Radio tuning-scale markings.

[Roger Ramjet]

In the mid 60's I was listening to an old stripped down valve radio & thought I kept hearing This Is A Boy Calling.... This Is A Boy Calling...

My dad walked in the room & chuckled pointing out that is was saying Hanoi Calling - not A Boy Calling !

Not sure if it was on MW or SW but now presume it came originated from Hanoi in Vietnam.

Roger

[Graham G3ZVT]

Are you sure it wasn’t a channel marker that said (to my ears, something like)
“This is Yutaboy Radio testing on eleven point one two zero megacycles”.

I never found out where Justaboy, Yutaboy or however it’s supposed to be said is located, but I’m sure it’s in Europe.

<edit>
Well I’ve solved my 50+ year old mystery, and maybe yours too, the place name is Gothembourg (Sweden)
Listen to how they pronounce it in Swedish.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rc...5&opi=89978449

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by 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!

If I twiddle the dial of my radio set
I wonder what sort of noises I'll get
The rumperty-tump of a big brass band
Or the quick foreign chatter of some far off land.

A half remembered poem, circa 1972 from the days long before "daytime TV", when the only thing on in the service department, other than the Test card, was Playschool on BBC2.

[Station X]

Originally Posted by Graham G3ZVT

Are you sure it wasn’t a channel marker that said (to my ears, something like)
“This is Yutaboy Radio testing on eleven point one two zero megacycles”.

I never found out where Justaboy, Yutaboy or however it’s supposed to be said is located, but I’m sure it’s in Europe.

I remember it well. I consulted atlases and even asked the school geography teacher where it was to no avail.

Thanks to you I now know where it was/is.

[Hybrid tellies]

You can age a radio from its dial station markings. Normally the more popular or station transmitter sites were shown. I have quite a few valved and portable transistor radios with interesting dial markings

[60136 Alcazar]

Originally Posted by Synchrodyne

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

I have what I presume is the AC equivalent of this - Bush EBS24 - with the Telecal vernier optical tuner (as it might be marketed today!) which allowed you to note the logging scale and tune SW stations in by a calibrated light ring setting (a back-illuminated fixed slotted disc with a rotating slotted disc vernier behind giving two sets of rotating light bars).

I've had this set since 1966 and it is robust to say the least - mains and output transformers hermetically sealed, mounted on something like 16 inches of aluminium chassis and 6 valves of the UL41 series to occupy it, so very sparse looking.

[livewireless123]

This is how it was done in OZ it's the dial of my HMV Australia Rangemaster
transistor set which somehow ended up here, a long way from home.
just a strip for each state with station call letters. no wavelength or frequency marking.
It's a very sensitive set with a big half inch diameter 8 inch long ferrite rod
and a tuned RF stage but I don't think i''ll hear any of those stations even if they are still on the air.

[Synchrodyne]

Originally Posted by 60136 Alcazar

I have what I presume is the AC equivalent of this - Bush EBS24 - with the Telecal vernier optical tuner (as it might be marketed today!) which allowed you to note the logging scale and tune SW stations in by a calibrated light ring setting (a back-illuminated fixed slotted disc with a rotating slotted disc vernier behind giving two sets of rotating light bars).

I've had this set since 1966 and it is robust to say the least - mains and output transformers hermetically sealed, mounted on something like 16 inches of aluminium chassis and 6 valves of the UL41 series to occupy it, so very sparse looking.

Yes, the EBS24 was the AC counterpart to the EU24. Both were covered by the same operating instructions. The Teleflic device was very useful and dual function. As well as being a logging device, it was also a bandspread device, in that for the eight SW broadcast bands 11 through 49 metres, one could read from the expanded frequency bracket on the main scale to Teleflic dial coordinates, and then tune to obtain those co-ordinates. It was probably one of the better approaches to SW BC bandspread short of the full electric method (which Bush adopted for the following EBS44 model). Having six tuning bands to cover the range 524 kHz to 30 MHz was also quite generous. And the Teleflic dial was a talking point, particularly in the evening with subdued room lighting.


Cheers,

[Tractorfan]

Hi!
Yes. loved trawling the SW band. I was given a Murphy A122 'Baffleboard' when I was about 12. It lived in a joiner's shop and I had to brush out the sawdust, dead spiders, etc.
I plugged it in, the valves glowed and, - nothing - I then realised I hadn't an aerial, so connected a couple of yards of flex, chucked it out of the window, then spent the rest of the night getting cramp in my hand as I turned the tuning knob ever so slowly and heard many foreign voices and music new to my ears.
I knew nothing of re-capping, nor 'That Cap', so the PEN45 was probably under stress. If it was, it never complained.
Alas, that set went to an Aunty and disappeared, but I now have two more.
Ah, happy days!
Cheers, Pete.

[Oldmadham]

Originally Posted by 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.

As was indeed done in Australia.

[Oldmadham]

Originally Posted by livewireless123

This is how it was done in OZ it's the dial of my HMV Australia Rangemaster
transistor set which somehow ended up here, a long way from home.
just a strip for each state with station call letters. no wavelength or frequency marking.
It's a very sensitive set with a big half inch diameter 8 inch long ferrite rod
and a tuned RF stage but I don't think i''ll hear any of those stations even if they are still on the air.

A lot of them are!


As far as MW DX is concerned: -

Back when I worked at 6WF/WN transmitters which were co-sited with a HF comms setup, after programme hours, the "midnight" shift moved to the Comms building to "baby sit" that stuff overnight.

We had an ordinary "mantel" set in the lunchroom, which had a full-size ferrite rod antenna.

Point the antenna at the "big stick" & you could pick up some amazing stuff on MW.
It seems that the 470 or so foot "dual mast" picked up a lot of signal & re-radiated it.

When the comms building shut down permanently that particular form of midnight to dawn entertainment was no longer available.

Even in later years, when I would drive home after midnight from the TV Tx I worked at, I could pretty much consistently receive a MF outlet of VOA on my car radio.

Singapore MF stations were there, too but at lower strengths--VOA romped in!
Strangely, I have seen no mention of a MF outlet on all the historical records of that network I have seen on the 'Net.

One US ham suggested that it was rebroadcast on the US Armed Forces Radio Service-------perhaps unoffically!

[russell_w_b]

You might find, on some sets of a certain age, a portion of the MW band labelled 'TV Sound'.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by russell_w_b

You might find, on some sets of a certain age, a portion of the MW band labelled 'TV Sound'.

I can't think why! Some mostly high-end just pre-WWII sets offered TV sound, by way of an ultra-short wave band that included its 41.5 MHz frequency.

Paul

[turretslug]

Yes, a somewhat blank arc/strip of tuning scale with just the 7m/41.5MHz "TV Sound" marker. Some of these sets tuned as high as 60MHz, presumably in the hope of further Band I channels "sometime". Perhaps with the relatively narrow-band front-end and IF compared with typical TV sets, these radios would have provided good fringe reception of TV sound, I wonder if there were any anecdotes of how far away AP could be heard.

Those sets bring to mind the latter-day tendency of some DAB radios/tuners to offer L-band coverage, on the grounds that "well, it might come true, someday, somewhere....."

[G6Tanuki]

Weren't some first generation cheap tellies sold without a sound IF and audio strip but instead downconverted the sound channel to MW so you received it through a MW broadcast receiver??

Were some broadcast receivers maybe sold with a specific marking on the MW scale for such TV users to tune to??

[John10b]

As a Kid in the forties I was fascinated by all the radio stations that I could tune into on our windup radiogram. Dad had strung a very long length of wire out of the window and stuck a spike into the garden. I was memorised by all the foreign stations.
John

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by Paul_RK

I can't think why! Some mostly high-end just pre-WWII sets offered TV sound, .

'Just pre-WWII'? There's modern! I was thinking of 30-line Baird telly, which went out on medium wave. I think at one time you could have picture, or sound, but not both.

[russell_w_b]

Originally Posted by robinshack

What sparked my imagination the most was "Amateur" & especially "Aircraft" markings, as well as those already mentioned.

Just ratched out an old KB radio with 'Aircraft' marked on at 900 metres. Forgot I had it!

[Smithdoor]

You find the American dials are close.
I used a good RF signal generator to make dial.
I just tuned the radio to that channel and market.
Then make a good on the drafting board today I would use a CAD program.

Dave

FYI
I like the look of UK dials.

Originally Posted by 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.

[60 oldjohn]

Has anyone a radio marked with BBC Ottringham ? This is the only radio that I am aware of, unfortunately not the best of print in that area.

John.