[Agamemnon]

HCJB and Family Radio WYFR often carried the old gospel dramatic program "Unshackled." Does anyone else remember that? HCJB also had a program called "The Cracker Barrel" where they read viewer mail.

Great memories in your column!

I discovered my grandparents' "Silvertone" floor model and "Philco" table radio models from the 1930's, each of which had back lit dials and the "Magic Eye" (or "Cat's Eye" as others called it) green tuning tube that let you "visualize" how good your tuning signal was.

On December 16, 1972 I recall I was listening to the news reports on the Silvertone pertaining to Nixon's bombing of Hanoi on AFRTS - and I say specifically on December 16, because Deutsche Well was at the same time celebrating Beethoven's birthday!

An interesting thing about HCJB, Radio Moscow, and the broadcast of ever ticking National Bureau of Standards Time atomic clock -- in 1970 I lived in Cape May, NJ and Sunoco sold a promotional item at their gas stations for $4.99 - a "Pump radio" which was an AM embodied within the shape of a Sunoco gasoline pump. The receiving transistor radio mechanism was made in Taiwan, and at a time later at night than ~ 10 PM, you could pick up HCJB, Radio Moscow, and the Atomic Clock at places way up at the top of the dial, just around 1580 or 1590 MHz, and then just past 1600 up around 1620 - 1630 mHz. I don't know if being at the shoreline and on such a peninsula made any difference in the reception that allowed for this.

You'll doubtlessly remember that after the minute time was announced "At the sound of the tone the time will be xx:xx...." their was a distinctive hum on each striking second which lasted and gradually faded until it ended ~ 20 seconds before the next time announcement.

I eventually got a Grundig when the tubes started to burnout out of the Philco and the Silvertone and I'd used up whatever spares I had from the old TV repair man who used to come the house with his "Dr's bag" of tubes and testers. He closed his business and there was obviously no eBay back then to find what were becoming more rare "5Y4G"'s!

Thanks for allowing me to travel the world in my mind all over again!

FReegards!

[hoagy62]

yes, I remember the WWV time signals. The reason that the town’s ended about 20 seconds before the top of the minute was so the stion could put in their time announcements. WWV had their time announcement at 53 and a half seconds before the top of the minute. But their sister station in Hawaii, WWVH, did theirs first at 46 seconds to the minute. on days and nights when you get really good short wave propagation, you can hear both stations make their time announcements. WWVH uses a female voice and WWV uses a male voice. That’s how you tell them apart. Also at the minute before the top of the hour, WWVH does their station identification, and at the top of the hour WWV does theirs.