The Joy of Radio

The picture in the signature of my posts is from my working at (now defunct) WGEA, AM 1150, in Geneva, Alabama, at age 16. I was a disc jockey on the weekends, sometimes during the week, in the evenings, and it was a wonderful experience. But that wasn’t my first foray into radio.

When I was a kid, my dad, an electronics technician in the Air Force, had a great interest in Citizens Band (CB) radio. It fascinated me to no end how he could communicate with so many people as if they were right there in his radio shack or the car. And perhaps just as fascinating was the jargon he used while talking, mainly when we were on the road somewhere; it was a different language. These aspects attracted me to continue in my dad’s footsteps when I got old enough to acquire a CB radio of my own.

My first CB radio was given to me by my dad. It was a basic JCPenny 23-channel Pinto. It was just enough to get me going on a path of understanding how it all worked. It inspired me to learn how to build antennas because, at 15, I wasn’t making a lot of money to spend on things like $100 antennas and masts. Eventually, he gave me the rest of his CB equipment, including a 40-channel base station SSB transceiver from JCPenny, which would become a staple in my own radio shack.

I was living with my grandmother at the time, and, looking back, she’s the reason why I stayed the course in electronics as she invested heavily in this hobby, which would form the foundation for my career, as my family had no money for me to go to college, and, frankly, school didn’t interest me much. So, with a 100-square foot building, a proper antenna and mast, and suitable RG-8 cable, my journey began.

As I made connections near and far through countless hours in the evenings, weekends, and school holidays, communicating on my proper CB setup, I became known by my handle, “Mr Wizard”–an homage to the TV show of the same name that captivated my interest as a kid. I was just a naive kid and had no idea that there were evil people in the world, so I made many friends; anyone was welcome over to my shack. With this, and as people learned that I could repair electronic things and modify them, I was given radios destined for the landfill as they no longer worked, and I welcomed it. While I had an NTE cross reference catalogue my uncle had given me to study, I had no way to purchase the components I needed–the internet wasn’t a thing at some point in time, remember. So, some of these non-working units became my spare parts pile that I would use to repair or modify some of the radios and give them back or away. It was a lot of fun because I finally had some way to organize a social network, which means a lot living in a small town with very strict and narrow-minded adults watching over me.

One of my CB buddies who stands out in my memory is “Backtrack”. He was a disabled guy who used to be a painter but got some sort of respiratory disease, so he could no longer work. He was a good guy and taught me some about the hobby, and we visited each others’ shacks to show off our setups as radio hobbyists do. I recall seeing the tips of his YAGI antenna glow in the dark as he keyed up 1000-Watts on his Yaesu rig.

Another buddy of mine was Henry. Henry worked hundreds of different jobs in his life. At that moment, he was an orderly for my grandmother’s local hospital. They talked about my hobby, and somehow we connected. Henry was a HAM operator, so he had quite a bit of a different setup. I recall seeing the huge amplifier tube in his amp and how cool it looked glowing blue. Henry taught me quite a bit about attenuation and RF matching. If you’ve never heard the word “attenuation”, then it becomes a thing to learn more about, and Henry, with his generous soul, shared so much with me. A funny coincidence is that I would grow up to follow a similar path to him as I’ve worked an abundance of odd jobs in my life as well, thus far.

I had another exciting connection with an owner and his son of a hardware store in Hartford, AL. We, and a couple of other people, started a CB club called Delta Bravo. I have no idea what it stood for then, but it certainly doesn’t stand for what it does now. lol I don’t really remember the purpose, except to just share each others’ equipment, and everyone was borrowing from me. My dad put together a kit frequency counter, which he gave to me with the loot, and I was the only one in the group with one–at the time, they were costly. Anyway, everyone loved it!

And how can I make a post about my radio days without a mention of Mr Jones! Mr Jones was perhaps one of my best mentors in all things radio. He was my Spanish teacher at my high school, and both of our trucks were covered in antennas, so of course, I wanted to learn more about what he was doing. There isn’t much to do on the weekends, and after school in Geneva, Alabama, so we would hang out and talk about radio. We put together a duplex system where I would talk to him on CB, which he would receive on his scanner, and he would reply to me on GMRS, for which he had a license, but I didn’t. I had a scanner in my truck to receive him just fine. He would be at his base station, and I’d drive around the circle made by Magnolia and Maple avenues. I’d report the activity at McDonald’s and Walmart, which were two popular places to hang out. He’d encourage me to find a cinderella to ask out–likely alluding to the fact that I need a life. If I had stayed in Alabama, my life might have taken a better, more enriched route thanks to his mentorship, guidance, and friendship. He was one of the hero teachers that went unnoticed.

Fast forward to today, and now I’ve got Software Defined Radio (SDR), which allows me to listen or transmit from 100KHz to 6GHz, from devices the size of my hand, and I’m back to building my own antennas, even as I can afford the manufactured ones because it’s more fun that way. I’m usually found on the public band of 446MHz now, so the antennas are much smaller and fit inside my skyscraper apartment.

I appreciate the people mentioned in this post who saw my potential and helped guide me along the way, and kept my interest rooted in what would become the foundation of my livelihood. You may be gone, but your legacy lives on through me. Thank you.