Rialto Log

I used various radios, but the one I remember using the most was a Radio Shack 12-656A "TRF" AM-only portable, that I had modified for digital frequency readout, following instructions printed in an IRCA bulletin (I think...) The big problem was that the digital readout circuit caused so much interference that I had to include a switch on the side of the radio to turn it off after I had tuned to the frequency I wanted! I don't know what has become of the little TRF, I probably chucked it in one of my periods of disinterest in DXing.

My antenna was a 2-foot tuned spiral loop that I had strung around nails on a piece of plywood. I took 2 rolls of teletype paper, taped end-to-end, and stuck it in the center of an old plastic 5-gallon paint bucket, and filled in around them with sand. The antenna, mounted on a wooden broomstick, slipped right into the cardboard centers of the teletype rolls, and allowed me to rotate the loop to null out (to some degree) stations broadside to the loop, so I could hear stations in a different direction.

The list below is what I wrote down during those years. It starts sometime in 1976, and ends in February of 1982, when I apparently lost interest in the hobby (or got a job, or ??).