Monthly Archives: July 2019

Don Stoner, W6TNS, 1959

1959JulElecWorldThe dapper outdoorsman ham shown on the cover of Electronics World for July 1959 is none other than Don Stoner, W6TNS.

We wrote about Stoner previously in connection with his 1959 design for one of the first CB transceivers, a design which became widely popular, and which served as the basis for the Heathkit CB-1 and the “Benton Harbor Lunchbox” series of transceivers for 10, 6, and 2 meters. Stoner was also the idea man responsible for Project OSCAR, amateur radio satellites. He outlined the project in a February 1961 QST article.

In the cover photo, he is operating a 6 meter walkie talkie transceiver which he designed, the construction details of which are contained in the magazine. The set was actually available in two versions, either standard or deluxe. Either version used two tubes and three transistors. The tubes were used for the transmitter, with the superregenerative receiver being completely transistorized. The main difference was that the deluxe version had a transistorized power supply which allowed use of four dry cell batteries to completely power the set. A set of flashlight batteries were said to run the receiver for up to 2000 hours. The standard version used a 90 volt B battery, but Stoner made a compelling case that the small added expense for the deluxe version would pay for itself in short order with lower battery cost.

With the built-in whip antenna, the set had a range of about five miles. With an outside beam antenna, the author had worked stations fifty miles away. In the cover picture, he is working the station in the lower left corner, which is pulling him in with a Hallicrafters SX-101 Mark IIIA receiver, which could pick up 6 and 2 meters with a converter. The station also includes a Johnson Viking 6N2 transmitter and VFO.

Stoner died in 1999 at the age of 67.



1929 Byrd Antarctic Expedition

1929JulyPSNinety years ago this month, the July 1929 issue of Popular Science carried this graphic showing how daily news dispatches were consistently making it to the New York Times from Richard E. Byrd’s first Antarctic expedition. Since the ship left New York, more than 150,000 words had made their way from the expedition to eager news customers in the United States. The dispatches were received each night at 10:00 New York time, the largest being an 8500 word dispatch sent one night. At the receiving end, a radio operator was set up in the New York Times Annex building. A backup station at Woodside, Long Island, was also receiving, and in the cases where the signal couldn’t be heard in Manhattan, the message was quickly relayed via telegraph from Long Island.

Within in hour, the story was going to press in New York, and was going over the wires to other papers throughout the world. After the news dispatches, personal messages from Commander Byrd and his men were sent. Then, a news summary was sent to the men in Antarctica.

At Byrd’s camp at Little America, Bay of Whales, the illustration here (based upon descriptions contained in those dispatches) appears to show a horizontal Delta Loop antenna at seventy feet.



KFI “On The Scouting Trail” 1944

1944Jul17BCSeventy-five years ago today, KFI Los Angeles ran this ad in the July 17, 1944, issue of Broadcasting, touting its public service in the form of the program “On the Scouting Trail.”  The show served the 60,000 Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts in the region by dramatizing experiences of former scouts and how they were relevant in wartime.

If you look carefully at the shoulder of the scout lighting the fire, you’ll see that the patch has the station’s call letters at the bottom.  The text on the top appears to be “COMMANDO.”  This patch was given to scouts appearing in the show’s studio audience each Saturday morning.  You can see specimens of this and other patches at this page on the Crescent Bay Council website.  The scout here appears to be wearing the “late 1940s” version of the patch.



Superior Radio Service, Westfield, MA, 1944

1944JulyradioRetailingSeventy-five years ago this month, the cover of the July 1944 issue of Radio & Television Retailing showed this scene of downtown Westfield, MA, specifically, Supreme Radio Service, 28 Main Street.  The store’s owner was Joseph R. Davich, who had gotten his start in radio at the age of fourteen, when he built sets “using a piece of coal or potato for a detector.” He reportedly also had a spark transmitter with a range of about six miles. He had been in the radio business since 1932, and had expanded into both large and small appliances in 1935.

With wartime consumer manufacturing shut down, Davich had sold his last radio in the fall of 1943. Washers and ranges were soon also out of stock for the duration. The service business continued, but all of his regular technicians had departed, four to the armed forces, one to teaching, and one to a war plant. “Not a man of prejudices, but concerned solely with getting the work done, Davich is willing to train women, if they are interested and willing to learn.” His most recent protege was a 17 year old gird who had just graduated from high school.

The store’s record department was holding its own during the war under the management of a young woman. The magazine noted that records were paying the rent, with service completing the volume. Davich also had a government subcontract to produce plastic radio parts for submarine detector radar equipment. This contract employed five to eight men.

1944JulyradioRetailingGoogleStreetIf the New England church steeple looks slightly out of place in the picture, well, that’s because it is.  A modern view of the shop from Google street view.  The 1944 radio shop is in the spot where the Rovithis Realty sign is, and the building next door is very distinctive.  But there’s no church steeple in the modern view.  But this isn’t because the church isn’t there.  It’s actually located a half block away.  It’s actually the steeple of the First Congregational Church, as shown in the modern image at the right.  Apparently, the magazine editors took a bit of artistic license and “photoshopped” in the nearby steeple.1944JulyradioRetailingGoogleSteeple



Preparing for Power Outages

New York during 20__ power outage caused by Hurricane Sandy. US Govt. photo.

New York during 2012 power outage caused by Hurricane Sandy. Image Credit: Hybirdd, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

The recent blackout in New York serves as a reminder that you should be prepared and have some useful items on hand.  The suggestions on this page are a bare minimum, and you probably want to be more prepared.  But this page can serve as a checklist to make sure you have at least the very basics on hand.

We call it a “blackout” because the lights go out, and the natural first idea is that you’ll need light.  Chances are, your cell phone will work as a flashlight, but the battery won’t last forever, and it’s probably not the most convenient.  Fortunately, flashlights are very inexpensive, and you ought to keep one or more in various locations in your home and vehicle.  The Eveready flashlights shown at left are very inexpensive, but they are fairly durable and have long battery life.  (Even though they look like your grandfather’s flashlight, they actually contain quite good LEDs and use only one D cell rather than two.)   They come with batteries, but it doesn’t hurt to   get some spares.

Your next need is information.  In many (but not all) blackouts, the cellular network will keep functioning, at least for a few hours, so being able to power your phone is important.   Obviously, you won’t be able to plug it in to the wall, so at a minimum, you’ll want to have a charger that plugs into your car, such as the one shown at left.  Obviously, you’ll want to make sure that the plug fits your phone.  This one uses a micro USB plug, which almost all non-Apple phones now use.  If you already have some USB cables, the 12 volt USB plugs are very inexpensive.

If you want to charge away from your car, one very inexpensive method is the USB charger shown at the right.  This charger contains a USB outlet (so you’ll still need the USB-Micro USB cord) and is powered by four AA alkaline batteries.  Therefore, you can charge your phone at any time, as long as you have AA alkaline batteries.  The extremely low cost of this type of charger makes it ideal to keep a few on hand in case of emergency.  Even if the power is out, you might still be able to buy batteries.  But more importantly, it allows you to keep batteries on hand to keep your phone charged.

There are a few downsides of this type of charger.  The main one is that it goes through the AA batteries quite fast, so it’s not a good long-term solution.  Also, it does not “use up” the batteries completely.  In other words, even after you are unable to charge your phone with that battery, the battery is still good for other things, such as a flashlight or radio.  Therefore, if you have some of these chargers on hand, I would recommend also getting some inexpensive AA flashlights.

And speaking of radios, you should have at least one battery operated radio.  You can get information on your cell phone, but streaming is generally battery intensive.  Also, in many emergencies, the cellular network will become unavailable or extremely slow.  During the New York blackout, WCBS radio was providing excellent information about current conditions, and anyone with an inexpensive radio would have been able to tune in.  The inexpensive radio shown at the left would give you this information immediately.  As an added bonus, it runs on AA batteries.  So when you have depleted a battery charging your phone, you can still use that “dead” battery to listen to the radio.

 

One product you may want to consider for all of these needs is the Midland emergency radio shown at the left.  I own one of these, and it can come in quite handy.  It is a combination radio/flashlight/cell phone charger.  The flashlight is excellent, and the radio is quite good.  In addition to normal AM FM broadcasts, it picks up NOAA weather stations, and even includes an alert feature that will sound an alarm in the event of severe weather alerts.  It has both a USB and micro USB plug to charge a phone.  One micro USB cord is included.   It has a built-in battery which can be charged in three ways.  First of all, before an emergency, you can charge it up by plugging it into a standard USB charger, or even by plugging it into your computer.  It’s a good idea to keep the battery topped off in this way.  But when power is unavailable, you can charge it with the built-in solar panel, or with the built-in hand crank.  Thus, this one device will provide you with a flashlight and radio, and will also keep your phone charged.

Obviously, these suggestions are just the starting point for preparedness.  But just having a source of light and information in an emergency will go a long ways in making an emergency more bearable.  And the cost of these minimal preparations is extremely low.  After you have made these basic preparations, some of my other pages will provide you with ideas of other preparations you can make for emergencies:

Some links on this page are affiliate links, meaning that this site receives a small commission if you buy after using the link.  The links above are for ordering on Amazon.  

 

 



Bastille Day 1919

 

In the first Bastille Day parade after the War, U.S. Troops, along with troops of the other allies, march through Paris.  And at a more recent Bastille Day, this stirring rendition of the Marseillaise was performed:



1949 TV Station List

1949TVstationlistThis listing of U.S. television stations appeared in the July 1949 issue of Radio Electronics.  It showed all stations on the air as of May 20 of that year.  Los Angeles now led the nation with the number of stations on the air with six:  KFI-TV, KLAC-TV,  KNBH, KTLA, KTSL, and KTTV.  New York had five stations on the air.  Chicago and Washington DC had four.  Baltimore, Detroit, and Philadelphia had three.

In the Upper Midwest, WTMJ-TV was on the air in Milwaukee, and KSTP-TV was on the air in St. Paul.



1959 TV Extension Speaker

1959JulPM

The young woman in this picture wanted to listen to the TV privately, but didn’t want to put up with the dreaded “headphone fatigue.” Fortunately, her late 50s living room contained the perfect speaker enclosure that could be placed right next to her ear, namely, one of the “bullets” of the ubiquitous pole lamp.

Very little modification of the lamp was necessary. Each lamp had a separate cord running to the base, so it was an easy matter to disconnect one set of wires and add an extension to run to the speaker terminals. To mount the speaker, an ordinary AC plug was added, and that was plugged in to an adapter similar to the one shown at the right. You then tapped into the speaker leads inside the set, and you could listen to a speaker nestled in the “bullet.”

Pole lamps of this type are still available at Amazon, so there’s no reason why you couldn’t duplicate this feat today. The instructions for the project appeared in the July 1959 issue of Popular Mechanics.



Hurricane Preparedness Links

cone graphic

NOAA image.

With another tropical storm bearing down on the Gulf coast, here are links to earlier posts on hurricane preparedness:



WDGY Minneapolis, 1944

1944July10BC

This ad for WDGY radio appeared 75 years ago today, in the July 10, 1944, issue of Broadcasting.  The ad maps the station’s impressive coverage area, and notes that letters were recently received from over 96,000 letters from listeners.  The letters all included a boxtop for Waldorf Crackers, and were part of a promotion for an afternoon program.

The station is currently KTLK, with a similar pattern with its nine-tower array beaming north at night.  The WDGY call letters are in use by an oldies station serving the Twin Cities market from its Hudson, WI, city of license.