Re: [IRCA] Howdy
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Re: [IRCA] Howdy



John Callarman???? Where have I heard that name before??? Oh, yeah-QRM....How can I forget you?  We're in the picture together (along with Bob Pietsch) from the convention in Eugene back in the
middle ages...............In our bloody prime, we were----then!!

don k.



JohnCallarman@xxxxxxx wrote:

> It has dawned on me that, though I've sent a line or two to the IRCA list
> since I came on board a few weeks ago, I've never introduced myself through
> any of the club's functions, except at the Columbus, Ohio, convention in
> 1975 ... the only IRCA convention I've been able to attend.
>
> If I were to link for my old Jaycee ties, I could call myself a double
> exhausted rooster, having turned 70 in June of this year. I invented DX'ing
> (or thought I did) in October 1947, in Corvallis, Oregon, just 11 miles from
> Albany, which appears to be a significant IRCA QTH these days. It wasn't
> until 1950, when I discovered Kenneth R. Boord's International Shortwave
> column in the old Radio & TV News that I realized that what I was doing was
> DX'ing.
>
> Unfortunately, I didn't join a club until 1955, when I became a member of
> two now-defunct organizatons, the Newark News Radio Club and the Universal
> Radio DX Club. I began my broadcasting career in Corvallis, doing color and
> half-time and post-game statistics for, first KRUL-1340 and, later,
> KCOV-1240, while I was still in high school. I also was sports editor for
> the CHS student newspaper and wrote all the high school sports for the
> Corvallis Gazette-Times from my sophomore year in high school on. Big thrill
> for the pun-lover in me came in 1952-53 ... the athletic rivalry between
> Corvallis High and Albany High was called the Civil War, and in the fall of
> '52, my Spartans beat the Bulldogs, 18-12. My lead in the G-T: "The Civil
> War turned into the War of 1812 this year" ... Basketball season rolled
> around and be darned if Corvallis didn't beat Albany, 54-40. Yes, my lead
> was "The Civl War turned into 54-40 or Fight this year ..."
>
> My first full-time radio job was at KCOV (now KFLY) and when I QSL'd a
> tape-recorded reception report from the late Roy Millar, then of Issaquah,
> Washington, he 1) arranged a DX Test from KCOV, the first of several that I
> have run, and 2) touted me onto the National Radio Club. That spring I had
> volunteered for the draft, entered the Army and DX'd from Aschaffenburg,
> Germany, while at the same time, current IRCA board member Pete Taylor was
> DX'ing from a Coast Guard ship headquartered in Hawaii, plying the South
> Pacific, and Jack Hathaway was DX'ing from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where he
> was an Air Force NCO at the American Embassy. Pete and Jack were later to
> have a further place in my life ... which are two whole n'other stories.
>
> When I was in the service, my folks moved to Canyon, Texas, and I followed
> them to the Panhandle when I mustered out in 1958. About the time I moved to
> Canyon, 17 miles south of Amarillo, a student at Amarillo High School named
> Larry Godwin joined the National Radio Club and, at one time, we actually
> had eight MWBC DX'ers in and around Amarillo, including Jack Hathaway, whose
> last assignment before retiring from the Air Force was Amarillo Air Force
> Base.
>
> One of the ironies of this whole thing is that Larry Godwin was to teach for
> a while at Oregon State in Corvallis before he settled at the University of
> Montana.
>
> Other stops along the way to retirement in Krum, Texas for me were radio
> stations in Hereford, Amarillo, Tulia, Pampa, Fort Worth and Houston, Texas;
> Monroe, Louisiana (where I part-timed during a career-detour as a Social
> Security Administration bureaucrat); Cambridge, Massachusetts and Mt.
> Vernon, Illinois. After 11 years as news director/sports play-by-play man at
> WMIX, the Mt. Vernon Register-News hired me as an editor, and the my last 19
> years of paychecks came via print journalism.
>
> I've DX'ed with a Wards Airline five-tube tabletop set, on which I heard New
> Zealand on 650 from Corvallis, a Hallicrafters S-38A, a war surplus BC-342N,
> which covered 1470-1600 in the broadcast band (and on which I heard 2 kw.
> 2CN, Canberra, on 1540 in 1956); an HQ-160, a DX-150, an HQ-180; and, more
> recently, an NRD 525.
>
> I did a little volunteer work for the NRC in the '60s ... IDXD editor,
> publisher, editor and typist for the first NRC Log in 1968 ... and am now
> writing a DX history column for NRC called "Memory Dredging," stealing the
> title from a column written by my all-time radio hero, Jim Hawthorne, on the
> now defunct webzine, Radio Digest.
>
> I was one of five founding members in 2002 of the "Corazon DX" reflector,
> which specializes in DX'ing México, which is now my primary DX interest.
> Since moving to Krum, about 35 miles north of Dallas-Fort Worth, I've taped
> IDs for about 140 XE stations from my final location. I have shared some
> extensive information I've collected on BCB stations in México with James
> Niven, for use in the IRCA Mexican log.
>
> I first joined IRCA shortly after it changed its name from National Radio
> Club, Inc., and have been a member, off and on, since some time in 1964. I
> anticipate being a more active participant in IRCA, as well as in NRC, ABDX
> and other lists that have been and are being established.
>
> I believe in sharing, and will try to do a better job here and elsewhere in
> hopes that whatever we old-timers can do to bring newcomers into our hobby
> can keep the hobby alive, if not growing.
>
>
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