First Radio You Owned That Inspired A Lifelong Interest In The Hobby?

[MiCon]

What started my interest wasn't MY first radio. My uncle had been an airborne radio operator in the US Navy, and became a ham operator after his discharge (mid 1950's). I was about ten years old, and watched as he chatted with other hams on his Hammerlund set-up. Eventually my father brought home a 1940's era floor model tri-band receiver (AM, FM, and a shortwave band tuned for, probably, 30 ~ 40 meters). That was my first receiver that got me going on tuning the airwaves. When I was around 15 ~ 16 years old I got a Knight Kit Star Roamer for Christmas. Then my friend introduced me to CB. Then another friend introduced me to the Public Safety bands (VHF-low and VHF-high). These were all tunable receivers. Got my first crystal scanner shortly after they came out in the early 1970's. It just kept going from there, and I've enjoyed over sixty years of radio monitoring.

 

[spongella]

Thanks for all the excelent replies and memories.

 

[K3YGX]

I was given a crystal set as a little kid around 7 - it had a wire with an alligator clip and an earphone
I could pick up the rock & roll, R&B, and elevator music stations......then a 2 transistor radio with a
battery that was hard to find. SWLing really got me hooked, I had a pocket radio that covered
HF I took everywhere with me.

 

[merlin]

TBH, it was a radio from an old Cadillac. Am Fm, wonderbar seek. Came across a mod to get it onto 160 meters that worked great.
That went to scrap when I got a Hammerlund HQ-180. A couple tubes and I was SWLing in style.

 

[Blackswan73]

TBH, it was a radio from an old Cadillac. Am Fm, wonderbar seek. Came across a mod to get it onto 160 meters that worked great.
That went to scrap when I got a Hammerlund HQ-180. A couple tubes and I was SWLing in style.

And it even doubled as a space heater for your room

B.S.

 

[BinaryMode]

Mine was the Uniden Bearcat BC296D with p25 digital card.

When my town's public safety went offline, and having no computer or Internet, I spent numerous trips at the library scanning the Internet trying to find out why that was. I even saw the 800 MHz frequencies in the FCC ULS and programed them into my Pro-2042 but just heard digital noise. It was then I discovered the state P25 system that was put in place. So then the next question: who makes a radio capable of listening to this new "digital system?" I found that radio in the picture advertised some time latter so knew EXACTLY what I wanted. Well, the sucker back then was around $519 and at the time I had no money to speak of. Then on Christmas morning I see an Ad in the paper for a contract job delivering phone books. So I IMMEDIATELY gave the guy a call and made sure to speak clear and loud so he could hear me an assure I got the job. Next day I think it was I got a call and I got the job. And to my surprise (or maybe not), when I met him he said I was one of the few he could actually understand on voicemail. LOL So, I walked around the entire town delivering phone books in the cold January from around 08:00 till about 17:00 for two weeks just to make the money to buy that scanner. Everyday my dogs (feet) were barking, let me tell you. At the end of two weeks I had just enough money right down to the dollar or two to buy the Uniden BC296D with BCi96D card capable of decoding P25 phase I modulation. I think the company was Communications Electronics or Emergency Communications Electronics or something like that out of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

 

[BinaryMode]

My first run with radio was with a pair of these Archer Space Patrol walkie talkies I got for Christmas circa 1991. Little did I know, my favorite movie back then Back To The Future (part II) used Archer Space Patrol walkie talkies but of a different model. Or should I say, "CB Communicators" in the movie Die Hard-like fashion? LOL!

I also got a kid's tape player/AM/FM radio back then and would set one walkie talkie in the living room and rubber band the other near my tape player and play DJ. Later on at another house I lived in I climbed the roof and attached the dismantled walkie talkie to our TV antenna we weren't using to see if I could get out further. To my dismay I head no other kids in the neighborhood.

My first "real scanner" was a Bearcat handheld something or other I bought at a pawn shop with 10 LED channels. It would follow me on my fishing trips in the tackle box. LOL!

Edit-

And just found this in Google:

Binturongs are also called bearcats, but that name is rather misleading since they are not related to bears OR cats. Instead, they are related to civets and fossas but look more like gigantic dust mops and smell like a freshly made batch of popcorn!

The more you know, eh? LOL

 

[K4IHS]

For me it was just an American 5 tube AM radio. A friend showed me how to retune the variable capacitor so I could hear frequencies above the AM broadcast band. I lived in Toledo, Ohio and the 160 meter band was very active. They primarily used the frequency of 1812 kilohertz (as it was called back in those days) and I listened to them most every day for years in the 1960's. K4IHS

 

[Freemor]

For me it was a Radio Shack Science Fair GLOBE PATROL (1971). I did have a home made pocket crystal diode radio before the Globe Patrol. But the Globe Patrol really introduced me to the wide world of radio. That and my parents CB radios.

 

[Freemor]

Yes. The Rocket Radio. Got this one when I was 10 years old I think. The Sputnik year.
The black suction cup base has long since perished. Can't hear anything at all from the earphone.
Antenna red and Ground black leads. Tuned the internal ferret rod by rotating the nosecone.

That is one cute radio. Close to the style i built as a kid. Mine was a chapstick tube. but same idea twisting the knob at the bottom of the chapstick tube moved a ferrite slug inside the tube to tune the radio. Took it with me everywhere for a couple of summers looking for good grounds and "antennas" to clip it to.

 

[soberbyker]

For scanning, I really don't recall the model. I do remember it was a handheld dealio that used crystals. I think it had four or five spots to plug in crystals for specific agencies, most likely from Radio Shack. My first CB was also from Radio Shack, I remember it had a plug like a phone for the microphone and the mic had up and down buttons to change the station.