What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

David Eduardo wrote:

"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo wrote:
"Telamon" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"David Eduardo" wrote:

"dave" wrote in message
...
Why not just record the station as proof you received it?
EKKO stamps ended after The War, and until the 60's, recording was
impractical. In fact, even in the 60's it was not a good idea... most
tapes
made in that era deteriorated rapidly. Most of my prized audio IDs did
not
make it into a more advanced media as the tape flaked... some nice ones
like
HCRE1 855 and CX28 were lost that way, although verified by letter or
card.
There were wire recorders. Very durable. You could also record on vinyl
records.

Have you checked the price of a wire recorder, in today's dollars? They
cost more than a car did when they were available.


Oh, you're so full of ****, you're scary. You can pick up an Armour type
wire recorder in pristine condition at a high end antique shop for less
than $300.


Cost. Past tense. When they first came out, they were in the price range of
a cheap car.

My point is that the average DXer in the era could not afford a wire
recorder. Or a disk recorder. Keyword: average.


Home recorders recorded to an acetate, sometimes vinyl (higher end
blanks which were available later) coating on an aluminum substrate. Those
were also not expensive.

If you don't recall one, your experience is lacking.

By 1959, when I started, the only place we saw disk recorders was as a
fading way of sending spots to stations.

That was when you were 13, and had moved to Mexico, right?

When I got to Ecuardor, all
agencies sent spots out on disk; we were the only one of nearly 300 stations
that did not play the disks on the air, dubbing them instead to cart.

I'm glad I never had to have the recorders in a station.


As for expense...again, not VERY expensive. I have one by Meissner that
was less than $130 new.

That was when minimum wage was less than a buck. In other words, the home
recorder cost a mont's take home pay. That is not cheap.

And we had a pair of professional machines at WEW.

The miserable daytimer in St Lousi?

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Full of ****. Present tense.

Webster-Chicago model 181, $98, 1953.

Webster-Chicago model 80, $149, 1948.

Even Henry Ford wasn't selling cars for that.

Run back the thread... my original answer to the recording issue had to do
with tape, which is a format that endured. Wire had a short life and, in
retrospect, is nearly impossible to reproduce today. Most ETs of the
pre-60's period (and I was talking of the post WW II period) were 78's...
and the life of acetates is also limited.


Read back the thread, yourself. Although wire's commercial life was
short--in fact, it was obsolete before the Armour Foundation licensed it
for release and AEG Telefunken was already experimenting with iron oxide
on paper before wire went into use--wire was one of the more enduring
formats. As I said, I have 60 year old recordings, that if cared for,
play as new.



Wire also was very fine (something like 2000 feet on a 3 inch reel)

And again, you're incorrect, here. There was more than a mile of wire
on a 3 inch spool. I've measured.


and it
was next to impossible to edit.

Also incorrect. One simply tied a knot in it, and trimmed the ends
with a scissor.


The devices ran at very high foot per second
speeds


Average 30 ips on a 1 hour spool.


and the delay while rewinding (you rembember there was no removable
pickup reel at least on all I have seen)


Actually, late model Websters had a removable pick up spool.


makes, like the changing of an
acetate, the devices not quite appropriate for non-stop DXing.


No more cumbersome than tape. One hour and more on a spool meant less
time changing spools, and the rewind/rethread time was about 3 1/2
minutes. With a removable take up spool the down time was less than half
a minute.

A Realistic 808 took more than 5 minutes to rewind 3600 feet.

A Masterwork portable takes nearly 3 to rewind a 5" reel of .5 mil tape.

I used wire extensively in the 60's and 70's, before I could afford a
tape deck.



And you neglect (more later) the enormous cost of supplies.


And again: bull****. Wire was cheap. Cheaper than tape. And in many
cases far more plentiful. It was still sold at electronics shops as late
as 1972, when I bought my last 4 spools.

Olson used to have it by the box. In a variety of lengths.





My point is that the average DXer in the era could not afford a wire
recorder. Or a disk recorder. Keyword: average.

Keyword: Horse****. Recording gear was in the same cost range as the
receivers of the period.

I'll get to it later, but I spoke of cost, not just the purchase price of
home devices (the ones you mention would never have held up to the recording
requrements of a DXer devoted enough to want to record... 60 or 70 hours a
month or more.
Many receivers were far and away more expensive. Even Bill Halligan was
building rigs costing more than the cost of a top line wire recorder. We
won't even go where Oscar Hammarlund's prices were.

An lower range Hammarlund was in the $129 range. The cheapest Hallicrafters
was about $60. I had one of each. But that was a full 15 years after the
War.

S-38 was $47.50 in '46. S-25 was $100 in '45. Chuck Dachis has a
great book out on Hallicrafters. You may wish to read it.

The point is that, even if you were buying retail, the cost of a wire
recorder, or a disc recorder was on par with receiver costs. If you
could afford one, you could find away for the other. And most recording
technology was built with radio enthusiasts in mind.

The Meissner of which I spoke not only recorded and played discs, but
it had a receiver, a rather fine receiver built in. It was literally
made for airchecking.



Recording technology, until the early 60's, was not accessable by the
average DXer. The receivers of the post-War period that most people used
were much less costly, in fact. The supplies, maintenance and such were not
what the average DXer was into, either. Tape allowed recorded reception
reports (where you only heard a brief piece of a station, but hearing the DJ
could net a verie out of it).

Home recorders recorded to an acetate, sometimes vinyl (higher end
blanks which were available later) coating on an aluminum substrate.
Those were also not expensive.

If you don't recall one, your experience is lacking.
By 1959, when I started, the only place we saw disk recorders was as a
fading way of sending spots to stations. When I got to Ecuardor, all
agencies sent spots out on disk; we were the only one of nearly 300
stations that did not play the disks on the air, dubbing them instead to
cart.

I'm glad I never had to have the recorders in a station.

So, you admit you don't know what you're talking about. Thank God I
lived to see that.


You fail to recognize, and a horrible failure it is, that the "cost" of such
a device is not just the purchase price but also the other costs. In the
case of a disk recorder, a DXer would have to record at all times he was
listening. Let's say an average DXer listend 15 hours a week for DX... they
would spend something, at near minimum wage, all their salary on blanks in
the 40's or 50's. There were no "Acetate RW" blanks available. And then,
they would need a second recorder to dub the IDs to... not really practical
since recording was pretty much a continuous process.

As for expense...again, not VERY expensive. I have one by Meissner
that was less than $130 new.

As I said, plus the disks. I know in Ecuador, agencies charged us S/.250 for
broken disks, so the cost much have been substantial to them.

And $130 in 1946 was about, what, $1500 in today's money? Or if the year is
1950, $1200 in 2008 money.

That was when minimum wage was less than a buck. In other words, the home
recorder cost a mont's take home pay. That is not cheap.

Again, your experience is lacking. A good radio cost that, and more.
Recording toys were fairly common. Not free, by any means, but hardly out
of the price range of someone who wanted one.

Again, even the low end devices (which were delicate, temperamental, etc.,
just like early tape devices) required you run non-reusable media every time
you listened. The cost of that would make it prohibitive for all but very
rich people.



And yada, yada, yada....you ignore VERY important points. You're
assuming that all of the hobby was done at retail. Not even close.

But consider, that the very people who were into radio in those days
were the same ones who were moved to recording technology. The two went
hand in hand. Receivers had "Record Out" taps. Even some of the bottom
line Halli's did.

And DXers, along with other radio hobbycraft types were highly
motivated, so the equipment they wanted, they found a way to acquire.
And the business accomodated them.

For the Rich? It is to laugh.

My grandfather couldn't afford mercury rectifiers in his early days.
So, he built liquid state rectifiers using pickle jars filled with
solutions of 20 Mule Team Borax. About 20 of them in series. Not
elegant, but they got the job done. He built a power supply for his
receiver like this. The receiver required batteries. He couldn't afford
batteries. So, he found a way.

As with most radio hobbycraft practitioners, even up to today,
"finding a way" is stock-in-trade. The Radio Amateur's Handbook is based
on this thinking. Build your own. Modify what you don't built, but get
something and get it working.

Now, how did my grandfather acquire a receiver when he couldn't
afford batteries?

The same way tens of thousands of hams, DXers and SWL's acquired top
of the line hardware for pennies on the dollar: from the Military.

Receivers like BC-348 didn't become a staple of the amateur hobby
because they carried low price tags at Tipton Electric. They became a
staple of the hobby because after the war there were pallet loads of
them in crates sitting on docks waiting to ship. They went to Military
Surplus. For less than $20 hobbyists on budgets were buying top flight
gear and pressing it into hobby service.

And really budget conscious hobbyists would go through dumpsters at
the end of hamfests, Field Days, and DXpeditions...there were BC-348's
in the dumpsters for the taking. Dumped there just to get rid of them.

Hell, my own BC-794 came from the Signal Corps. As did my RME's.

Military surplus stores had everything. Tubes, radios of all kinds.
Blank discs, wire. Electronic components. And for only a handful of
greenbacks, a dedicated hobbyist could even walk out of an Army-Navy
surplus store with a brand new SX-73 ($975 at retail in '52).

Didn't you say you had an R-390 or 392? You buy that at SS Kresges?

And to the point, military surplus is also where recording hardware
went after the war. Disc recorders, wire recorders, even early tape.
With plenty of media, all were found at surplus.

Hobbyists were like pigs dipped in ****.

So, this notion that recording hardware was only for the rich is the
purest poppycock. Recording hardware, and recording supplies, were for
the dedicated. And affordably available. If someone REALLY wanted them,
they could be acquired regardless of budget.

In fact, the rise of recording hardware at retail was a direct result
of the proliferation of recording hardware from surplus. C'mon, get a clue.

What's so surprising, is that you don't know that. Having been an
engineer yourself, and having regaled us with your tales of building
transmitters, and radio studios in Ecuador, on shoestring budgets...are
you saying that you only bought from BSW, or BGS?

How is it you can tell us of scrounging for parts to keep your radio
stations on the air, while not being aware of the enormous resources
available in the US to hobbyists from the Military Surplus network?

Hmmmm...once again, underscoring many questions.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

David Eduardo wrote:


The pride and joy of Charlie Stanley, and the poster station for FCC
attention. Yes, WEW. The station with more dial positions than a 40's
Zenith FM. The station with more shared frequencies than Heidi Fleiss's
cell phone. WEW. The station that had to monitor it's program line,
because WABC came over the top of the air monitor in late afternoon. Yes,
THAT WEW.

So the WABC stories are true.


I"m sorry...you didn't know that? Hmmmm....well....that IS a
revealing confession.


That is one of the daytimers that was worst
hit by an eastern clear.




My best days listening to Dan Ingram were when I was on the air at WEW.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

D Peter Maus wrote:
David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo wrote:
"Telamon" wrote in
message
...

In article ,
"David Eduardo" wrote:

"dave" wrote in message
...
Why not just record the station as proof you received it?
EKKO stamps ended after The War, and until the 60's, recording was
impractical. In fact, even in the 60's it was not a good idea...
most tapes
made in that era deteriorated rapidly. Most of my prized audio IDs
did not
make it into a more advanced media as the tape flaked... some nice
ones like
HCRE1 855 and CX28 were lost that way, although verified by letter
or card.
There were wire recorders. Very durable. You could also record on
vinyl
records.

Have you checked the price of a wire recorder, in today's dollars?
They cost more than a car did when they were available.

Oh, you're so full of ****, you're scary. You can pick up an Armour
type wire recorder in pristine condition at a high end antique shop
for less than $300.


Cost. Past tense. When they first came out, they were in the price
range of a cheap car.



Full of ****. Present tense.

Webster-Chicago model 181, $98, 1953.

Webster-Chicago model 80, $149, 1948.

Even Henry Ford wasn't selling cars for that.




My point is that the average DXer in the era could not afford a wire
recorder. Or a disk recorder. Keyword: average.


Keyword: Horse****. Recording gear was in the same cost range as the
receivers of the period.

Many receivers were far and away more expensive. Even Bill Halligan
was building rigs costing more than the cost of a top line wire
recorder. We won't even go where Oscar Hammarlund's prices were.





Home recorders recorded to an acetate, sometimes vinyl (higher end
blanks which were available later) coating on an aluminum substrate.
Those were also not expensive.

If you don't recall one, your experience is lacking.

By 1959, when I started, the only place we saw disk recorders was as a
fading way of sending spots to stations. When I got to Ecuardor, all
agencies sent spots out on disk; we were the only one of nearly 300
stations that did not play the disks on the air, dubbing them instead
to cart.

I'm glad I never had to have the recorders in a station.


So, you admit you don't know what you're talking about. Thank God
I lived to see that.




As for expense...again, not VERY expensive. I have one by Meissner
that was less than $130 new.

That was when minimum wage was less than a buck. In other words, the
home recorder cost a mont's take home pay. That is not cheap.


Again, your experience is lacking. A good radio cost that, and more.
Recording toys were fairly common. Not free, by any means, but hardly
out of the price range of someone who wanted one.



And we had a pair of professional machines at WEW.

The miserable daytimer in St Lousi?


The pride and joy of Charlie Stanley, and the poster station for FCC
attention. Yes, WEW. The station with more dial positions than a 40's
Zenith FM. The station with more shared frequencies than Heidi Fleiss's
cell phone. WEW. The station that had to monitor it's program line,
because WABC came over the top of the air monitor in late afternoon.
Yes, THAT WEW.





$149 was 2 weeks pay in 1948.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

Telamon wrote:
In article ,
D Peter Maus wrote:

Telamon wrote:
In article ,
"David Eduardo" wrote:

"dave" wrote in message
...
Why not just record the station as proof you received it?
EKKO stamps ended after The War, and until the 60's, recording was
impractical. In fact, even in the 60's it was not a good idea... most
tapes
made in that era deteriorated rapidly. Most of my prized audio IDs did not
make it into a more advanced media as the tape flaked... some nice ones
like
HCRE1 855 and CX28 were lost that way, although verified by letter or
card.
There were wire recorders. Very durable. You could also record on vinyl
records.

I have a pair of Webster wire recorders. One, I bought at a local
junk shop and spent a year restoring. The other, I got from my
grandfather. Along with a rack of wire spools. Some dating as far back
as the Truman inauguration with some very cool recordings of shows like
the Sealtest Variety Theatre, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Have Gun Will
Travel, and the Stan Freberg Show. I still find spools of wire at
antique shows, flea markets and junk shops. Always a bit of an adventure
to hear the audio.

Print-through is less of an issue, and the wire definitely doesn't
slough off magnetic material. But they are susceptible to elevated noise
from stray magnetic fields. So, storage environment is as important as
it is with tape.

I've also got a couple of disc recorders. And an armload of home-made
records. As well as some made in drug store recording kiosks. They're
not quite as archivally stable as they may seem. Many are not vinyl, but
acetate on an aluminum substrate. The acetate breaks down, becomes
brittle, often lifts from the substrate, or shrinks. And the low quality
vinyl used also tends to be less stable over time than that used more
recently.

I've spent a lot of hours recovering audio from wire and disc
recordings, for friends and colleagues. Sometimes, all you get is one
pass before there is too much damage to continue with the discs. And
magnetically contaminated wire will often develop a whining noise mixed
with the audio as it passes through the head. So a very great deal of
care is required when handling these recordings.

By far, the wire recordings are a lot easier to handle without damage.

Both may be more durable than tape, but they're not for casual
listening after long spans of time.

One careless pass, and the recording may be irretrievably lost.

Before the vinyl disk there were the cylinder recorders and players. I
had a neighbor with one of those.

There were very inexpensive tape players in the 60's. They were just
fine for voice. They were little reel to reel type. The reels were only
a few inches in diameter and the tape was thick. The head was offset so
you could record on the other side by turning the reel over. I had one
as a kid. Other kids in the neighborhood had them. Then the high
performance audiophile units were developed with the big reels. The
main problem with tape was the high end audio was weak and the
amplifiers had to be biased for more gain at the high end.

The problem with these over many years is the tape formulation kept
changing to improve the high end so you needed to have amplifiers with
selection switches depending on the tape formulation. Some even required
different heads (gap) depending on the ferro grain size in the tape.

And then to make matters more complicated there was dolby noise
reduction for tape hiss so you equalized for the tape formulation and
noise reduction. That's were I first learned to hate hiss. Now I can
listen to hiss from IBOC to get ****ed off or just read an Eduardo post
as it has the same effect.

The 7" Akais started appearing in the early '60s; before that there
were the consumer Webcors and the semipro Wollensaks. Norelco made a 3"
portable which evolved into the cassette around the end of 1964. I had
a 5" Aiwa TP-104 that I bought in the summer of 1965 to use for
airchecks. The really cheap decks had no capstan and were unsuitable
for anything but note taking.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

Telamon wrote:

And then to make matters more complicated there was dolby noise
reduction for tape hiss so you equalized for the tape formulation and
noise reduction. That's were I first learned to hate hiss. Now I can
listen to hiss from IBOC to get ****ed off or just read an Eduardo post
as it has the same effect.


Perhaps it's your bias. Check the settings.



mike

--
Due to the insane amount of spam and garbage, this filter
blocks all postings from Gmail, Google Mail and Google Groups.

http://improve-usenet.org/

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

"Telamon" wrote in message
news:telamon_spamshield-
My point is that the average DXer in the era could not afford a wire
recorder. Or a disk recorder. Keyword: average.

SNIP

Nothing special about me. I'm average and I could afford one.


You have a $4000 receiver and you think you are average?

Get real.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

"Telamon" wrote in message
...
In article ,

There were very inexpensive tape players in the 60's. They were just
fine for voice. They were little reel to reel type. The reels were only
a few inches in diameter and the tape was thick. The head was offset so
you could record on the other side by turning the reel over. I had one
as a kid.

The Norelco / Philips was one of those. 3" reels, two track mono.

Other kids in the neighborhood had them. Then the high
performance audiophile units were developed with the big reels. The
main problem with tape was the high end audio was weak and the
amplifiers had to be biased for more gain at the high end.

There were plenty of decks usable for DXers with 7" reels and 3 3/4 ips
speed that could record an hour per track, mono, in two track configuration.
As mentioned, many had lots of RF emissions that interfered with the BCB
(MW) and were not good for DX use, but others could be shielded or used out
of the box and were less than $200.

The problem with these over many years is the tape formulation kept
changing to improve the high end so you needed to have amplifiers with
selection switches depending on the tape formulation. Some even required
different heads (gap) depending on the ferro grain size in the tape.

I never experienced that. By 1960, the format for 2 track mono (forward and
reverse) and, later, for two track stereo were the same in consumer and
boradcast applications. You are likely thinking of the mid to late 50's
stuff, which was not as standardized.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

"dxAce" wrote in message
...


David Eduardo wrote:

By 1959, when I started, the only place we saw disk recorders was as a
fading way of sending spots to stations.

That was when you were 13, and had moved to Mexico, right?

No, that was when I started at WJMO and WCUY. I spent most of 1963 in
Mexico, and in 64 moved to Ecuador. Learn to read.

What's an EKKO Stamp ? - AM/MW Radio Reception Verification Reports
 

"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Full of ****. Present tense.

Webster-Chicago model 181, $98, 1953.

Webster-Chicago model 80, $149, 1948.

Even Henry Ford wasn't selling cars for that.

Run back the thread... my original answer to the recording issue had to
do with tape, which is a format that endured. Wire had a short life and,
in retrospect, is nearly impossible to reproduce today. Most ETs of the
pre-60's period (and I was talking of the post WW II period) were 78's...
and the life of acetates is also limited.


Read back the thread, yourself. Although wire's commercial life was
short--in fact, it was obsolete before the Armour Foundation licensed it
for release and AEG Telefunken was already experimenting with iron oxide
on paper before wire went into use--wire was one of the more enduring
formats. As I said, I have 60 year old recordings, that if cared for, play
as new.

Nitpicking 101: I meant the life of the concept. Late 40's to very early
50's. Not life of the recording, although if you can't find machines to play
the wires on, the recording is essentially useless. I have some stuff on 8"
floppies from a System 33 IBM and I can't find anything that will play them.


Wire also was very fine (something like 2000 feet on a 3 inch reel)

And again, you're incorrect, here. There was more than a mile of wire on
a 3 inch spool. I've measured.

You make my point, which is that the wire is very fine and very hard to
handle.


and it
was next to impossible to edit.

Also incorrect. One simply tied a knot in it, and trimmed the ends with
a scissor.

Or, what one person I know did, which was weld with a cigarette. In either
case, not the same as a splice, which is the only good physical edit. Making
bow ties out of wire is not a good edit, which is my point.

and the delay while rewinding (you rembember there was no removable
pickup reel at least on all I have seen)


Actually, late model Websters had a removable pick up spool.

Yeah, you made my point. Most did not, making them bad DX machines. When
DXing, you had to be able to do a very quick reel flip. Generally, thinner
tape and slow record speeds meant a typical Monday Morning AM DX session fit
on both "sides" of a single reel. Very little lost DX due to reel flips and
changes.

makes, like the changing of an
acetate, the devices not quite appropriate for non-stop DXing.

No more cumbersome than tape. One hour and more on a spool meant less
time changing spools, and the rewind/rethread time was about 3 1/2
minutes. With a removable take up spool the down time was less than half a
minute.

3 1/2 minutes for a Monday Morning session was an eternity. Most AM DXers
who used tape to supplement the ear could flip a reel over in less than 20"
and change reels in about 40".

A Realistic 808 took more than 5 minutes to rewind 3600 feet.

DXers, mostly, used two track mono, and we flipped the left and right reels
before the tape ran out, avoiding threading.

And again: bull****. Wire was cheap. Cheaper than tape. And in many
cases far more plentiful. It was still sold at electronics shops as late
as 1972, when I bought my last 4 spools.

FUnny, I never saw it. But I had tape and was not looking.

Olson used to have it by the box. In a variety of lengths.

I visited Olson in Cleveland about once a month at least in the early 60's.
Never saw any wire.


The Meissner of which I spoke not only recorded and played discs, but it
had a receiver, a rather fine receiver built in. It was literally made for
airchecking.

You changed the subject from DXing to airchecking. An aircheck is done on
one local station. In DXing on AM tape was used as often we got cascaded
sign ons or sign offs from 2 or 3 or even 4 stations on a channel in a
matter of 60 to 90 seconds on Mondays. A vebatim transcript of the signoff
announcement often got a verie, where memory or notes would not.

And yada, yada, yada....you ignore VERY important points. You're
assuming that all of the hobby was done at retail. Not even close.

I can't recall anyone in the NRC, IRCA, NNRC that was not buying DX supplies
and receivers and recorders at retail. Of course, many DXers then did not
consider a taped verie to be "real" and insisted on paper veries... and they
did not tape. Changing to a "tape and transcribe from tape" mentality took a
decade, and arrived mostly when the cassette was available and cheap. From
that point to accepting taped "veries" was another decade.

And DXers, along with other radio hobbycraft types were highly
motivated, so the equipment they wanted, they found a way to acquire. And
the business accomodated them.

Not really. Most of the NRCers did not have pro receivers, and that has been
the premiere AM club for 70 years or so. There were the elite, who had
HQ180's almost exclusively, and then the rest. Most had Trans Oceanics and
consumer radios, in fact.

My grandfather couldn't afford mercury rectifiers in his early days. So,
he built liquid state rectifiers using pickle jars filled with solutions
of 20 Mule Team Borax. About 20 of them in series. Not elegant, but they
got the job done. He built a power supply for his receiver like this. The
receiver required batteries. He couldn't afford batteries. So, he found a
way.

AM DXers in the post War era were not builders. They were listeners almost
100%. The few who were engineers and such were the ones who helped the other
1000 members in loop and Beveradge antenna construction, etc.

As with most radio hobbycraft practitioners, even up to today, "finding
a way" is stock-in-trade. The Radio Amateur's Handbook is based on this
thinking. Build your own. Modify what you don't built, but get something
and get it working.

AM DXers for 60 years have not been builders. They are off the shelf folks
as far as equipment, and are so today.

And really budget conscious hobbyists would go through dumpsters at the
end of hamfests, Field Days, and DXpeditions...there were BC-348's in the
dumpsters for the taking. Dumped there just to get rid of them.

Never heard of one being used for MWDX.

Didn't you say you had an R-390 or 392? You buy that at SS Kresges?

I bought it new from Hammarlund; it was an overrun from a government order
and sold to the public.

So, this notion that recording hardware was only for the rich is the
purest poppycock. Recording hardware, and recording supplies, were for the
dedicated. And affordably available. If someone REALLY wanted them, they
could be acquired regardless of budget.

Very few AM DXers were recording before around 1959 to 1960, and even then
it was the young set, not the older guys. It took a long time for recording
to be an accepted part of DXing... some guys really thought it was cheating,
in fact.

What's so surprising, is that you don't know that. Having been an
engineer yourself, and having regaled us with your tales of building
transmitters, and radio studios in Ecuador, on shoestring budgets...are
you saying that you only bought from BSW, or BGS?

No, we bought all our original studio gear from Gates. I bought the first
transmitter from a local manufacturer, and then subsequent ones we built in
our own shop since we always were generating a need for more transmitters,
ATU's and other stuff we could build locally like FM antennas, consoles,
limiters, etc. In other words, I had enough stations to support a
fabrication department.

How is it you can tell us of scrounging for parts to keep your radio
stations on the air, while not being aware of the enormous resources
available in the US to hobbyists from the Military Surplus network?

We used conventional designs, and use the same parts that a Gates or RCA
did. Occasionally we found useful equivalents in surplus, but most stuff was
branded. The bulk could be obtained at Miami parts houses which supplied
radio and telecommunications in Latin America; a flight to Miami and visits
to two or three suppliers would get what we wanted.

"Scrounging" usually meant overnighting to Miami to get some tubes because
the local outlets were out or the ones ordered for shipment were stuck for a
month in customs. Fly to Miami, find the tubes, pack them among soft
cloting, fly back.

Once I had an Audimax and Volumax stuck nearly 3 months in customs because
they did not know what partida arancelaria it fell under and thus could not
determine how much the tax was; I ordered two more to be shipped to Miami,
picked them up, put them in my clothes in a suitcase, and flew through
customs at the airport under the tourist exclusion for returning citizens
and residents.

Hmmmm...once again, underscoring many questions.

None at all.