Distant
Signals Received in the Houston Area
Earl Nightingale
and the morning I DXed with my FM radio
Most visitors to this site are familiar
with the late Earl
Nightingale and the radio broadcasts he produced during
most of his career. His Our Changing World was one
of the few successful programs based on good news and motivation.
I can remember the first time I heard Earl
Nightingale. Back then, you could actually DX for FM signals
even in the middle of Houston.
Early one summer morning when I was 14,
I suddenly found myself in the presence of the sonorous
voice of Earl Nightingale. It was one of about 7,000 broadcasts
Nightingale would eventually create.
That voice had arrived on an FM station
completely new to me, KTOD in Corpus Christ. The call letters
stood for "top of dial."
A "skip" in their signal had suddenly
ushered KTOD into Houston that morning. Unlike AM signals,
FM radio only goes as far as the horizon except when
it breaks the rules. Don't ask me for a more technical explanation.
Around that same time, I also picked up
WRR-FM, the city-owned station in Dallas, and a university
run station in Minnesota.
That particular morning was the only time
I ever heard KTOD. It was not the only time I heard Earl
Nightingale. In fact, I eventually worked for a station
that carried his broadcast. Later, I paid good money to
hear him speak on tape and CD.
I am pleased that I now have an affiliation
agreement with the company which Earl Nightingale co-founded.
Here are some Nightingale-Conant audio products
which I personally purchased and recommend to people interested
in radio and communications:
Best
Kept Secrets of Great Communicators
How
to Be a Rainmaker
Conversation Power
Since 1986, I have purchased over 80 Nightingale-Conant
audio programs. They are one of the main reasons why I don't
listen to the radio much any more.
If you enter the Nightingale-Conant site from any of these
three links, a generous commission will go to this web site
for anything you purchase. That will help assure the continuation
of this radio page.
Additional sponsored links are
below. Please give serious consideration to the products offered.
Best
Selling Time Life Products
I have personally purchased such massive Time Life CD collections
as Legends of Rock, Sounds of the 80's, and
Modern Rock. I owe a lot of my musical knowledge to
collections like these.
Total Training for Dreamweaver 8
I have purchased and studied the Total Training program for
Photoshop Elements.
Classic Country Collection-Introducing:
Honky Tonk Heroes 2-CDs for $14.99!!
Added January 27, 2007 . . .
Chicago comes
to Houston
WLS, Chicago,
May 2, 1967-1
WLS, Chicago,
May 2, 1967-2
WLS, Chicago,
May 4, 1967-1
WLS, Chicago,
May 4, 1967-2
WLS, Chicago,
September 5, 1967-1
WLS, Chicago,
September 5, 1967-2
WLS, Chicago,
September, 1967
All of these airchecks were recorded in Houston.
The quality of the September recordings was limited by poor
weather in the Houston area.
Added January 25, 2007 . . .
Short wave signals
Now for something totally different . . .This
is primarily a Houston radio history web site, but I will
include other materials if they were recorded by me. These
are my only short wave air checks.
I am not a a big short wave hobbyist, but
I do occasionally take an interest in the international broadcasts.
Before the Internet, the short wave was the one medium which
allowed a voice to skip across the oceans directly to the
ear listening at home.
A BBC Beatles
documentary
Recorded in Houston one afternoon in early
1973. (Time of day and time of year are big factors in short
wave reception.) If you're not used to short wave, bear in
mind that these are radio signals which have to bounce across
the ionosphere. The effect on the sound is dramatic, but often
frustrating.
A German broadcast.
Recorded in Bay City, Texas, on a night in
the fall of 1979. I don't understand much German, so I asked
for help in identifying this material.
Thijs Wassens wrote from the Netherlands and
identified the program as "Schlagerparade der Deutschen
Welle," a program featuring a parade of hits.
Wassens adds that the station is probably
RIAS Berlin, a station in the American sector aimed at Germans
then behind the Iron Curtain. According to Wassens,"That
would be why the presenter explains so much about the music.
I think this program is rather progressive for its time."
Wassens also tells us that the woman at the
beginning of the recording is Marion
Maerz, a singer who had been popular since the 60's. Her
voice was what got me to start this very spur of the moment
recording. I had always assumed that the material was someone
who was very young in 1979, but she is actually older than
me.
Semi-technical
dissertation: One thing which these materials have in common
is that they were both recorded using cassette recorders,
rather than reel to reel units. In both cases, a portable
short wave receiver was patched into a portable cassette recorder.
Both
items remained on cassette until 2003. The cassette used on
the BBC 1973 recording was already four years old at the time
of the recording, a Scotch C-60 in a clear yellow shell.
When
cassettes first came out, some experts doubted whether they
would last more than ten years. I have had my share of cassettes
which jammed or distorted much sooner than that. With these
two tapes, I was lucky.
|