On Sat, 23 Jan 2016, Spike wrote:

On 23/01/2016 08:31, Ian Jackson wrote:
writes

S640 was my first RX....still got one ....

The R107 was my first RX - bought in 1958 for 13 pounds 10 shillings,
plus 1 pound 10 shillings carriage. I remember the evening it arrived.
I've still got it - on the desk, about 3 ' away from me. [Well, I have
to use something to keep the desk from floating in the air.]

My first RX was an R208, which I had in time to enjoy the massive propagation
year of 1957[1]. Had to tun it from a 6V battery at first as at that time
there wasn't electricity in the shed/greenhouse I shared with my dad. AFAIK
the R208 was the receiver part of an AA regiment-level comms system, it must
have been a nice quiet background on the higher band. The WS17 was used for
AA battery comms, but I never had one of those.

[1] Never been a sunspot max like it since, and not likely to be. US AM
stations were wall-to-wall on 10m, and I enjoyed listening to RSA on 25.800
Mc/s.

And coincidentlaly, mid-1957 through mid-1958 was "International
Geophysical Year", which included study of the ionosphere.

Michael