majoco
Stirrer
According to this ad in a Radio Shack catalogue, 1967. They had to call it a Globetraveller as RCA had "Globetrotter" trademarked.
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A bit of radio history
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a29zuk
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Yes, I used to follow the major junior hockey teams years ago. I understand the demographics of mid and western Canada.
It's interesting that farm power is 25hz.
Late at night CBK on 540 is receivable here in Michigan. It's easier now that CBET in Windsor has left the air.
Jim
a29zuk
Member
"Globetraveller" sounds better anyway, because "Globetrotter" would have been too much of a cliche. Pretty impressive and versatile radio! Sort of like a Zenith Transoceanic, but with top-mounted controls. The car mount idea was ingenious, but with so many shortwave bands to explore it could have led to distracted driving by shortwave fanatics. Did it also have SSB capability? And air band? On second thought, maybe that would have been too much to ask.
It was back then, as I could see from a toggle switch on the back of my 1929 Westinghouse radio labelled 25/60 cycles, but the entire province is on the 60 hz. grid now. I used to own a small acreage in southern SK. It was actually the abandoned home site of an old farm. There was a 240 volt power transformer in a box on the ground. Since none of the buildings were left standing, the lines from the transformer had been disconnected for many years. You could still hear the AC hum from the transformer, however, as it was still being kept live via an underground cable.
majoco
Stirrer
I don't think you'll find many/any Euro radios designed for the domestic market that will have anything other than the broadcast bands on them. ISTR there was some legislation about Joe Public having access to frequencies that might contain information that might be 'useful to the enemy' given the proximity to countries that weren't exactly 'friendly'. I assume that to get a general coverage receiver you had to jump through a variety of hoops including some probing into your Grannies dubious past!
majoco
Stirrer
...but then the change in style meant they went to the '70's "Danish Modern" look. Here's my Blaupunkt "Sultan" - can't you hear someone saying "danger Will Robinson"....
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Hmm ... I've always wondered what that nice old lady was into, besides developing those delicious recipes she tried out on her grandkids each visit! :lol:
Still a nice looking radio. I had forgotten about Blaupunkt when reminiscing about the German radio brands. So there was Grundig, Telefunken, Nordmende and Blaupunkt. They all had class!
It looks like you must have a pretty large collection of radios. I would have lots of them myself had I not ditched some of them every time I relocated, which was quite often. I'm not really a collector, but still regret having sold my Hammarlund SP-600 back in 1979. I had bought it secondhand at an electronics store in Vancouver. The radio was in excellent condition, and came with a photocopy of the manual. The previous owner had given the front panel a beautiful new paint job in sky blue, and he even painted the labels around the controls so that they stood out in white. It was a real performer, although heavy on power consumption. It was also physically heavy; someone had to help me carry that 65 lb. boat anchor out to the car and lift it into the trunk.
pjxii
Member
I grew up in the SWL hobby with a Blaupunkt Sultan with a 25' vertical wire strung up the outside of the house back in the '70s. Those were the days!
I have a big Nordmende Tannauser 57 sitting in front of me right now, best FM audio from these 1950s Germans I've ever heard, however even having been gone through reception on all bands is maybe the worst I've ever heard. On the FM band a HUGE Phillips I once owned had fantastic reception but it was way too bass-heavy (it did have two 8" woofers, might explain that).
Best SW reception of these Germans I've come across was a Loewe Opta Magnet 6745W. Real nice FM audio and reception, too. Wish I never sold it...
6079smithw
Member
Here's my Grundig 2520-U I got at an estate auction around 1999. Made for export to USA in 1961 according to the serial #. Broadcast AM-FM plus 6-16 mHz SW. As a previous poster mentioned, reception across the entire dial is a disappointment even with a longwire external in my backyard.
Radio works perfectly right down to the EM87 indicator; original caps and dial string. (Wish my camera was as good lol)
Radio works perfectly right down to the EM87 indicator; original caps and dial string. (Wish my camera was as good lol)
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My first radio experiences (during my early teens in the 1950s) were with a random piece of wire dropped out of my bedroom window. The room was in a dormer over the front porch, and I just threw the wire out onto the dormer roof. It couldn't have been more than 15 feet long. The reception was fantastic, but I wasn't satisfied, so one day I added more wire and managed to fling the end of it to the side and around the corner of the house, so that it wound up on the roof of the attached garage. Then I climbed out of a side window above the garage roof, nailed some porcelain stand-off insulators onto the roof -- without asking permission, mind you -- and stretched the antenna wire out between them.
This must have infuriated my father, but I can't remember his reaction. From 1963 to 1968 I had a ham licence, and can remember that my voice used to come through the TV downstairs while he was watching his favorite shows. I'd be up there bellowing into my microphone, and he'd go to the foot of the staircase and yell up to me, "CQ, CQ!"
Most of the big old console radios I used to play around with had huge speakers, some as big as 12 inches, and I think one of them was 15 inches. Back then everyone seemed to think that the heavier the bass, the better the sound quality. Most of the speakers used electromagnets, but one had a big, strong horseshoe magnet surrounding the voice coil, and mounted with screws. That radio wasn't playable, so I dismantled it and removed the electromagnet. Eventually the radio got scrapped, but I kept the magnet.
That radio, by the way, had a built-in antenna that consisted of a square piece of sheet metal a little larger than a cookie sheet. I thought at first it was part of the radio's ground system, until I discovered that it was connected to the antenna side of the front-end, not the ground.
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pjxii
Member
"CQ! CQ!" That is hysterical!
I know SDRs are not only the future but they're actually the present. I'm happy that many computer savvy people are enjoying them, and I'm sure more than one person would not have gotten into radio listening/monitoring if it wasn't for computer driven receivers, but I will never enjoy sitting down and scanning the bands by clicking a mouse. Radios up to the beginning of this century had "character" and many from before the '60s were actually functional works of art (there aren't any off the top of my head from this century that have ever interested me, they all seem the same now).
Me neither. And I find it equally unfulfilling to listen to streaming radio broadcasts on the internet. I can hear quite a few foreign stations, but the magic is just not there.
I do use my computer for decoding the various digital modes, especially FT8, because the propagation is often too poor to receive anything else, but even though lots of DX shows up there, reading those standardized messages can get pretty boring after a while. When the bands are in better shape I put the computer into sleep mode, sit back and listen to my portable. It's amazingly relaxing, even compared to using my R75, with all its accuracy, better filters, etc.
Oops, typo! I removed the permanent magnet; there was no electromagnet.
majoco
Stirrer
It's probably rather difficult these days to buy a new ham HF transceiver that's not an SDR - the front panel is merely a control and display computer - it may be that the only linear devices in there may be the power amplifier and perhaps the RF amplifier right at the antenna.
You can tune through the bands with a knob, both my WinRadio SDR's have a tuning knob and you can get an external USB tuning knob if you really want that 'feel'.
What's to prevent receiving lots of RFI from a computer on an SDR, since it's directly interfaced to the computer? That's a problem for me even without any connections between my standalone receiver and my laptop. Running the laptop on battery power helps, but not enough, so I usually need to put the computer to sleep when I'm listening, otherwise I run into a lot of strong unmodulated carriers and various other kinds of interference.
The other day I started hearing some kind of strong RFI all over the lower shortwave bands. It would come on and off at regular intervals. My computer turned out to be the culprit even in sleep mode and without any physical connections to the radio, as I discovered when I noticed that the LED indicator for sleep mode was flashing in time with the interference.
The other day I started hearing some kind of strong RFI all over the lower shortwave bands. It would come on and off at regular intervals. My computer turned out to be the culprit even in sleep mode and without any physical connections to the radio, as I discovered when I noticed that the LED indicator for sleep mode was flashing in time with the interference.
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pjxii
Member
Talk about irony! I'm studying right now to take my Amateur Extra exam next month and I just got to the part about SDRs. 17 questions and there was only one that I knew or even had a clue to the answer (the obvious one asking "what is direct digital conversion"). Can't wait to forget what I learn after the test...
majoco
Stirrer
I find that most of the interference comes from the ancillary items rather than the computer itself - I use a laptop on it's batteries for lowest noise levels, although it's not generally noise - more a comb-like set of frequency spikes - mainly coming from the switch mode charger. If I use the desktop, then nearly all the noise comes from the (geriatric!) display. I also have to go to the study to pull the power plug on the Canon printer. Now all I have to do is find the source of a 10dB rise in background noise that goes from 8MHz to exactly 12MHz - and its a distinct step, not a gentle rise and fall. Nothing in the house is doing it, I'm beginning to suspect cable TV which has only just arrived here.
A geriatric display -- good one! :lol: My first computer came without a monitor. It had to output everything to a TV; I used one with a black & white CRT display, because the computer didn't support color.
Cable TV has been in this area as far back as I can remember. We don't use it; in fact, there's no TV whatsoever in this apartment. Nothing is connected to the cable outlets, either, but they're still live. I think we get more RFI from some neighboring buildings with big-screen TVs. Some of them may be the old plasma TVs.
As for my computer, it creates a rushing noise, plus the dead carriers I mentioned earlier. Putting it to sleep and running it on battery power clears most of that up, except for the junk I mentioned that it puts out on sleep mode. My only option there is to power down the computer altogether, which I rarely do, because rebooting it when I want to look something up in a hurry is quite time consuming.
Other noise that I can't do anything about is from the nearby shopping centre and the power lines.
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