Monthly Archives: April 2025

1940 DX’ing

1940AprRadioNewsIt wasn’t until June 5, 1940, that the FCC completely banned amateurs from working foreign stations.  And it wasn’t until after Pearl Harbor that amateur radio was put off the air entirely. But even before the ban on foreign contacts, U.S. amateurs had been prohibited from communicating with any of the belligerent countries, and even some neutral countries had shut down amateurs as a precaution. So there wasn’t much DX to be found, as the ham in this cartoon from the April 1940 issue of Radio News has discovered.



Invention of Portable Hole, 1955

PortableHoleToday marks the 70th anniversary of the invention of the portable hole. Specifically, the cartoon “The Hole Idea” was released on April 16, 1955.

The full cartoon does not appear to be available in English, but the Spanish version can be viewed here:



1965: Conditional Territory Gets Smaller

1945AprQSTmapSixty years ago today, “Conditional Territory” in the United States got smaller.

The Conditional Class amateur radio license had privileges identical to the General Class. But instead of taking the exam in front of FCC employees, prospective licensees living far away from FCC exam locations could take it through a volunteer examiner. Until 1965, this applied to those who lived 75 miles away from an exam location. But starting on April 15, 1965, the distance was changed to 175 airline miles. And as long as an exam was given at least semi-annually, that location qualified. As a result, the areas eligible for a Conditional license got much smaller, as shown on the map above. The majority of the population was now ineligible.

The FCC realized that this might be a particular hardship in some cases, and they would entertain requests for waivers. But in most cases, rural hams now needed to make a trip to the closest FCC exam location.

The map appeared in the April 1965 issue of QST.



1950 Automatic Transmissions

1950AprPS3Eagled-eyed observers will notice that something is missing from this picture on the cover of the April 1950 issue of Popular Science.  That’s right.  This Studebaker is missing the clutch pedal, and the magazine features an expose of those newfangled automatic transmissions.



Laying Telephone Wire by Air, 1945

1945AprilPMIn 1945, the U.S. Army had ben using as much as 235,000 miles of wire per month for communications. Despite the role of radio, it was often advisable to use telephone communications. Among other things, radio might disclose positions to the enemy.

There was the matter of laying all that wire, and one method is shown here, on the cover of Popular Mechanics, April 1945. A “grasshopper” plane was fitted so that it could skim the ground and 200-250 feet. At one end, probably closest to the front, it would drop a parachute bearing a telephone unit, attached to the wire. The wire was wound binder twine fashion, to play out without tangling, and with minimal resistance. Rolls were 1-1/2 miles long, and three to five miles of wire could be layed in a flight at 65-70 miles per hour.

By this method, patrols cut off from communications could be swiftly reached.



Death of FDR: 1945

1945AprilLifeEighty years ago today, April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died, and Vice President Harry S Truman assumed the office. This photo of his being sworn in appeared in the April 23, 1945, issue of Life Magazine.

At 5:15, Truman was summoned to the White House and was shown to Mrs. Roosevelt’s study, where she informed him that the President was dead. He asked, “what can I do,” to which she replied, “tell us what we can do.” At 7:10, Chief Justice Stone administered the oath. Truman slept that night at his own apartment, and the next morning, set up his office, from which Roosevelt’s effects had already been removed.

At noon, Truman greeted a group of reporters with tears in his eyes, saying, “last night the whole weight of the moon and stars fell on me. If you fellows ever pray, please pray for me.”

 



Radio in the Canadian Rockies, 1925

1925AprilPMA hundred years ago this month, the cover of the April 1925 issue of Popular Mechanics shows author Lewis R. Freeman and his companions at the controls of a four-tube radio set during an expedition to the Canadian Rockies. In 1923, he had taken a radio to the Grand Canyon and successfully pulled in stations, despite assurances by so-called experts that reception would be impossible. Emboldened, he was asked to join the Canadian expedition, and brought along the four-pound radio. Batteries and other accessories added forty pounds.

The first night’s listening pulled in Oklahoma City, followed by Calgary, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, before it even got dark. Freeman reported that during the course of the expedition, a majority of the high power stations east of the Mississippi were heard, along with stations as far south as Baton Rouge, and practically everything in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alberta.



TV Comes to Astoria, OR, 1950

1950AprilPMShown here are Ed Parsons, W7FKZ, and his wife Grace. Parsons was the owner of KAST in Astoria, Oregon. It was Mrs. Parsons who came up with the idea of having television, and she knew that if anyone could do it, it was Parsons. In addition to running the station, Parsons was the go-to man for the town’s fishing boats when they needed electronic equipment repaired.

The problem was that Astoria was 140 miles away from the closest TV station, KRSC (later KING-TV), channel 5, in Seattle. Complicating the problem were mountains along the path. Parsons took up the challenge, and drove every inch of the city, and discovered that there were fingerlike bands where a signal was making it. One of those bands included his penthouse apartment, and he set up shop there. While his wife watched the set for a signal, he adjusted the antenna, communicating by telephone.

Eventually, he had success, and his house had constant visitors. Eventually, he set up a rudimentary Cable TV system, retransmitting the signal on channel 2 into a coaxial cable, which could be run up to 2000 feet. Within this radius were a number of businesses who had sets running in their shop windows.

This story appeared in the April 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics. A more in-depth biography of Parsons can be found at this link.



1940: War Comes to Norway, Denmark, and Greenland

1940April22Life

Eighty-five years ago, on April 8-9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.  This was of particular concern to the United States, since the war was now creeping closer to America, since the Danish colony of Greenland was geographically part of North America. A year later, Greenland became a de facto protectorate of the United States, and when America entered the war, Greenland became a combatant.

President Roosevelt suggested that it would be “a good thing for the American people to learn a great deal about Greenland.”  According to Life Magazine, April 22, 1940, from which suggested that most Americans’ only knowledge was the hymn beginning “from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands.”  The magazine also reminded readers that during the last war, the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark to keep them from falling into hostile hands.

While orders came to Greenland from Copenhagen, via radio and via neutral Portugal, these orders were ignored. Instead, local officials came to taking orders from the Danish Ambassador to the U.S., Henrik Kauffmann, who became nicknamed as the “King of Greenland.” He was charged by the Danish government with treason, but the sentence was revoked after liberation in 1945.

That issue of Life devoted fifteen pages to the expansion of the War to the Nordic Countries. Shown above is an Inuit Greenland girl flirting with two Danes. The magazine noted that the Inuit had a good deal of white blood, and the Danes have no objection at all to marrying them, since there were “considered more useful wives in this hard climate than the thin-blooded white women. They are extremely courteous, for Greenlanders know they must get along with one another to survive at all.”



Britain, Germany Issue Emergency Guidance

UKwebsiteOn April 2, 2025, Britain joined other European countries in issuing guidance to the public to prepare for emergencies.  According to press accounts, flooding was the most common risk, but other emergencies could be pandemic, cyberattacks that cut off the internet, or a nuclear war in Europe.

And Germany, in addition to encouraging citizens to stock up on needed goods, is calling for schools to provide civil defense training to prepare students for war scenarios.

The UK list of recommended supplies includes the following items: (The links are to previous posts on this site discussing them in more detail, or to inexpensive items available at Amazon.)

Most of our readers are ahead of the curve, and are prepared in excess of these bare minimums.  But even so, it doesn’t hurt to look through a list like this, and make sure you have these items available at home, at work, in your car, at school, or wherever you might find yourself when disaster strikes.  And, of course, not all of your neighbors are prepared, and it might be helpful to nudge them in the right direction by pointing out that mainstream media in countries throughout Europe are now encouraging basic preparations.   You can click here for all of our posts on the subject of emergency preparedness.

We hope there won’t be a war.  But it doesn’t hurt to take at least some minimal preparations to help you should there be one, or even a more mundane emergency.



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