Shortwave of Yesteryear has gone away. The love of radio is still there, the World has just left me behind.