We wrote previously about Canadian airman Brian Hodgkinson.  He was a former announcer for CKY Winnipeg, and was a German POW for most of the War. After the war, he moved to the United States where he was an announcer for WHK, WERE, and WDOK in Cleveland.

75 years ago this month, CKY’s program guide, Manitoba Calling, April 1945, carried this letter from a fellow POW:

Paris, 30 December, 1944.
Sir,
I would be very grateful to you if you could put me in touch with Brian Hodgkinson’s family. This request may appear somewhat indiscreet. Here is a brief exposé of the reasons which motivate my request.
We met in Stalag VII a in Germany, where, for many months, we were together and we became great friends. We were separated in the summer of 1942 following camp changes.
I had the luck of returning to France a year ago where I am enjoying absolute liberty, following the exploits of your armed forces and those of your allies. I would therefore be very happy to receive news of my gi and comrade, and he having communicated his address to
Radio Winnipeg, I, in turn, am taking the liberty of addressing myself to you.
I offer my excuses for having written you in French, but my knowledge of the English language is so restricted that it does not permit my use of it.
With my most heartfelt thanks, 1 offer you. sir, my distinguished salutations and the greetings of a Frenchman -friend and admirer of the Canadian people.
Lucien Villatte,
107 Rue du Chevaleret,
Paris 13, France.

Hodgkinson’s memoir of his days during the war, Spitfire Down, was published after his death.  The book is not available in the United States, but used copies are available at a reasonable price on Amazon.  In Canada, it’s also available at Amazon.ca.

We previously featured the Radiomarine Corporation of America’s model ET-8030 lifeboat radio. While the set was never deployed during the war, it was featured in the April 1945 issue of Radio Age, a quarterly magazine published by RCA. It is featured on the cover of the magazine, being operated by cadets at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, N.Y..

The set, permanently mounted in the lifeboat, operated with a hand crank which provided the power and keyed the transmitter. In the automatic mode, the set would send a long dash and SOS on 500 kHz and 8280 kHz. It could also be switched into the manual mode, which allowed voice transmission, and included a receiver for both 500 kHz and 8100-8600 kHz. The set could be used with an inveted vee antenna mounted to the boat’s mast, but the most prominent feature was a helium balloon which could hoist the antenna to height of 300 feet and keep it there for a week. As a backup, a box kite was also provided.

Eighty years ago, this ad showing some of the Admiral line of radios appeared in the April 1940 issue of Radio Retailing. Even rural Americans without household electricity would be able to pull in Europe direct with these battery shortwave sets. The sets all featured 1.5 volt filament tubes, and the combination A-B battery packs were readily available.

The model 10-A5 was a table set that tuned the standard broadcast band (including police calls, since it went as high as 1730 kHz) and 5.75-18 MHz shortwave to hear the war news directly from the capitals of Europe. The model 24-A5 was a comprable console model.

For broadcast only, the model 40-A4 and 41-B4 table sets were shown. The ad also featured four portable sets that could operate from AC, DC, or internal battery. The ad promised guaranteed car performance.

Seventy-five years ago this month, the March 1945 issue of Radio Craft magazine carried this one-tube receiver, submitted to the magazine by Sgt. L.R. Blattner, who was stationed at Tinker Field, Oklahoma. According to the serviceman, the set gave the maximum performance for the number of components, and it’s hard to dispute that claim. Despite having only one tube, the set had a stage of RF amplification, AVC, and two stages of AF.

The signal is first applied to the pentode section of the dual tube, passed through the RF transformer, and then detected by the plate and cathode of the triode. Then, it’s applied again to the pentode, now acting as an AF amplifier. From there, the signal goes back to the triode where it’s amplified again.

The magazine also carried the shortwave converter below, sent in to the magazine by Richard E. Held of Sioux City, Iowa, who reported that he received stations from Tokyo to Brazzaville.  It tuned 7-11 MHz, and used two tubes that the writer had lying around.

According to Wikipedia, MacGyver was born in either 1951 or 1952, so he couldn’t have been responsible for this wartime power supply. Instead, it was sent in to the the March 1945 issue of Radio Craft by one Richard F. Reed of Jacksonville, Florida. But MacGyver must have been inspired by Reed, since this power supply ingeniously makes use of available parts, despite wartime shortages.

Reed needed to 90 volt power supply, and used this circuit to get it out of a 1.5 volt battery. The transformer could have been an audio output transformer, but Reed had on hand a model plane induction coil, so he used that. In lieu of an inverter, he used a 1.5 volt buzzer in series with the transformer.

For a rectifier, he used the starter from a fluorescent light. He reported that the supply put out 95 volts at 25 mA.

This handsome but utilitarian wartime cigar-box set was put together by G.L. Keirstad of Toronto, and described in the March 1945 issue of Radio Craft magazine. According to the author, the set pulled in all four of the local Toronto stations, as well as WGR and WBEN in Buffalo. At night, it would also get the New York stations with loudspeaker volume quite adequate for a personal radio.

In March 1945, the war was still on, and that meant that there was no production of civilian radio receivers. But the manufacturers knew that there would be a big sales boom as soon as the war was won, and they were getting their name before the public.

This ad from Stromberg-Carlson appeared in Life Magazine 75 years ago today, March 12, 1945.  And the company was betting on the miracle of FM being the wave of the future.  These young people are listening to some postwar program daydreaming.  The girl dreams of marrying the man of her dreams, and her tenderfoot little brother dreams of being the patrol leader of the best patrol in town.