[Wayne Stacey VE3QO shares some of his “Sixty Years of Weird Stuff in Radio”.]
In the early 1960’s, when gas cost a mere 35 cents per gallon, many teenagers in Winnipeg loved to cruise around the city on weekend evenings, much as in the movie “American Graffiti”. This frequently ended in a late-night stop at one of the drive-in fast-food establishments which abounded in those days. Young members of our local amateur radio club were no different in this respect; however, we had a distinct advantage over our non-ham peers. In those days before cell phones, many of our members’ cars were equipped with VHF mobile rigs that allowed us to co-ordinate which drive-in eatery might be visited by several cars full of hungry hams.
Of course, this was nothing like today’s VHF/UHF mobiling, where tiny solid-state FM rigs easily communicate via local repeaters. Nope …we were using simplex AM transmissions on the 6 metre band, employing mobile rigs full of vacuum tubes. While this certainly made communication challenging at times, it did have the advantage of supplementing in-car heating during Winnipeg winters.
My friend Marty had installed a Heathkit Shawnee 6 metre AM/CW rig in his father’s car, an enormous mid-1950s Chrysler station wagon which could go like stink. Like most cars in this era, it had bench seats, thus providing lots of clear space under its dash to accommodate a large transceiver. While out in that car late one Saturday evening, we decided to honour a local Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-in with our patronage. This establishment was a classic 1960’s model, with a large portico under which customers could angle park. As we pulled in that evening, we noticed that the local top-40 AM radio station, CKY, was underway with a remote broadcast from a booth situated under the portico. In those days, remote broadcasting facilities often looked like complete mini-studios, having audio consoles, turntables for music and tape cartridge machines for commercials. Lots of low-level audio wiring in there!
Once we had ordered, Marty keyed up the Shawnee and called CQ to see if other club members were out cruising. No response, so a longer CQ followed. Still nothing. But after about 5 minutes, the booming voice of Andy, VE4MA, popped out of the Shawnee’s speaker, calling Marty’s call-sign. At the time, Andy (SK) was the chief engineer of CKY and a well-known local ham. “You guys anywhere near the Colonel Sanders on McPhillips”, he enquired. “Yep, why?”, says Marty. “Well, your signal is being picked up in the CKY booth and mixing with our programming”, says Andy. “Oops”, says Marty. (That’s not what he actually said but this is a family-friendly article.)
Now to be fair, that Shawnee may not have produced the cleanest AM signal ever. However, who builds an audio console for remote broadcasting that has no RF filters on the low-level inputs, we wondered?
In any event, that’s how it came to pass that a 50,000 watt CQ was heard on 580 kHz over a large swath of North America one fine summer evening in 1961.
Never did find out if Marty received any SWL QSL cards as a result!
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Last Updated on 2024-12-23 by AdminOARC