Old radios memories and a few mementos

A recent posting saw me digging around the shack reminiscing about the 'old' days of my early radio interests.

Despite fire, flood, relationship breakups, homelessness and the passage of time (several decades!!) I found that I had managed to cling onto a few things :-





There was a note with the QSL cards regarding prices....£10 for 100 and that was back when £10 was worth a lot more than it is now!

A few other things of a similar era were thrown together for the photo, not necessarily all radio either.
(Who has their original Spectrum? )


The handle 'Gunslinger'? 

There was a printing plate that had been made but never utilised and I was able to buy it cheap, so I went from the 'Toe-Tapper' (due to my apparently annoying habit of clicking my toes unintentionally, which even still drives my wife mad on a quiet evening!) to the 'Gunslinger'. There were quite a few 'Gunslingers' about back then and over the years so don't go mistaking me for anyone else, like some things handles back then were mostly inspired by our 'American' cousins.

(Printing plates - pffft, we did stuff a bit differently back then! They were worth the money for my cards to still be in spangly new condition all these years later though.)


One thing of note was the message on the back of the QSL cards along with the usual info stuff.....

"ALTHOUGH WE MAY BE MANY MILES APART, WE ARE NOT STRANGERS, JUST FRIENDS WHO HAVE NEVER MET"

Still love that and glad the radio interest still sees me making 'friends' in a similar vein all these years later.




Have you got some old radio momentos?

You can post pictures of old (or even current) radios on the 'shack & rig' gallery here :-

https://charlietangodxgroup.forumotion.com/f27-shack-rig-gallery

Or just pop up pictures of anything radio related you like in this forum section. 
Up to you, but nice to get a bit more involved with fellow CT members on the forum.  


Enjoy your radio.

All the best,
Victor

Hey Vic loving your memories buddy.

I'm particularly envious of the ZX spectrum. I own two Amiga's an A1200 with a Motorola 030 upgraded CPU and additional ram, also a A600 with a HDD and additional memory.

Back to radio in the 80's my handle was the Artful Dodger, I had a President JFK AM & FM rig and a Harrier CBHQ which I still own today. The radios were feeding a CTE speedy valve linear amp then into a Lemm 1/4 wave ground plane antenna in the loft of the block of flats I lived in at the time. It all worked pretty well at the time and of course the biggest problem you had then was finding an empty channel.

I remember those days with great fondness chatting late into the nite on UKFM then on AM mid block in the small hours it was all such great fun.

If I get a chance when we get back from holiday I'll post some pics of the JFK and the Harrier.

Looking forward to everyone's memories.

73's Gary.

This is the second post on the forum today to send my mind back in a whirl of nostalgia. Thanks for the great post to read Victor.

I don't have much left to take photos of unfortunately, most related items are long gone, and some recently found not so important items have been moved on to new appreciative homes as I don't have a lot of room in our little house. Like Gary, I am envious you still have your Speccy. I had a 48k rubber keyed one like that soon after they came out and later the plastic keyed + model. I may have said before, we (a friend and I) experimented sending data with those over CB, successfully in some cases. There's a project for you.. find another person still with theirs and try sending loading screen images to each other, that'll confuse a few hams who are trying to work out what sort of SSTV mode their receiving

I do still have a good collection of QSL cards, and had some out earlier after reading the division prefix post on here. So here's a quick pic of a few old ones with my call on where I didn't use the '26' prefix. All are very simple and cheap QSL confirmations, just A4 piece of paper in one case, but all were excitingly received.. every one was a piece of proof I had really made the contact and that I had manage to get 'Cirencester' over to them in phonetics correctly (no proper internet back then to check my address was correct). The colour one in the middle is one you won't get now, Yugoslavia.

"10-4 there Artful Dodger, you got the Gunslinger this way."

Weren't those old days something else, eh Gary!

I remember too well talking into the small hours on some of the old AM nets often landing up late and knackered for work the next day. As you mention trying to find a free channel during the day was a nightmare and you often heard "Up one!" being shouted over your conversations as people hustled for space.

My old Spectrum 48K is still in fine fettle but the old tape player gave up the ghost some years ago. Lord knows where all my cassette tapes went, not just the classic games but also programmes I wrote such as for a home built EPROM programmer meaning I didn't have to borrow my friends BBC Micro to programme 'CB conversion chips'.


Look forward to seeing some pics from you and you'll have to shove some of your Amigas up for the crack too.  


"10-10 til we do it again!"

Awesome stuff there Neal!  

Really wish I'd been able to hang onto some of the old hand written stuff, postcards and letters. I used to have an old Corona portable typewriter back then is some vain attempt at making my cards look more official.


In fact I still have my old Silver Reed 500 which the grandkids find fascinating, especially amazed that you don't have to "plug it in" either!

I do remember you making mention of utilising those burgeoning home computers to send data over the airwaves. I remember attempts at sending those squeals and squeaks through the microphone but don't recall much success with it.

Really great to see that you are still in possession of some of your radio history especially hand written. 
Oh yeah, Yugoslavia (they suffered some terrible atrocities during their more recent historic conflicts), but who'd have thought world maps would have changed so readily even in just our life time?


All the best mate and thanks for posting your collection,
Victor

Thanks Victor and SangueG as your posts motivated me to dig out my old QSL cards which was no joke as they were buried under mountains of other stuff but I found them   looking them over brings me back. Lots of QSLs from France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, then a few odd ones from Spain, UK, Denmark, Hungary, canary islands, New York.

Here's a snap of them, all from '89 to '91 time period, guess that makes them vintage. I mainly operated under the international springbok DX club callsign 29 IS 2129 and for a time 12 CB 04 not sure why it was 12.

My last remaining blank copies for the QSL cards I sent are the 3 at the lower right.

I'm happy to take more close up images back and front by request.

Thanks for posting up your great collection of QSL cards Dermot.

I'll bet that brought back a fair few good memories sifting back through them all and looks like you had good results with solar cycle 22. Always brilliant to see people that have managed to hang onto their old QSL's as some of us have lost quite the collection. (I had a good cycle 21 but alas no cards survived.)

Always great to see others memories and bygone radio activities let alone current activity. I wish you well with the current cycle 25 although it hasn't been all that fantastic so far but fingers are crossed the radio Gods eventually reward us.


Fantastic stuff as always from CT members and look forward to seeing more.

Can't remember my first computer, it was a less popular one than the commodore or spectrum.
MSX possibly? Probably wrong.

I remember having an Amiga and thinking it was amazing
It was still boxed in the loft and I gave it away after many years stuck there.

I think there is still a commodore 64 up there.
If it hasn't been binned

I enjoyed gaming, Sega master and mega systems back in the day, then built a PC.
I cringe at the price of something that cost so much at the time (around £750) to end up so quickly outdated and in the bin.

I've dabbled with the playstation and Xbox consoles over the last 20+ years and still have a ps3 and ps4 although hardly bother now.

I can see why kids are consumed in gaming these days though. 
I cast my mind back to my binatone console back in the 70's and time spent watching a white dot bounce around a black screen

If red dead redemption or grand theft auto were thrust upon me as a child I'd of probably needed an introvenous drip and incontinence pants

Mind, the advent of CB radio saw me up until all hours, incoherently rocking to and throw from consciousness and eventually waking up with a microphone wedged into my face

My first computer was a Spectrum Plus 3 with floppy drive built in, had hours of fun playing Afterburner. Soon upgraded to an Atari 1024 STE then Amiga 1200, those were the days, I still run an emulated Amiga system on my 18 Core PC, mainly for the pinball games.

My handle when using my grandfathers CB was Big Foot, he gave me one of the old Amstrad's with the LED power meter. Still keep the theme going with 13oots2, I take a size 13 and wear boots.

I remember the old MSX Nige! 

Mind you back in the day everyone was battling for the home computer market with some unusual stuff like the Dragon or the Oric. I recall a plastic fake wood front version of Pong connected at times to the old TV but have to admit I did find that rather boring. However there were plenty of fake wood front CB radios and it was a lot more fun than some of the supposed gaming systems of the day.

Yep, woke up on more than one occasion with a red impression of a microphone grille on my face!

Happy memories there Nige and thanks for posting.

Hi Mark,

Your explanation of your CT username and old handle brought back some memories for me.....
My old Dad was 'Sasquatch' due to his rather large size 13 feet.

Yep, the old Amstrad CB 901 which was loved or loathed in equal qualities, but they were actually surprisingly good little rigs.

Cheers for posting.  



Anyone for any more? 
Some of you must still be clinging onto old rigs or radio memorabilia so why not post up and let us share such memories with you. It is after all a lot of fun.