Radio Memories of Ron Spain

Rock Talk?

There was a talk show that came on 106.1 WRDU once or twice a week. I caught it a few times as a kid when listening to the radio in bed before going to sleep. Was it Rock Talk?

Early AM

I recall picking up a station from Wheeling, West Virginia when I was 15, and I thought it was cool but didn't really explore and study AM as I should've until I was 19 and into my early 20s. It was probably WWVA on 1170 kHz.

John Boy & Billy

A comedic morning show syndicated to hundreds of affiliates and one of the biggest radio shows I listened to.

Allan Handelman

I started listening to Handelman in my car when I was 16 or 17 on 106.1 WRDU on Sunday nights in the mid 1990s. That was one of the few talk shows on FM radio back then, but I suppose it primed me for Art Bell and the other talk radio that I found later on AM. I think Handelman had libertarian inclinations, and he sometimes talked about UFOs and aliens.

Going Digital

When I was 20 or 21, I got a digital AM/FM receiver and figured out how to hook up a wire to act as a loop antenna for AM, which ultimately ran around the living room and made it difficult to walk around. You had to do the limbo to get around. If I ran into a wire, I'd freeze like a bug in a spider web until I figured out how to escape.

I was fascinated by all the stations that were available on AM. A good digital AM receiver - kept from sources of interference - can pick up stations on a good percentage of the available channels. I recall describing it as like a whole internet of information that's available there on AM radio, and this was before I was on the net, and it was free, with commercials of course.

I used to unplug any electronics and appliances around the house that made interference to my AM or shortwave listening. Microwaves, alarm clocks, televisions, whatever. Unplug it all.

DXing

This is the hobby of trying to pick up distant stations. I was doing it just out of curiosity before I knew the term, like many other people I suppose. We all want to pick up more stations.

Art Bell

I was interested in the unexplained and had probably read dozens of books on the unexplained, UFOs, aliens, the paranormal, etc., so I latched onto the Art Bell show, called Coast to Coast AM. I always hated when I fell asleep and missed the show.

It was live from 1am to 5am on a dozen stations across the dial. All of them faded in and out, so you had to try to figure out the best station to listen on - and try to quickly find another station whenever one faded out. Sometimes, I recorded it for my Dad.

The show was never as good without Art Bell.

Neil Boortz

I listened nightly to this Atlanta libertarian. I think his replay was on before the other guys came on.

Phil Hendrie

He did voices and pretended to be multiple people in ridiculous situations just to fool people into calling in for the lols. He was basically pranking the listeners who were scanning the radio dial and maybe tuning in for the first time. They'd call in and he'd be even more ridiculous doing his voices and piss them off for the amusement of the listeners who understood that it was a prank.

Lionel

He sounded like Joe Pesci coming through the radio. I recall once or twice he described a large penis as like a baby's arm with an apple in his hand lol.

The John Batchelor Show

We sometimes listened to John Batchelor and Paul Alexander on WABC, mostly from 12-1 am. They sounded gay, so we called them the gay guys. I think it was in the months after 9/11 when I was mostly listening, and they usually talked about 9/11 and terrorism.

Ken Hamblin

Known as the Black Avenger, he was a conservative black guy who came on at 3pm on 680 WPTF. I listened occasionally.

Clark Howard

Came on in the morning and gave advice for saving money and consumer protection and such.

Dr Joy Browne

I listened sometimes to this call-in counseling show.

Dr Laura Schlessinger

I listened a number of times. Kinda like Joy Browne's show but with preachy conservative views. I was more leftist at the time....

Shortwave

When I was 19 or 20, I accidentally figured out one way to convert an AM radio to a shortwave receiver while trying to improve reception. I recall hearing Australia, which was the ultimate. Nothing farther than that except outer space. Sadly, I damaged a variable inductor while tinkering and didn't know how to fix it, so the receiver didn't last long.

In my early 20s, I learned another way to convert an AM radio to shortwave, and I used it to listen to Alex Jones just about every day. I ultimately came to view him negatively, but he was inspiring then to be inhibited about saying how I feel because he was saying wild things.

The Phone Jacks

My good radio receiver was connected to the stereo in the living room. But my Dad went to his room at 9 or 10pm and wanted to keep listening to shows, so I hooked up the stereo to the phone jack and used that to send the audio to his room. We didn't have landline phone service at the time, so the phone jacks weren't connected to any phone service, but the jacks were still connected to each other through the wiring in the apartment, so that's what I was exploiting to avoid having more wires running around.

I made a variable resistor out of a piece of wood by drilling a hole and putting in some ground up (or scraped off) pencil lead, and I glued a knob onto a screw and used a spring to connect a wire, so this acted as a volume control (lol wtf how the hell idk). I had some variable resistors, but I didn't think they could handle the current going through the speaker, hence the reason for making one. And this speaker with a piece of wood glued to it and a knob sticking out was connected to his phone jack, and he used that to listen to whatever I was listening to in the living room.

So I'd listen to whatever seemed most interesting, and hop to another program when one went to commercials. I tried to keep the volume fairly constant for Dad as the AM stations were fading in and out. And I tried to keep him entertained, not going away and forgetting. I had to stay there and manage the thing.