[IRCA] 1937 RCA 811K was my first DX machine

[Robert Young <youngbob53@xxxxxxx>]

I had been interested in radios since my preteens years starting out with my father's old 5 tube Motorola plastic table set. You could pick up old consoles and tabletops in those days for at most 10 bucks, they had been moved to the cellar or the garage to make room for TV and sometimes they'd give them to you just to get rid of them. I blew up quite a few in various ways. I can first remember DXing with a crystal radio I got for Christmas sometime around 1965 at the age of about 12, I also had a 15 watt mono tube amp I had put together from a Radio shack kit, the amp sounded pretty good actually. I of course hooked the crystal radio to it and picked up The Voice of America which was quite strong in those day. Starting playing in rock n roll bands for quite a few years so radios took a back seat until I hit about 18 or 19 when I traded a friend a Panasonic 8 track player for a 1937 RCA 811K console radio which is still an excellent radio for DXing and it sounded good to boot!
 . I moved this radio every everywhere I went from several different apartments, I became a shortwave listener for several years until I brought home a book called Popular Electronics (I think) and it had a MW guide in it (White's Log I think) and explained the rudiments of BCB DXing, I had never thought of it up until that point. By this time I was living in Worcester MA in the Grafton st area on a hill, I took about 400' of spliced together copper wire and ran it across a schoolyard and down to a tree, I hooked an old pair of headphones to it and decided to try this BCB DXing. I fired up the old RCA and started scanning the band, I started at about 7 pm, my girl friend and a few others all went out to a local club and thought I was nuts when they got home again at two am and I was still sitting in the same position! Anyway I did pretty well that night, got lots of clears latter in the evening but the crown jewel of that night for me was sitting on 1160 and hearing just tha!
 t sound when you know there is no other station on that same frequency
 for thousands of miles. I waited and started hearing some faint swirling noise in the background, just below the noise floor, it came up slowly and within twenty minutes it was KSL Salt Lake City Utah, got a pos. ID at 1pm and was thrilled, I knew just about how far Salt Lake City was and that was in very far corner of our land. Anyway I got hooked that night and soon bought an HRO-60 which netted me many more stations, splits and Caribbeans. I remember getting Germany 1593 on that radio with a small loop. Turn the loop another way I would get RJR Jamaica on I think 720, I got a couple of other Jamaicans semi regularly too. I remember getting an Alabama day timer right as he was getting ready to shut down or off. Some of the semi regulars here back then were WBAP 820 and WSM Nasville  I joined the NRC around 1980 for a few years lost interest and joined again about 6 or 7 years ago just in time for the IBOC mess and was surprised at how crowded the bands were, no more real !
 clears. I mostly DX TA's BCB and LW now I'm lazy about IDing them so don't often email them to the reflector, I do pretty good here some nights though with my long wires, my phaser and my boatanchors. My three favorite radios for DXing are in no particular order, A Collins designed (Capeheart) R-390A, a Hammarlund SP-600 and a pristine National HRO-50R1

Bob Young
KB1OKL
Millbury, MA
 		 	   		  
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