[R-390] The radio machine, getting bit by the bug

[wli]

I was maybe 10 or so, when Dad came down to the basement and told me that "aeronautics was a dead end" and that I should stop building model planes. 

He bought me a two tube battery radio kit. It worked on its first try! I was hooked. That was 1949, and at the time there were many stores on Market Street in SF and in the Quonset huts at the Oakland Airport packed with gear. I recall seeing piles of ARC-5's up tho the ceiling for $3-$6. I still have some of them today. Then Korea came and even more stuff came in. It was an all-consuming hobby much to the detriment of my school grades. My buddies were smarter than I was, they all got their tickets… but I flunked x3. Back then EICO made the best quality kits, and today, I still have some, in use. Then, as now, I got hooked on SWL… spent countless hours listening to exotic far-off broadcasts. In the Service in the 60's, it was very interesting to compare CBS-NBC-ABC news to what was broadcast on the foreign stations. The difference was most instructive! At that time, my main receiver was a BC-358C. The other one was a pair of ARC-5's using one as a Q5'er. Never occurred to me that I could have used the 2nd harmonic of the BC-453  local oscillator to directly access the 915KC IF of the BC348 as was described in Radio & TV News in the September 1951issue… and re-explained in ER in 2014.

The  family patriarch ran everything back then, so when I came of age (18) he ordered me to go into medicine. Nevertheless, I continued to accumulate and build gear whenever the opportunity presented itself. Once I retired, I have regressed back to the 50's and have been a "tube-lover" until the present. The wife is appalled at my collection of Army-Navy BA's. As far as I am concerned, this hobby is far more interesting and challenging, than playing bridge, golf, or sitting around watching TV.

W. Li