My good friend, Dan Romanchik recently wrote about his disappointment to learn that WV7G, who posted a plan for a single tube transmitter had passed away and his web page describing the project had seemingly passed on with him. Enter W5RST, who referenced the Internet Archive, where web content seemingly…
Category: Radio History
What follows is a summary of the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS). Information was gathered primarily from “Fifty Years of ARRL,” an historical record of the League and amateur radio. It was originally posted on the AC6V website. First a bit of background: In 1939 there were 51,000 US hams.…
For years, the Electro Voice RE20 was the studio standard we radio announcers loved. It seemed to enhance the bottom end of our voices, giving us a three-pack-a-day throat without the cigarettes. Today the SURE SM7B and the Heil PR40 often supplant RE20s in the control room. But NPR uses…
As heard on 5985 khz on June 26th.
Seven years ago I first had the honor of meeting K5UR at the Rocky Mountain Division gathering in Taos. Rick Roderick was an ARRL vice president in those days and his message still resonates: Relevant, Resilient, Ready. He touched on those points and many more in an inspiring address at the…
Beyond the horrors of interrogation and torture, lack of information about what’s happening on the outside is was a huge challenge for prisoners of war during World War II. Here’s how POW’s kept informed by making their own radios while in captivity.
12.070.41 Radiogram: AIRRAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NO DRILL.
Those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s lusted after the early Chevrolet Corvettes and Ford Thunderbirds, two seaters that melded performance and style into an irresistible combination. Not as versatile, or powerful as some of the later, more refined models, but inspiring none the less, firing…
When I became active as a radio amateur in the early 1980s, the “No Code License” debate was already in full swing. There were strong opinions on both sides of the issue. I remember many a hot debate at our local amatuer radio club centered on whether or not removing…
Today is the anniversary of an historic solar storm, the Carrington Event On Sept. 2, 1859, a CME struck Earth’s magnetic field with such power that telegraph stations caught fire and people in Cuba read their morning newspapers by the red light of the aurora borealis. If a similar storm…