As a kid I didn't care about radio, but was amazed when my Uncle Hanky's voice came out of the radio shack wonky tonkys he'd given me one xmas, I kept turning it over looking for the "tape recorder" that surely had to hidden in it somehwere!
I mean he was talking to me from the other side of the house!
However after getting a 160 n 1 radio shack kit from the very same late great Uncle Hanky I was exposed to electronics and dived in big time, becoming a great lover of radio.
Tuned in to the world on my dad's old Sony or Zenith, heard about yankee imperialists and all their running dogs, WWV and wondered how the guy reading the time every minute of the day kept from falling asleep.
The Halli SX110 I picked up on a wim, you know, the one that drifted off freq any time the ac or heat came on.... gave way to an Icom R70, what a revelation, an epiphany of radio!
SAC! NORAD! Russians on 11.297! Barges on the Mississippi! USCG doing helo rescues! USN Alligator Playground! MYSTIC STAR! ZULU FREQS! It all became so easy to tune and stayed exactly where tuned!
I was a true Icom fanatic afterwards.
I'd later, after becoming a radio HAM (HAM must always be capitalized to satisfy CB radio rules), drooled over the yearly Icom flyers from the late 90s I oft saw at the now defunct Ladd Electronics at 41st and Dodge in Omaha, wondering what it'd be like to own a 775 or a 756p, today I know, and still enjoy the pro.
Ladds was a place to go if you wanted a room full of ww2 surplus or the latest Icom and sound stock advice.
Also never thought I'd get to use a R8 but I had #28 off the assembly line and miss it to this day, give it back, John!
Never thought I'd use a Winrad to spy on Russian T600 traffic but there's one in the pc right now.
I was never a fan of the Collins stuff that was hyped by friends for ambc, visiting Nebrasks Surplus Sales almost weekly during the 90s and seeing racks of the things for sale at obscene prices (this was when Japan was going nuts over old US milsurp tube gear especially Collins and driving prices way up when only a few months before you couldn't give the stupid things away).
I, not caring about ambc, was a diehard hfbc man.
Well, now I have a R388 and a R390A (have had several of the beasts) and have to admit to their charms.
The 390A may be the most sensitive rig I have currently and much more emp proof than anything else here and completely understand why NSA and the ilk loved them.
Not long ago was fooling around with the 390A and there was a faint but detectable T600 sig rattling away, I tried every solid state rig here on the same or better antennas and they heard exactly nothing and hear down below -130dBm.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
