The KEØVH Hamshack For May 2013
By Jack Roland, CBRE, CBNT, and AMD
KLove /Air 1 Denver Engineering.
Happily listening to the CBS Radio Mystery theater on my Zenith H-500 Transoceanic.
Along with restoring a few old radio’s, I have been really getting into listening to the CBS Radio Mystery Theater, (http://www.cbsrmt.com/) which aired on CBS affiliates from 1974 until 1982. It was the brainchild of Hiram Brown, who had also produced “Inner Sanctum” and “The Whistler” back in the Golden age of Radio. See a complete history on all this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBS_Radio_Mystery_Theater. I had listened to a lot of these radio drama’s on WDEF-AM in Chattanooga growing up and it all of a sudden dawned on me to look this up on the internet. I was elated to find you can download and listen to these anytime, or live stream them from the CBS RMT site. They would like a small donation to keep this alive on the internet and I am glad to help out. What a great preservation of our radio history this is! I encourage you to check out this fine site and others like if for some REAL old time radio experiences. I am even able to pass this down to a couple of my kids as believe it or not they are interested. My daughter Emily (KCØYYG) is really enjoying these as she is interested in crime solving and drama’s on TV. She has the first 49 episodes (MP3) on a CD and puts them on her MP3 player to listen to while she draws and does her art projects.
Now how am I listening to them on the above radio you may wonder. My good friend Greg, WB7AHO, designed and built a (Part 15) small AM transmitter putting out about 3-5 milliwatts that I have hooked up in my hamshack downstairs that covers the house BEAUTIFULLY, and sounds GREAT in my old tube radios. So I can use the radios anywhere in the house and listen while I am doing various chores and such. Earlier the evening I took the above picture, my wife and I were listening to a Bobby Darin album playing thru the transmitter to the H-500 pictured. Man, talk about nostalgia and just plain fun! It is really fun to listen to Colorado Rockies baseball games on these radios too! The tubes just sound better! At my previous Entercom Denver employment the PD of KEZW, an AM Nostalgia station I looked after gave me a shoebox full of the “When Radio Was” cd’s that had been aired, and now I am in the process of converting to MP3 all of those cd’s. Shows like “The Shadow”, “The Lone Ranger”, “Yours Truly Johnny Dollar”, and a host of others are going into my library to be listened to and pass down to my children! Listening to the “Lone Ranger and Tonto” the other night on my Zenith Transoceanic made me wonder if this old radio received any of these shows originally back in the day. Man this is TOO MUCH FUN!
Schematic
WB7AHO Schematic for the AM transmitter. The frequency crystal is on 785 kHz, perfect for an analog dial tuning radio as we have stations in Denver on 760 and 810 kHz. (Nice hand drawing Greg!)
The 5 milliwatt transmitter itself. Man it sounds GREAT!
And as promised this month, with the exception on needing another tuning knob and a small flaw in the “black stag” cloth covering, the 8G005Y Transoceanic is done. The picture doesn’t do it justice as to how nice it looks. It will now be on display in my office at the Denver KLove studio. I am very proud about how the radio turned out. I am listening to our Nostalgia station in Denver, KEZW even as I type this. What a cool piece of history! I think I am going to make restoring these a part of the rest of my life!
The brass works and lettering turned out really great!
My R-7000 and 8G005Y in the office. Beautiful!
And since I have been into a bit of nostalgia with these radios and old radio shows, how about this list of things our kids will never see……………Remember:
45’s and 78’s, Drive-In Movie Theatres, Manual Typewriters,Telegrams, Roller Skates with Keys, Rotary Telephones, Live Operators that asked “What Number Please?”, Party Lines, Ice Boxes and the Ice Man who came with blocks of ice on his wagon, Regular Gasoline, Drug Stores with Soda Fountains, Boyfriends Class Ring around your neck, Hot Rodding on 16th St., Doctors who make house calls, Coal Stoves, Writing a check, Butter Churn, Margarine in a plastic bag with yellow color tab, Dancing Cigarette boxes and “Call for Phillip Morris”, TV’s with no Remote, Beanie Caps, Berma Shave Billboards, Eight Tracks, Fender Skirts, Suicide Knobs, Carbon Paper, Theatre Newsreels, Combing your hair into a ducktail, Annie-Annie Over and other childhood OUTDOOR games, Rumble Seats, Washboards, American Bandstand, Church key bottle and can openers, Coon Skin Caps, Saddle Shoes and Poodle Skirts, Big Chief Pads, Drinking out of the Garden Hose, Sunday Drives, Playing Cowboys and Indians, Trading Comic Books, Full Service Gas Stations with Free Gifts, Chemistry Sets, Erector Sets, S&H Green Stamps, Howdy Doody with Buffalo Bob, Movie serials, Tiddly Winks, White Buck Shoes with Powder Puff bags for the scuffs, Slide Rule, V-Mail, Gifts in boxes of detergent, Cap Guns, Real Cash Registers with numbers you punched, Elevator attendant, TV Test Pattern, Wood burning set, Coffee Percolators, Car window mounted air conditioner, Metal ice cube trays, Star Spangled Banner at start of TV broadcast day, Wringer Washing Machines, Tang and Space Food Sticks, Drivers Side Vent Windows, Dimmer switch on the floorboard, Backyard Incinerators, and for us engineers, the smell of dust off a vacuum tube radio AND ATTENDED transmitter sites…….
And finally, I am really looking forward to the summer season for 6 meters. Hopefully in June the band will come alive, and the VHF contest is June 8-10. Details are at http://www.arrl.org/june-vhf. Last year I had one of the coolest 6 meter contacts ever, with VE1SKY in Nova Scotia. This is about as far east in the America’s as you can get, grid square FN74. So I really wanted Rogers QSL card. I really enjoy 6 meters and look forward to getting more contacts with my Ranger RCI-5054 DX 100 and 6 meter beam. I will certainly be monitoring more as the summer begins and continues.
The QSL from VE1SKY
As always don’t forget the SBE IRLP (and Echolink) Hamnet, the first Saturday of the month. Details on how to join are at http://www.qsl.net/ke0vh/sbehamnet. I hope you will be able to join us and share your engineering and ham exploits!
73’, God be with you, & see you next time! KEØVH