and ephemera: |
Well, from the looks of it now, 1970 was a good year for me as a 14-year-old I hadnt discovered girls yet, so I had lots of quality time for short wave listening, and I got some pretty nice QSLs out of the deal. Same goes for 1969, and for 1968, when I first started SWLing My first receiver was a Heathkit GR-64 not the Knight Star Roamer shown here but I know I did most of my DXing at this time on an Allied A-2515 (third photo on this page) with a simple longwire antenna strung across the roof of my parents' house.My days in the summer of 1970 were spent waiting for the mailman either at home or at the house of my best friend, Joe Rippe, also a SWLer -- where we lounged on his parents porch on Rattan chairs and sofas, poring over our tremendous cache of dozens and dozens of MAD magazines which we had picked up one fine Sunday morning at the Aurora flea market for five or ten dollars for the lot When I look at these QSL card images now, what I remember is less about my actual tuning in to these stations than it is about waiting for the mailman
SW broadcasters on the whole have always been quite generous to their listeners, and it seems to have been especially so in those days a QSL card very often came accompanied by all sorts of ephemera a personal typewritten letter, a broadcast schedule, DX club info, cultural information about the country, sometimes a program magazine, and of course very often a pennant. And sometimes a broadcaster would go the extra mile and include something really special in its QSL package, such as the silver kiwi stickpin I got from Radio New Zealand -- and darn if I didnt lose it somehow! -- I still keep searching through my stuff for it
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