[TenTec] Entry levels for Boys.

[John Bescher]

I remember as if yesterday the many thrilling stations I heard on my old AM broadcast receiver that had short wave bands and stations like BBC marked on the dial.  This was back in 10th grade, I'd get up at 4 am to listen to stations roaring into my New Jersey home from hundreds and thousands of miles away.  Even then, I knew 80 meters was a night time band and especially good in the early morning.


It was an old AM broadcast radio with a wooden cabinet, built in speaker, not even a band spread or any sort of filter,  but it had shortwave capability.  The old receiver worked especially well, I thought at the time, when connected to an external wire antenna strung on a 20 foot Birch Tree "tower"  that my Dad had cut down for me and erected outside my bedroom window.



One morning before day break I heard a search for a freighter on the Great Lakes. The Coast Guard cutters' conversations were booming in around 3 megacycles.  An ore carrying freighter was missing in a violent storm.  I could hear the strain of the Coast Guard transmissions, querying other ships whether there was any sight of the freighter through the gloom and driving rain.  I  listened until the sun came up and the band faded away.   The ship was never found, I read in the papers several days later.  The search was abandoned.  


No future television program was ever as exciting as that morning long ago.


73....John Bescher, N4DXI



-