Re: [IRCA] Howdy

[<JohnCallarman@xxxxxxx>]

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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