Radio revue (Dec 1929-Mar 1930)

DECEMBER, 19 2 9 31 "•■Ik H. V. Kaltenborn, to ivhose Talks on Current Events I Listen Every Monday Evening at 6:30 on the Columbia Chain the practical application of any of these useful implements is as much a mystery to me as how and why the radio operates. I know what purposes they should be used for, but how to do it baffles me completely. The result is that when my radio stops radioing I pull up the lid, fool around with the tubes and other gadgets inside and then promptly telephone my radio man to come over and fix the thing. Possibly I may be dumber mechanically than the average, but at the same time I am willing to gamble that there are thousands of radio owners like myself. Otherwise, there would be no reason for the little radio repair shops that dot nearly every block of any business section in the metropolis. And it has been my experience that some of these so-called experts do not always know what they are doing or why. They generally find out whether you know anything about a radio or not and, if you don't, that makes it just so much easier for them. They look wise, fill you full of technical information, take the machine away, days, and then come back with the They never forget the bill. Has Listened for Five Years My introduction to the radio took place about five years ago. I had heard it talked about indefinitely, but had not paid much attention to it. One evening I happened to be in a little shop near home. I was attracted by the fact that my son was going to sing that night — without pay, of course. While we had been listening to him for years at home, his mother wanted to hear him over the air. Possibly I was more attracted by the fact that Will Rogers, for whom I have always had a sneaking fancy, was going to talk. We heard both, with interruptions due to static and other troubles, and three days later we were the proud owners of a radio set, which really worked. We have never been without one since and never will be again, if we can help it. It was a five-tube set, with three dials and a horn. It made what sounded to us then as the grandest music imaginable, although there was frequently a lot of humming i and, during the summer nights, a large and undue amount of static. Never will I forget the thrills I received from that machine, crude though it was in comparison with the fine pieces of mechanism they produce these days. Night after night I would sit up twirling the dials and bringing in all varieties of noises and occasionally a distant station. The strange part of that machine was that it could bring in stations that were in a direct western line with New York but it had difficulty in catching the extreme northern of southern stations. The first time I brought in WOW of Omaha, the farthest west my set had ever reached — I was willing to swear that I had the finest set in existence and that radio was one of the world's wonders. After midnight I frequently could tune in WCCO, Minneapolis ; WREO, Lansing, Mich. ; the Chicago Stations ; the Fleetwood Hotel, at Miami Beach. Fla.. and good old WSB at Atlanta, the station that "covers Georgia like a blanket." keep it for a machine and a few bill. DX Craze Dies Out The DX craze died with me. as it does with every radio owner. New York stations began to multiply with such rapidity that it soon became almost an impossibility to tune through them with any degree of success, unless you wanted to sit up until the wee sma' hours and doing the latter is not always conducive to maritial happiness. There is no doubt that we New Yorkers get the cream has become common knowledge, but to learn the real truth of this, one need of the radio broadcasts. This fact only town, business to Los When I there, I go out-of Recently took me Angeles, got out was told what fine programs they had on the Coast. I listened in and heard a miscellaneous 1 o t of junk over the air, interspersed at least every five minutes with the most blatant kind of advertising. This would not be tolerated, much less listened to, at home. After a while, I found out that about the only programs on the Coast worth listening to were those which came over the NBC or the Columbia chain. Foto Topics Ted Hnsing, One of My Favorite Sports Announcers, Giving a Word Picture of a Football Game