If you’re wondering what your state or province’s license plate looked like 70 years ago, here’s a complete collection. This ad for Atlas Tires appeared 70 years ago today in the June 29, 1953, issue of Life Magazine.
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This past weekend was ARRL Field Day, an operating event in which Amateur Radio operators set up in the field and see how many contacts they can make with portable equipment. It’s mostly a fun activity, but it also serves as a test of emergency capabilities. For many, this involves hauling large equipment, often powered by a gasoline generator, and setting up large antennas. Often, large groups are involved in these operations. It’s been around since 1933, so this year’s running marked the 90th anniversary.
I prefer a simpler approach, and set out by myself or a smaller group with equipment that I can easily carry and quickly set up. This year, instead of just driving to a park, I decided to operate from an island accessible only by boat. In particular, I operated from Greenberg Island in the St. Croix River, part of William O’Brien State Park, Minnesota. The plan was for my wife and I to do the operation, bringing our canoe from home.
Setting up one end of my antenna. I’m breaking of a stick which I used as a stake to anchor it in the sand.
The initial weather reports didn’t look promising, so we decided not to take the canoe, and instead just operate from the mainland. But while driving there, the weather looked fine, so we decided to rent a canoe and activate the island as originally planned.
The island has been part of the park since 1958. When I was a kid, there was a pedestrian bridge linking it to the mainland, with a trail covering part of the island. Exploring the island was always a fun part of a trip to the park. The bridge is long gone, and the only way to access it is by boat. I did check first, and it’s perfectly legal to land there, although it is posted “No Camping.” And not having been there for about 50 years, it was fun to explore the island again, but there was no trace of the old trails.
There were a few human footprints on the beach, but not many. At the beach where we landed, there were deer footprints, as well as either a dog or a wolf. The only other sign of humans was a fairly recent mylar balloon reading “happy birthday” which had landed in the brush just off the beach. I inspected it carefully to see if it carried a note. Unfortunately it didn’t, so I just picked it up and took it to a trash can on the mainland.
I was on the air from about 3:30 – 5:00 PM, and the weather held up fine. It started looking like rain and we headed back. We had a few drops of rain, but it didn’t start pouring until we had just left the park on the way home.
We found a beach on the east side of the island, and set up there. I used the QCX Mini, running 5 watts on 40 meter CW, and worked about 20 contacts. The antenna was an inverted vee supported my trusty golf ball retriever shoved into the sand and leaning against a tree. The power source was a fish finder battery. I did purchase it new for Field Day, since the previous one was showing signs of wear after 7 years of abuse.
I forgot to bring a folding chair (although my wife remembered hers and was able to relax while I operated). The fallen tree shown above served as a suitable substitute.
Heading home. KC0OIA at the bow, W0IS at the stern.
Best DX was Alabama, I believe. In addition to working Field Day, I submitted the logs for Parks On The Air (POTA), WWFF-KFF, and U.S. Islands Awards Program. This is the first time the island has been activated, and since we went over the magic number of 15 QSOs, it will count as being “qualified” for that program.
Thanks to the stations shown below, some at home, and some out in the field, for pulling in my 5 watt signal. If you look carefully, you’ll see three dupes. All of my logging is pencil and notebook, so sometimes it’s hard to remember who I just worked.
Will I ever save the world with my communications abilities? Probably not. But it’s good to know that with equipment I can carry with me, just a few minutes setting up, and a battery found in any car, I could get messages out to my friends and relatives in case of disaster, and could do the same thing for my neighbors.
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We’ve previously written about the MacMillan Arctic expedition. It was the first such expedition to be equipped with radio. The radio operator was Don Mix, later W1TS, who went on to be a prolific writer of construction articles for QST.
A hundred years ago, if you wanted to stay up to date with the expedition, you would definitely want to take out a subscription to the Washington Star, as explained in this ad from the June 26, 1923, issue. The paper would report dispatches received by radio, but for those who wanted to stay in close touch, all that was required was a ham license and station, or just a receiver to listen in. The ad lists the times at which the expedition’s station (WNP, for Wireless North Pole) would be on the air. And from 1:00 to 2:59 AM and again from 3:00 to 7:00 AM, it would be open for contacts with amateurs. As we reported previously, Art Collins, W9CXX (later W0CXX) was able to do just that.
There was a time when electronic communications meant wires running from city to city. In the United States, these were the telephone lines owned by The Phone Company, or telegraph lines owned by Western Union. If those lines were knocked down due to some kind of natural disaster, then whole communities could be cut off from the rest of the world.
When that happened, Amateur Radio might serve as the only link. And 75 years ago this month, the June 1948 issue of QST announced that Western Union had reinstated a cooperative program with the ARRL to ensure that hams were available as backup “when wires are down.” It was a reinstatement because Amateur Radio had been off the air during the War, and the program originally dated to 1939, as announced in the June 1939 issue of QST.
The ARRL was able to “give W.U. a list of Emergency Coordinators (EC), so in any pinch, the W.U. local managers will know who to call upon for coordinated information on the active amateur stations, radio schedules, points in radio nets, local emergency-powered outlet, and so on, so
necessary emergency traffic might be filed.” For their part, Amateurs were encouraged to fill out ARRL Form 7 and give it to their EC to sign up as members of the Amateur Emergency Corps. In fact, the blank forms were available at Western Union offices, and could even be dropped off there, with Western Union routing the forms back to ARRL headquarters.
In reports of disasters, it wasn’t uncommon to read that hams had assisted Western Union when the lines were down. For example, during the 1940 Armistice Day Blizzard, Sherm Boen of Albert Lea handled traffic for the railroad, since a dispatcher in southern Minnesota needed permission from Minneapolis before sending a snowplow north.
These days, it’s unlikely (but not totally inconceivable) that the normal telecommunications networks will fail completely. In addition to ground-based lines, there are multiple satellite options available for linking various communities. So it’s unlikely that an internet service provider or phone company will call hams for assistance with restoring their networks.
However, it’s not unheard of for individuals and families in areas hit by disasters to be cut off from the outside world. The ability to send a short message to family or friends in other states could be a major morale booster, and could be extremely helpful in reuniting families separated by disasters. Hams spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find a “served agency” to whom they can offer their services. But radio communications today isn’t exactly rocket science, and those agencies can probably have communications in place operated by their own personnel.
But hams still have a major strength, and that is the fact that they are widely dispersed around the country, mostly in residential areas. In other words, if there is a local or regional disaster, they are already there, and they can begin communicating immediately. As exercises such as Field Day and Winter Field Day prove, they can be on the air immediately, even if power is out, and even if part of their station is damaged. A wire antenna can be put up almost anywhere, hooked up to an HF rig and car battery, and communications are immediately established. Even the most modest of VHF rigs can provide local communications with other hams.
It seems to me that individual hams should figure out how they can serve their neighbors in time of emergency. In my case, I will simply make it known, perhaps with a sign in the front yard, that I can send short messages to anyone, just about anywhere, via Amateur Radio. I have multiple radios that can be pressed into service, and all I need is some wire to build an antenna. For power, I have multiple options, such as a car battery, flashlight batteries, or a solar panel. I can be on the air almost immediately, and stay on the air more or less indefinitely. I don’t need any agency to serve. My license is the only authorization I need to offer my services to my neighbors.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first time an American president addressed the nation through a hookup of multiple radio stations.
President Warren Harding was on a tour of much of the continental United States, as well as the Territory of Alaska. While in Kansas City, he gave the speech over WDAF in that city. It was also picked up by WGY in Schenectady, NY, WEAF in New York City, and KDKA in Pittsburgh. The wire service story above appeared in the Casper (WY) Daily Tribune, June 22, 2023. It was estimated that about a million Americans heard the speech.
The summer of 1923 was to be a big one for radio, as predicted by the June 1923 issue of Wireless Age. The magazine editorialized that radio would be a major feature of summer camp experiences, and many farm families would be introduced to radio by their city visitors.
The cover featured this illustration by Charles S. Jaeger. But somehow, play-by-play broadcasts of rowing crew competitions never quite caught on.
Shown here, on the cover of the June 1953 issue of Radio-Electronics, is Barbara Reid, a worker at General Instrument in Elizabeth, NJ. She is making adjustments on the company’s Model 60 UHF tuner, which was in turn used in a number of manufacturers’ sets to tune channels 14-83, 470-890 MHz, which had been allocated to television in 1952.
According to the magazine, this band was an awkward one. The frequencies were too low for microwave and radar techniques, but too high for lumped-constant circuitry. Accordingly, this tuner, which found its way into sets made by companies such as Dumont, used a combination of both techniques.
For a snapshot of grocery prices in 1975, this ad for A&P appeared in the Pittsburgh Press, June 18, 1975. (You can click on the image above for a larger version.)
According to this online inflation calculator, one dollar in 1975 was the equivalent of $5.65 in 2023 dollars. So you need to multiply all of these prices by 5.65. The pound of coffee for $1.02 sounds like a bargain, but it works out to $5.77 in today’s money. And five pounds of flour was only 69 cents, but that’s the same as $3.90 today.
The federal minimum wage was $2.10 per hour, so you would earn $16.80 for a day’s work. How would you spend your grocery budget if you were buying?
Harnessing the power of the sun to cook your food is nothing new, as shown by this hundred-year-old illustration on the cover of Science and Invention, June 1923.
The accompanying article, penned by Dr. C.G. Abbott, the assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, isn’t quite a construction article, but it does provide some basic ideas. The model shown above was suitable for camping, or other situations where fuel and power were unavailable. The two concave mirrors, made of tin, reflected the sun onto the cooking surface, the bottom of which was blackened with soot. The complicating factor, possibly unnecessary, is the use of an alarm clock to keep the mirrors aimed.
For situations where it was necessary to cook at night or when there was no sun, the author also described a more complicated system, where the sun heated a reservoir of oil, which was in turn used to provide the cooking heat.
For a simple solar cooker, you can see our earlier post, where we provide plans for construction of a solar oven. If you want to save the work, the solar cooker shown below uses the same principle as the 1923 design, but it somewhat more efficient with the parabolic mirror. Also shown are some solar ovens:
While these can’t be used in the dark or on cloudy days, having the ability to cook using only the sun’s energy adds flexibility for camping or emergency preparedness.
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The June 1948 issue of Radio Craft showed this circuit for a one-tube “reflex” receiver, so named because the tube served double duty. The input was connected to the antenna circuit, and the tube served as an RF amplifier, with the output going to a then relatively new 1N34 diode. The audio then went through a transformer and volume control, where it was fed back to the tube, which then amplified the audio. The audio then passed through an RF choke on its way to the speaker.
The circuit had been sent to the magazine by one Arthur S. Bean of Baltimore. The magazine noted that his design provided good volume and moderate selectivity.
