1954 - Shortwave Radio reception at Auburn

THE YEAR OF 1954

In January 1954, I bought a dualwave "Chassis Radio" at Maxwell's, Elizabeth St, Melbourne.

This was sold without a cabinet, and I used this right up until about 1955. This lived on the small table in our bedroom - that table is still in good condition and is now in the little room next to the den here in Mont Albert!

I bought that radio from my wages of 21 shillings a week earned at Buscombe’s

chemist - I remember that I had been allowed to take some time off on a

Saturday morning to go into town and buy the radio. I dragged it back in the

train to the chemist, in a large cardboard box.

I ran an antenna from our upstairs bedroom window (shared with my brother) to a large ventilation chimney on top of the horse stables used by the bakery, at the rear of our back yard. Parts of that antenna are still there, today!

Later In 1954 I bought a secondhand dualwave mantel radio – this sat on the mantelpiece in our bedroom - I think we got this at a junk shop in Burke d, Camberwell.

I painted the cabinet light blue gloss. This set covered the SW bands from 16 to 49 metres – the 49 metre band was not overed by my main “chassis radio” which only tuned 42 to 13 metres.

When I was using the “Chassis radio” I was able to hear stations in the 49 metre band by tuning to their double spots (“IF images”) which would be fall in the 7 MHz range. The IF of the Chassis was 465 kHz (not the standard 455 kHz), and double spots would occur 930 kHz away. Thus, a station on 6000 kHz would be audible on the double-spot image frequency of 7930 KHz.

In 1954, I was attending Camberwell High School, and several of my schoolmates were also interested in radio, all of us read the Radio and Hobbies magazines avidly!

We used to look at the adverts which had started to appear for war surplus receivers!

RADIO ENGINEERING TEXTBOOK

In the same year, I bought a text book entitled “Radio Engineering”, published in the UK in 1951. I still have this reference, which gave me a good grounding in the theory of radio communications, propagation, and transmission.

SHORTWAVE REVELATIONS

The purchase of the Chassis really sparked my interest in Shortwave long distance radio propagation!

In 1954 I started writing to broadcasting stations for verifications (QSLs) and I have maintained that interest until the present day..

I also had an interest in monitoring amateur band stations, in the years 1954 to 1956.

In 1954 I started sending reports for QSLs.

At the present time, September 2011, I have received 8460 QSLs from 1053 Stations in 230 countries, a world record, resulting from 10,950 reception reports being sent out!.

I became quite frustrated at not being able to tune in to the regular 49 metre band, and was anxiious to get a better receiver with greater frequency cioverage..

AR8 RECEIVER
I operated this dualwave radio until May 1956, when I acquired an AR8 ex-airforce communications receiver, which I boight from A.C.E Radio, Sydney, for 34 pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence, A lot of money in those days.