Seventy years ago, this couple are pulling in a program on the short waves, thanks to the shortwave converter described in the June 1954 issue of Popular Mechanics.

According to the magazine, the setup was ideal for experimenters who were intersted in shortwave reception, but didn’t want to invest in a communications receiver or mess around with the proper tuning of a regenerative set. It could be used with any standard broadcast receiver, and the magazine explained how to make the connection to the set’s antenna coil if an external antenna were not present.

With two sets of plug-in coils, the combination would tune 3-20 MHz.