My interest in radios and listening to AM “medium wave” (MW) and shortwave (SW) broadcast stations started at an early age. My dad was an electronics engineer and when I was about 10 years old, he made me an excellent performing crystal radio with components built onto a piece of plywood. Connecting a “long wire” antenna to this would bring in local AM broadcast stations, such as KFI (640) and other strong stations in the Los Angeles area. I’d lay in bed listening to stations before dropping off to sleep.
Later, I was given an old GE tube-type AM radio receiver, which could pick up stations across the U.S. during nighttime propagation. I’d log these “DX” (long distance) stations while carefully tuning the bands (530 to 1605 kHz at the time).
In the late 1960s, both my dad and I got hooked on Heathkit products and one Christmas, he bought me a GR-64 AM/SW receiver, which I carefully assembled. This started me on the path of receiving and logging various shortwave stations around the world. He had hooked up a long wire antenna from the house about 100 feet long to one of the farthest power utility poles. Now 1968 was at the peak of solar cycle 20 ( NOAA ), so reception was extremely good with the highly ionized atmospheric layers, allowing signal