Traveling Through the Air

The World Series stretched to seven games in 2001 -- and, because of 9/11, the deciding game was played on Sunday, November 4. My son and I were at my brother’s house in central Washington. I had to get my son back to Seattle because he had school the next day, but we wanted to hear the game. Unfortunately, the local station carrying the game had a directional pattern that did not go west, so I fumbled across the dial to find another station that carried the game. I found a few but they, too faded out. Finally I put the dial at 690. “690, 690. Who is 690?” Then, during an ID break, they played a liner that said, “XTRA 690 sports.” “Ah, 690. That’s right. This is from Mexico." My son was incredulous. “Mexico. We can hear Mexico up here?” Truly a child of the FM era.

I have been fascinated with radio for as long as I can remember. Perhaps it is because my father always had the radio on in the car – and that included two cross-country drives by the time I was ten. I am also old enough to remember radio drama. When my brother got a single-play record player for Christmas in 1962, he told me that was the type of record player that radio stations used. I thought that was way cool. When my father bought his first tape recorder in 1964, it didn’t take me long before I was playing DJ. But the cool part about radio (which for all intents and purposes back then consisted of only AM for me) was what you could hear at night. One Friday night in 1965, when we lived outside of Heidelberg, Germany, I was tuning across the radio dial and found Radio Luxembourg. They were carrying a weekly “Battle of the Bands” show in English. The next day I told my brothers what I heard. “Luxembourg is hundreds of miles away. There is no way you could have heard it.” That’s the life of the youngest of three boys, but I knew what I heard.

By 1968 we lived in western Washington. Tuning across the dial one night I found KGA in Spokane. But my biggest catch was KSL in Salt Lake City. Wow. Here I was in DuPont, Washington, and I am listening to Salt Lake City. The host was a man named Herb Jepko. He had a nightly call-in show. His listeners were called “Nightcappers,” and called in from all across the country. The charm of that show was that everyone who listened was listening to KSL, Salt Lake City -- no satellites – it was like a club with a personal connection. That November we listened to the Presidential election results on KGO, San Francisco.

We moved to the Bay Area, California in August, 1969. Once we found the local stations we wanted to hear, I had to explore the distant stations I could pick up. I found my old friends KGA and KSL. I think I found some Los Angeles stations as well – but nothing that stood out, except I do remember my father listening to a Dodgers game on KFI. I loved their jingle – “Los Angeles, Los Angeles. Los Angeles, Los Angeles. KFI.”

In the summer of 1970 I discovered WWL, New Orleans. That was the best I had ever done. That same summer, my brother got married in Spokane. My other brother spent the summer in DuPont, western Washington. We drove up from California to DuPont to pick up the one brother. As we drove to Spokane late on the night of August 6, 1970, the 25th aniversay of the bombing of Hiroshima, we listened to a discussion of the subject on KGO as we drove across Washington State. By 1973 we had moved to Petaluma.

I was a bit more formal in my listening at this point. I would slowly scan across the dial. There was one night when conditions were just right – I heard WBZ Boston and KDKA in Pittsburg. Somewhere I have a tape of an announcer saying “The Spirit of New England, WBZ, Boston” -- clear as a bell with little noise. When you live in the same area for a while, you get used to what you can pick up. That was the same with me. I would still tune across the dial (although I never heard WBZ again), but that was mainly for stations I enjoyed hearing.

In 1979, I met a friend who had the same interest. I found the plans to a signal amplifier. I built it, attached 400 feet of wire, and my friend and I went out one night along the American River in Sacramento to see what we could hear. I think the biggest catch of the night was WSM Nashville – the home of the Grand Ole Oprey. At that time I worked at KJOY, Stockton. I went full-time in September, working the midnight to six AM shift six nights a week. A friend of mine worked Sunday morning. I bumped in to him one day, and he told me he had a tape I had to hear. It was a tape of my friend on two consecutive Sunday mornings (California time) recorded by someone in Australia. I thought it was great, but I was a bit peeved that I worked the shift six nights a week, he worked it one night a week, but he got the tape.

I moved to Seattle in 1983 and settled in West Seattle, which was within two air miles of every 50,000 watt AM station in the city, and a number of the 5,000 watters as well. That killed off the hobby of listening to distant radio stations real quick. Probably the best catch I ever had was something of a reverse catch. On Christmas morning, 1984, I did a simulcast on KMPS AM and FM in Seattle. In March, 1985, I walked by the chief engineer’s desk, and saw a request for a QSL card (confirmation of reception) from someone in Finland. I read the written report and thought, “This is cool.” There was also a cassette tape. I just had to listen to it. By this time I had forgotten that I had worked Christmas morning. I took the tape to the production room, and was floored when I heard my voice coming through the noise. It was me, recorded in Finland. One of my dreams come true.