Re: [IRCA] 30 years or more of skywave Dxing (55 years of radio)

[bill kral <jwkral@xxxxxxxx>]

A lot of interesting stories to read. I 've been listening and Dxing on almost the whole radio spectrum for most of my life and first contact was when I was about 6 or 7 in the old country when there was no such thing as FM so my mother had a radio tuned to one of only a hand full of stations and I guess reception was not local because one day she was listening and had to touch a length of wire attached to the radio and she let me hold it to show me that the weak signal became a bit stronger.That kind of got me interested in listening whenever I had free time after school etc.then after moving to N.B.Canada at 9 I was preoccupied with life as a little kid and sort of let radio go of radio for awhile until a radio was available at home again and I became familiar with stations that played top 40 rock and roll and so when I became old enough to earn a few cents I got my first pocket transistor radio and put it under my pillow at night and discovered
 night time radio listening (and daytime skip in the winter) and tuned into the big cities where all the stations were playing R&R and finding all the ones doing top 40 which basically every station was doing.I found more and more stations over the years and then turned listening into searching and bought Radio & TV Experimenter Mags for the White Radio Logs which alternated between frequency lists and call letter lists every other month. School and other interruptions prevented me from becoming a total fanatic so I did not persue the hobby seriously and maybe turn it into a professional thing but it's been something that I got addicted to and I'm still at it now. Back in the sixties I was listening to WBAL 1090 Baltimore and they were IDing as WBAL Radio 11 so I wrote them a letter asking why 11 when it was 1090 and they said it was a more familiar way of IDing since most radios had an 11 on the dial and that was my one and only QSL that I got but I
 lost it years ago.During the summer months I spent some time Dxing on FM and TV which kept me busy during daylight hours..I've bought, listened to, opened up and played with so many radios over the years that if I still had them all now I could open up a radio museum.I still find the odd old multi band receiver at a second hand store and scoop it up for a few bucks for old times sake and try to see what it can do in the way of outperforming the previous one. Dxing was easier in those days but still as much fun now.I guess I'll be doing it for a while yet.Bill in BC
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