[CW] Thank you, Zenith Radio Corporation

[stan levandowski]

I was born in 1949 in Middletown, New York. I became interested in 
electronics because my Dad had some Popular Electronics magazines laying 
around the house and they had a shortwave listeners ‘club’ where one 
could register for a listener’s callsign. I was given WPE2KSU. It was 
magical to listen to far away stations on Dad’s old RCA Victor 
combination phonograph and AM/FM/SW receiver with the kind of booming 
audio that only tubes could produce. I spent many a night in front of 
that glass dial, lit by a couple of softly glowing #47 pilot lights, 
dreaming about those places whose romantic names were etched into the 
glass – Bombay, Vietnam, Ankara, Paris, London…



It was a natural progression toward ham radio. In a nutshell: Dad’s 
receiver died one day. Took it apart so I could test the tubes. Went 
down to Larkin’s soda fountain where the big tube tester was. Discovered 
that the counterman, Ray, was into electronics as a hobby. He gave me a 
book on crystal radios . I built a crystal radio. It worked! Dad bought 
me a 500 milliwatt, 27 megacycle Knight-Kit walkie-talkie kit. I built 
it. It worked. I was hooked! 

Ray, the counterman at Larkin's, was not a ham. He was what was referred 
to as an "audiophile" back then: someone interested in the newly 
emerging stereophonic world. But he knew his basic electronics and for 
the price of a cherry coke and french fries after school, Ray was more 
than happy to talk shop. One day, my Aunt Rose came down for a visit 
from Syracuse and brought me an AC/DC Arvin radio, just a simple 
broadcast band receiver with tubes like the 35W4 and 50C5. Dad had a 
Pilot FM Tuner in the basement which he no longer wanted and he gave it 
to me for parts. Other than a couple of missing tubes, there was nothing 
wrong with it. I connected an old pair of 2000 ohm military surplus 
headphones to it and listened to WVNJ-FM in New Jersey every night. Ray 
suggested that I wire it up to use the Arvin radio's amplifier. He drew 
me a schematic and explained it to me. Pretty much just a capacitor and 
a connection to the grid of the audio output tube from the Pilot Tuner, 
as I recall. 

Now these were the 'good ole days' before the curtain of irrational fear 
descended upon the parents of America. At least this is my opinion. I 
remember fearing that the Russians would drop atomic bombs on us and 
we'd all be killed in an instant and I feared the big dog one street 
over. I do not recall being threatened by any human predators, poison in 
the Halloween candy, terrorism, horrible diseases, and I certainly do 
not recall being over-parented. I lived in a time when a youngster could 
grow, experiment, and learn by experience. If a kid showed up in school 
with a bump from falling out of a tree while putting up his antenna, the 
cops and Social Services were not called in to investigate the parents' 
childraising suitability. 

So I got to open up radios with 'lethal voltages' -- got shocked a few 
times, figured out how and why, and made it my business to not get 
shocked the same way twice. I "survived" successfully mating the Pilot 
Tuner to the Arvin, moved on to fixing relatives' TVs once Ray explained 
where the 30,000 volts were and how to ground out all the filter caps, 
and began to develop the beginnings of confidence in my abilities.

Electronics was my whole world back then. Capacitors, resistors, power 
transformers, switches, neon bulbs, tube sockets, variable capacitors, 
#47 pilot lamps, RF chokes - stuff I could rip out of discarded 
equipment and fill my first 'junk box' with. Stuff that I could hold in 
my hand, connect together, and build something electronic from. Didn't 
need no stinkin' video games...all I needed was my Lafayette Electronics 
Volt-Ohm-Meter donated to me by Ray the Counterman. 

Exposure to Cub Scouting brought Boys LIfe magazine into our house. I 
was really excited to read about the adventures of young ham operators 
who always managed to save the day. It was a regular column that 
appeared but I cannot recall the details or the names of the heroes. Of 
course, Hallicrafters made sure they placed their ads in close 
proximity. Man, I'd just lie in bed and imagine owning one of those 
beautiful Hallicrafters receivers. I wanted to become a ham radio 
operator because Boys Life claimed people my age actually could study 
and earn a Novice License. There were no hams in my family and no hams 
in my neighborhood. My dad had little electronics knowledge but he 
supported me 100% in my quest. He and mom scraped together enough money 
to buy me a National NC-60 General Coverage superhet receiver. It was a 
start. It covered 550 kilocycles all the way to 30 megacycles, far 
beyond the narrow Shortwave bands on Dad's RCA Victor. My new NC-60 had 
one other thing - a very important thing: it had a BFO (Beat Frequency 
Oscillator) which made it possible to copy code which was a requirement 
for the Novice class amateur radio license back then.


And that's how I became WN2LQF 54 years ago.


73, Stan WB2LQF (yes a lousy call for CW DX'ing but it's MY callsign ;)





On Thu, Nov 14, 2013 at 01:48 PM, Radio K0HB wrote:

> On the "Arizona Outlaws" contest club reflector, there has been a 
> recent exchange of "how I got started in radio" posts.
>
> Because I take a little ribbing from time-to-time about my "boy and 
> his radio" tagline, I thought I'd share the roots of it here too.
>