Radio tuning-scale markings.

[G6Tanuki]

I've always been fascinated by the station-listings on radio tuning-dials.

Kalundborg, Oslo, Moscow, Allouis, Dublin, Berlin, Hilversum, Paris, Luxembourg, Lyons, Helsinki, Prague, Budapest, Kaliningrad...

And that's just boring MW/LW: I recall a cheap-and-cheerful receiver of the 5-valve-including-rectifier kind whose short-wave dial optimistically listed Delhi, Nairobi, New York, Washington and Schenectady.

I guess this was all an ego-massage thing directed at potential purchasers who - at a stretch and with the ionosphere looking benignly upon them - just *might* be able to hear such stations if they had a spectacularly-long wire antenna in an optimal location.

US broadcast-band radios seemingly made do with a simple 540-to-1600KHz frequency dial; I guess it would have been crazy for a US manufacturer to put station-IDs on the dial - given the size of the US they would have needed to do different ones for East-coast, West-coast, Southern-US and the central-region.

[stevehertz]

I see where you're coming from. I too get a buzz out of reading the station names on old sets and wondering how a previous owner may have spent many an enjoyable hour tuning in to see how many he could pull in. Of course, the biggest source of noise in those days was car ignitions. But a lot of people had long wire aerials installed and got good reception. I recall my neighbour had such an aerial in their back garden. How nice it would have been to have pulled in some of those distant stations from other countries. A far cry from the handful (if you're lucky) of AM stations that we're able to get now, notwithstanding the constant buzzsaw sound of digital interference.

[G6Tanuki]

Yes, even my Roberts R707 and RM40 list MW/LW stations like Athlone, Brussels, Beromunster, Vienna and two instances of Hilversum as more-exciting prospects than the ubiquitous and dull BBC.

I remember also 1950s/60s MW radios having "AFN" on their MW dials; that was the American Forces Network - really great to listen to if you wanted to hear live reportage of baseball-games or boxing-matches from the US.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

US broadcast-band radios seemingly made do with a simple 540-to-1600KHz frequency dial; I guess it would have been crazy for a US manufacturer to put station-IDs on the dial - given the size of the US they would have needed to do different ones for East-coast, West-coast, Southern-US and the central-region.

Well, some tried, like this 1937 Pilot -

https://www.radiomuseum.org/images/r...84_1005585.jpg

Something over 50 domestic MW stations there, all identified by callsign: and I've only just noticed that the central part of the dial carried international station names, printed in red that's almost vanished - Berlin and a few others can be made out.

I've never owned an Australian set, but confess to being intrigued by the frequent practice there of producing what an unfamiliar eye would immediately take to be the tuning scale of a set with around five bands, but which turns out to be a MW-only radio with stations grouped according to territories.

I was an avid listener to AFN's singles chart at around age 8 or 9, in 1967-8, finding it much more engaging than our own: hence my purchase of a Cossor 494 Melody Maker at auction in the summer of '68, to see whether it might deliver better sound and less fading than my little Regentone transistor set. Probably it was about the same, but the valve radio still turned out to be the first of a great many.

Paul

[Kentode]

Well, You've really burst my childhood bubble there!

I thought l was working the world on my parents radiogram...

[Roger Ramjet]

Van Morrison made a cracking single called "In The Days Before Rock & Roll". Most of the stations in the OP are mentioned. You can check this out on You Tube & the best one to watch features an HMV Radiogram.

Sheer delight !

Rog

[Rich Woods]

Radio…….knobs!!!

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet

Van Morrison made a cracking single called "In The Days Before Rock & Roll". Most of the stations in the OP are mentioned. You can check this out on You Tube & the best one to watch features an HMV Radiogram.

Sheer delight !

Rog

It's the sort of subject Flanders & Swann should have covered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QucsGZ1U6-M

I can vaguely remember a pre-war radio set at a friends house that had an elaborate dial with the various SW broadcast bands annotated with helpful legends like "Day & Night". Anyone know who did that?

[stevehertz]

It may have been Marconi/HMV.

[rontech]

My father had two pre war EMI sets a Marconi 564 and an HMV 650. Also an RGD 1936 Model 625. I recall getting quite good signals from the North-East American stations

[Roger Ramjet]

Originally Posted by stevehertz

It may have been Marconi/HMV.

Either way Van & the Gram were a match made in heaven...

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by rontech

My father had two pre war EMI sets a Marconi 564 and an HMV 650. Also an RGD 1936 Model 625. I recall getting quite good signals from the North-East American stations

That was some radio 'collection', the best of the best! I bet you wish you had them now - or do you have them?!

[kellymarie]

On a 1930s set some names I remember radio Normany and radio lyons and Paris PTT long gone even before I was born but my uncle remembered them he got into radio in 1938 or 9 when he was only 12 he remembered the true holden age of mediumwave radio

[David G4EBT]

To an extent, I think there was some ‘kidology’ in this. The inference is that because the station names and frequencies are on the dial, that particular radio can receive those stations. Back in the mid-50s as an enthusiastic short wave listener in my early teens, (before I discovered girls and got out more), I soon discovered that wasn’t the case.

Back then, you could buy ‘Aerolite’ wire aerials from Woolworth with a conical ‘birdcage’ to mount on a pole at the end of the garden, which allegedly ‘captured the signals’. (And we fell for it). Such aerials still abounded back then. I do still have some QSL cards from powerful broadcast stations for ISWL listener reports I submitted, but many of the stations listed on the dial were inaudible on a domestic radio receiver with a mediocre aerial. Disappointingly, the ‘birdcage’ failed to suck stations out of the airwaves, ‘capture them’ and deliver them into my headphones.

[stevehertz]

I still think it was 'fair' to mark the dial scales with those worldwide station names. After all, as David eludes to, the ability of a set to receive a station is to a large extent dependent on the strength and quality of the signal it receives from the aerial. Not just that but where you are, eg in a valley or high on a hill near to the coast. There's a famous answer to the question, "which is the best tuner (radio)?". The answer being, the one connected to the best aerial.

[Beobloke]

Given that my wife hails from Athlone, I'm surprised I only managed to put two and two together and pay a visit to the transmitter at Moydrum that is mentioned on all those radio dials last year!

It's still there along with all three of its transmitter sets and it's rumoured to be destined to be the centrepiece of a new science-based visitor attraction.

[Synchrodyne]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

To an extent, I think there was some ‘kidology’ in this. The inference is that because the station names and frequencies are on the dial, that particular radio can receive those stations. Back in the mid-50s as an enthusiastic short wave listener in my early teens, (before I discovered girls and got out more), I soon discovered that wasn’t the case.

I suppose it is difficult to know just what expectations tuning dial labelling created. Here in NZ, back in the valve era, it was customary for locally-made receivers to include all of the NZ MW stations on the dial, by callsign. I don’t think that most users expected to receive other than there local or regional stations. Rather the tuning dial labelling was seen as reasonable for receivers that might be used anywhere in the country. (Back then, each station had its own MW channel. Even in later years, channel-sharing was very limited, and as was the use of synchronous transmitters.)

Perhaps more misleading was the incorporation of shortwave bands in basic domestic receivers with two-gang front ends and no RF amplifiers, which typically had rather dismal HF performance.

Nonetheless, “dial art” did seem to be part of the equation in the valve era. The first radio receiver I was aware of was my father’s Bush EU24, in the 1950s the only family receiver. This had a rather distinctive dial – see http://www.pasttimesradio.co.uk/dial...eu24-diala.jpg. At the time, I did not know that it was in fact quite unusual. Around 1960, after we had moved to Auckland a Columbus CM3 (Pye Akrad chassis) was added as my mother’s radio. In this case the dial was marked with all of the NZ MW stations of the time.

Nonetheless, the Bush EU24, which had a three-gang front end with RF amplifier, seemed to have justified its dial labelling. For example, at our down-country location, my father regularly (and year-round) listened to the BBC World Service, using an outside aerial that was probably around 7 metres high and maybe 12 metres long. In fact the first radio programme of which I have a clear recollection is BBC Radio Newsreel, with its “Imperial Echoes” theme music. Also, reception of the Auckland regional stations was very good, even though as I later learned, we were well outside the 2 mV/metre contour, probably at around the 0.5 mV/metre contour. In Auckland, we were about 3 km from the regional transmitters, so local reception was not a problem with any kind of receiver. For SW reception, one could use a sufficiently long aerial with the Bush with no problem. Its front end seemed to be bomb-proof, even in a very strong MF field. But not so with the Columbus, which had a two-gang front end without RF amplifier. With a similar long aerial, the strong MF field simply overloaded its input, resulting in an unintelligible output. So, although the CM3 had SW coverage to 22 MHz, it was of minimal utility. That experience (reinforced by similar results with other receivers) led me to the viewpoint that the inclusion of SW bands on receivers without RF amplifiers and three-gang tuning was misfeasance if not malfeasance. During the 1960s, a Sharp transistor portable was added to the domestic collection of the time. This had SW coverage up to somewhere around 18 MHz, and it did have a three-gang front end with an RF amplifier. With a moderately long aerial, it was actually more usable for stronger SW signals than was the CM3.



Cheers,

[CambridgeWorks]

What sparked my imagination the most was "Amateur" & especially "Aircraft" markings, as well as those already mentioned.
I don't recall hearing Amateurs and definitely not aircraft!
Rob

[Kentode]

At the end of the scale, l mostly got taxis!

[McMurdo]

All part of the charm of an old radio that attracted me to the hobby in my youth. So many exotic-sounding places at your fingertips! Best enjoyed in darkness with just the dial lamps as you slowly turn the knob across the short wave and those foreign accents and strange music fades in and out. Magic!