UNCLE BILL'S RADIO

Long ago, when I was still fascinated with a chunk of lead, that had a piece of galena (lead ore) stuffed into it, hooked up to a coil that was wound on a Quaker Oats box (the ONLY box to use), and using a sliding contact made from a piece of brass brazing rod I'd gotten from my other Uncle, crested with a silver-metal ball that just happened to have a hole through the center (made it easier to slide back-and-forth across the coil), I thought I had the cat's meow... and I did. Ultimately, Mr. Taylor - my 7th. grade shop teacher at Old Mission Junior High, sold me a 1N34 germanium diode (no diddling about with cat's whiskers (made out of safety-pins) anymore. It cost a whole 50 cents, and amazingly enough, I still HAVE IT. That opened up a whole series of crystal sets, some MOBILE from my bicycle (that's how I tracked down the ORIGINAL WØQQ on AM, in my neighborhood)

I moved on to REAL radios. I can't recall the tube now, but after saving my money up for the cherished 90v "B" battery, I got my 1-tube radio going, and much to my Father's chagrin, it used a LOUDSPEAKER. The sudden presence of WHB and KMBC in my room, was very counter-productive to my schoolwork, thus I was early on, to learn the meaning of "quiet hours", and not from the regular FCC, rather from "Father's Corrective Counsel".

It was later on that I got "grandma's radio", which was an RCA "Golden Throat Tone" transformerless AC/DC "All American Five" with a really big dial for the BC band, and now I was in the big leagues - superhetrodyne... the word just DRIPPED from my lips........ aughhhhh. It sounded like something Tom Corbett would say on "The Space Cadets". "Secure the hatch Commander, I'm going to energize the SUPER HETRODYNE!" Broadcast Band DX is something that I don't think is practiced much anymore, but to us kids, it was the beginning of a new, exciting, and different world of "ground wave" and "skip", fraught with KAAY (Little Rock, Arkansas)... KOMA (Oklahoma City)... WLS (Chicago)... KNX (Los Angeles)...and more often than not - XERB in none other than Del Rio, Texas... with the ORIGINAL Wolf-Man-Jack spinning forbidden platters and selling pictures of Jesus that winked at you as you walked by. Nobody REALLY knew how much power they radiated, as the studios were in Texas,

but...
Out on the farm - securely guarded in a prison of corregated steel, and carefully locked against unlawful entry by evildoers, alien abductors, and other miscreants of nature, was THE RECEIVER. I didn't know what it was, but it looked REALLY COOL, was the very proper "wrinkle black", was obviously military in origin, and had come OUT OF MY UNCLE'S AIRPLANE! (Navy PB4Y-1 Liberator) I wasn't really too hip about such things at the tender age of 10, but I knew (like every other red blooded American Boy) what a B-24 Liberator was, and MY UNCLE was a crewchief on a Navy one.... and therefore, our country was safe from the Reds. There must be a reason why HE has such a fine piece of craftsmanship on THE FARM... gee, maybe he's working for the FBI, or is a real spy against the Kremlin, or maybe because they just figured that he was such a good guy (Heck, I already KNEW that), they PRESENTED IT to him.

It was many years before I learned what kind of receiver it was, and then only got to turn it on, IN HIS PRESENCE. I learned it was a WW-II, 1942 manufacture, Wells- Gardner BC-342Q...... awwwwww, wow! These were used in nearly every multiengined bomber that the USA had, and were usually accompanied with one or two AN/ART-13 transmitters. It had a real TOGGLE SWITCH on it for powering it up (real radio guys don't just "turn it on".. they "power it up"), and the tuning knob had a crank-handle on it, 'cause it took LOTS OF TURNS to take it from one end of the dial to the other. It went from 1.5 to 18 mcs (sorry - no mHz. on this radio), and had a beacon band from 200 to 550 kcs (still no kHz). I could hear beacons that said "D-O", and "T-O-P", and the "F-O" one (Dover, Topeka, and Forbes AFB)... late at night, they'd warble a bit, and it sounded really strange and mysterious... they had to threaten me to get me to come into supper, when I was on the farm - no matter HOW COLD it was in that unheated shop.

Through many years, that old receiver sat in the shop - once in a while, Uncle Bill would turn it on, and listen to a country station that was around 1510 kcs (the bottom of the next-to-lowest band), but typically, it just sat there on it's own shelf... a piece of wire with an alligator clip, hooked to a roof-nail, for an antenna. (corrigated steel roof, too). I went off to the Navy in 1961, and he eventually returned to the farm, FROM the Navy - I became a Navy Radioman (gee, wonder how THAT happened?) and got to use astoundingly wonderful gear, and earned my ham license. I'd see the old "Black Box" in the shop, when I was "home on leave", but never thought much of it. Later on in years, I'd turn it on, and tune around to the W1AW CW broadcasts when I was out there, but it just sat... the dust getting wiped off, once in a while...

I lost Uncle Bill a year and a half ago. He was my mentor, my teacher, my guide... my inspiration to good things and achievements. He was more like a big brother to me, than just an Uncle... so when it came time for my other Uncle (Ed) to sell the old family farm that Bill had lived on - I was given a few things in addition to my countless 56 years of childhood-through-adulthood memories... I asked Ed about the "receiver"... he looked at it - forlorn on it's dusty shelf; a couple of salvaged rolls of old copper wire sitting atop it, intermixed with muddauber nests... and said "Sure Tom - go ahead and take the old thing - William would want you to have it, I guess... 'sides - you're the only one who'd want it, anyway" I delicately cleared all of the debris from the top, unhooked the alligatorclip from the roof, coiled up the power-cord (a helpful Navy avionics tech had installed the AC power supply), and carried it lovingly out to the car. It now is all cleaned up, washed free of it's 66 years of dust, and sits once again on it's OWN shelf - the piece of wire with the alligator-clip is hooked to a random long-wire, and I love to listen to 75m AM nets on it. Perhaps the best thing is to snap up that toggle switch, "power it up", and spend an hour or two with myself and memories again - but I'm not alone... I have Uncle Bill's Radio.

October 23, 2008