Five Radios

It has become, for lack of a better expression, a bit of a parlor game among the amateur radio community. Talk about how many radios you own. Talk about how many radios you have owned in the past. Talk about how much money you've spent acquiring radios. Talk about how much your spouse or partner disapproves of all those expenditures. It's all in fun—I get that—but it's a bit of fun I haven't really gotten in on. My approach to amateur radio, as it is with so much else in life, is one of minimalism: figure out what gets the job done and go with it. 

That's not to say that I don't own a few radios, or that I haven't seen a number of radios come and go over the years. Since I've been doing this maybe a dozen or so rigs have passed through the W6KSR (and, prior to that, Ed's SWL) shack. Some are—or were—objectively awesome radios. Others might have been a little short of awesome, but had what we'll just say were qualities that could only be endearing to their owner. Five of these radios truly stand out for some combination of what they meant and how they performed. Here are those five in chronological order.

Candle 3 Band 12 Transistor VMS-1220

In the early '60s manufacturers of transistor radios would often include a shortwave band along with AM and FM for reasons that seem to be more ornamental than anything else. The radios lacked the sensitivity and selectivity to pull out weak signals from thousands of kilometers away on crowded bands, but apparently that wasn't the point. If a radio dial with two bands looks good, then three bands must be even more impressive¹. 

At the age of ten in the late '70s, my biggest problem with the VMS-1220 that my grandfather gave me was trying to figure out just what the hell that third band was even nominally supposed to do. During those long summer days when school was out I'd try tuning around the radio's 4 MHz - 12 MHz shortwave band, hearing nothing but static. It was later that I'd learn that those frequencies were suitable only for nighttime propagation. I asked around, but none of the adults in my life seemed to know exactly what shortwave was, only that it was a different kind of radio. I heard the term shortwave thrown around quite a bit in pop culture references, but always as a sort of catch-all for anything esoteric² on the airwaves, even in cases where that esoteric activity didn't literally take place between 3 MHz and 30 MHz. 

The breakthrough came in the summer of 1980. While browsing the bookshelf at the local Radio Shack, I came across the eighth edition of H. Charles Woodruff's Short-Wave Listener's Guide. Somewhere along the line³ I found out that shortwave radio was used by international broadcasters and so I made it a goal—quickly achieved—to find the BBC on shortwave. In the pages of Woodruff's Guide I learned that shortwave broadcasters the world over (not just in English-speaking countries) produced English language broadcasts intended for North American audiences. After a couple introductory chapters describing shortwave broadcasting and the basics of propagation, the book featured country-by-county listings of stations with broadcast times and frequencies. It was, in essence, a scaled-down World Radio and Television Handbook, but since I hadn’t yet heard of the WRTH, Radio Shack’s Short-Wave Listener’s Guide became my shortwave bible. With the VMS-1220’s audio gain maxed out and the speaker pressed against my ear to overcome the receiver's lack of sensitivity I began tuning in Radio Canada International, Deutsche Welle, Radio Netherlands, and Swiss Radio International, and my radio adventures had begun.

Radio Shack DX-100

I spent a good bit of 1981 looking over the DX-100 in the Radio Shack catalog. On Christmas morning of that same year, it was under the tree. The new radio solved most of the problems that I encountered with the midcentury transistor radio. I no longer had to max out the AF gain to pull in international broadcasters. The daytime bands were in play. The voices heard around 7 MHz that sounded like a particularly unintelligible version of Donald Duck could now be easily tuned with the receiver's BFO⁴. 

The DX-100 had a drum-style frequency display. A drum turned as you turned the tuning knob and a pointer (very approximately) marked the frequency. All of the HF spectrum and most of the MF spectrum was divided into four bands spread across the drum. With the improved selectivity and sensitivity, I was able to find broadcasters previously hidden between stronger signals. I busted out South American music on the 120, 90, and 60 meter tropical broadcast bands. With the ability to receive SSB signals, I monitored amateur radio QSOs⁵, flights between mainland North America and Hawaii checking in with Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated (ARINC), and high seas sideband communications. I learned about amateur radio satellites from Radio Netherlands' Media Network program, and found a half dozen birds with beacons on 10 meters. Using nothing but pen, paper, a pocket calculator, and a listing of orbital periods published in a pamphlet that Radio Netherlands gave out after that particular Media Network episode, I spent the summer of 1983 learning to track satellites and make pass predictions. With the Candle radio I took my first steps into listening to shortwave; with the DX-100 I became an SWL.

Sony ICF-2010

By the mid '80s the solar cycle approached a low and a high school kid's academic, work, and social life approached a high. I drifted away from radio for a few years. By the late '80s the solar cycle was picking up, and the sudden unravelling of the Cold War meant that listening to European broadcasters on both sides of the Iron Curtain was about to get interesting. I started tuning in again, but quickly realized that the venerable old DX-100 had its limitations. I saved a few hundred bucks from the part-time job I had while attending college classes and bought myself a Sony ICF-2010.

It felt like a bit of an extravagance at the time, but that rig turned out to be some of the best money I ever spent. Its sensitivity and selectivity is well ahead of anything I had seen previously, and its stability is rock solid. The digital display and keypunch tuning, still a novelty in 1989, took all the guesswork out of trying to find a broadcaster or utility station. Being a portable, that radio went with me everywhere: on weekender road trips, on flyaway holidays, on camping trips where I'd listen to Swiss Radio International around the evening campfire or music from Radio Australia in the morning while frying up some bacon over a camp stove.

The rig also had VHF air band capability. I had developed a keen interest in aero monitoring listening to those flights transiting the central eastern Pacific communicating with San Francisco ARINC on HF. Now the chance to hear aero comms was enhanced; I could monitor flights talking to air traffic control on VHF. Often I would hear the same flights on both as they transitioned between flying over land and flying over water.

The 2010 has been described as an all-time classic. I still have mine and it still works, as long as I put in a little effort to stay ahead of the effects of time and entropy. My shack is the kitchen table and on days when I'm content to sit back and listen the 2010 is not only a bit of nostalgia come to life, it's simpler to set up than a transceiver and all of its peripherals. If you're activating POTA sometime and you get a spot from me without a QSO, check the comments. You just might see a word in there about how I heard you on my ICF-2010.

Yaesu FT-70D

More solar lows, more life happening, budget cuts and evolving technology making life below 30 MHz much quieter than it once was, all of this contributed to a lengthy hiatus from radio. On the eve of the 2020s, I was ready to give it another go, even if it was a solar low. After passing the Technician exam in July of 2019, I literally drove from the exam location to Ham Radio Outlet and purchased my first HT. To his credit, the clerk talked me out of cheaping out too much, and the FT-70D that I took home has served me well to this day.

It didn't take long at all to realize that shooting the breeze on local repeaters wasn't my thing. Fortunately for me the late teens and early twenties turned out to be the heyday of FM satellites. Remembering how much fun it had been in the summer of '83 to track satellites, I got a satellite tracker app for my iPhone, did a bit of reading, and watched a couple YouTube videos. On a 70° AO-91 pass, I decided to see what my HT could do. Standing on the patio and contorting my hand and wrist to get the rubber duck antenna to match the satellite's polarity, I heard the sound of an FM transmitter suppressing the noise on the downlink frequency. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was that same familiar thrill that I hadn’t experienced in more than three decades of knowing that I had just acquired a low-Earth-orbit satellite signal. Even more remarkably, I was able to complete a QSO with WD9EWK. I was hooked, and bought an Arrow hand-held Yagi the very next day. I went on to earn a satellite VUCC, do a good bit of grid square roving, and complete a QSO with astronaut Kjell Lindgren aboard the International Space Station—all on my FT-70D.

With the exception of the 2010's VHF air band, none of my previous radios had capabilities above 30 MHz (other than broadcast FM). The FT-70D's receiver has continuous coverage, which opened a whole new world of monitoring. I still enjoy using my HT to monitor aircraft, fire dispatch, activity on the railway just down the hill from my house, and much more.

Kenwood TS-590SG

My first HF transceiver was a second-hand Icom IC-730. It worked out well enough to get me on the air, but in 2024 I purchased a brand new Kenwood TS-590SG. Back in the '80s, the must-have receiver on every SWL's list was the Kenwood R-1000. The Sony ICF-2010, and the DX-100 before it, met my needs at the time and I just never got around to getting my hands on an R-1000. Now would be my big chance to own a Kenwood.

The TS-590SG didn't disappoint. It has hear-a-pin-drop sensitivity and gorgeous audio. Selectivity is so exacting that even on Field Day the default filter settings are perfectly adequate for completing a QSO without getting blasted by a strong signal on a nearby frequency. The lack of a touch screen and spectrum analyzer, found on comparably priced models like the Icom IC-7300 and the Yaesu FTDX-10, is by no means a limitation. In the field, the tactile controls and large, backlit frequency display allow for a simplicity of operation that POTA activators and Field Day participants will appreciate. At home on contest weekends, the TS-590SG fully integrates with SDRuno and an SDRplay appliance. Spectrum analysis can take place in the biggest display you've got, and pouncing on an interesting looking signal is as simple as point and click.

Conclusion

Two of the five radios exist only in memory; two others are in regular use in my shack and one is in occasional use. The radios that I didn’t mention here are mostly memories. Each rig added value to my radio experience. They each, in their own way, did the job. What radios have done the job for you?

1. This trend made a brief return in the early '80s, when some boom boxes would feature large dials that included AM, FM, and part or all of the shortwave spectrum broken up into two or more bands. Return to story

2. As I wrote about in my very first blog article, the mystique surrounding shortwave radio was, and is, much more of a feature than a bug as far as I'm concerned. Return to story

3. I'm pretty sure it was an inconsequential bit of dialog from a Twilight Zone episode. Yet another pop culture reference, but this one serendipitously turned out to be reasonably accurate. Back to story

4. On the old transistor radio, I'd also hear something that sounded like a carrier being rapidly switched on and off. I came to realize that this was CW which, when you get right down to brass tacks, pretty much is a carrier being rapidly switched on and off. Back to story

5. Almost forty years would pass before I sat for the Technician exam. What took me so long (spoiler alert: it had next to nothing to do with the Morse code requirement), and whether what I heard was ultimately encouraging or discouraging is complicated, and might be a good topic for a future blog article. All I'll say for now is that every time you key up your mic, there's a good chance you're being monitored, and you're representing amateur radio whether you want to or not. Back to story