Sunday, January 16, 2011

Boris n' Broadcasting


                                                                
                                                             Boris n' Broadcasting

                                                                           by

                                                                              Jay Agan

      I had been involved in AM & Shortwave DX (Recieving & logging what, how far, & how many stations I could get.) for a couple years. I had heard/read of TV DXing but had not given it much thought. I did end up dabbling in it (27 states & Cuba.) & the following is what got me started.

      Not having cable, we had "over the air" chs 4 (WCLT later WCMH), 6 (WTVN later WSYX), 10 (WBNS), & 34 (WOSU), with a lot of "dead" spectrum space between. Every so often chs 8 (WJW, Cleveland), or 2 (WDTN, Dayton) would come in with a lot of "snow" (One Sunday I got a perfect viewing of The CBS Late Night Movies' airing The Black Scorpion on 8.). Never gave TV DX much thought in spite of the articles I read on it until I was bit by the bug in an interesting way.

      Flipping through the channels one late August afternoon in the early 70s, I saw ch 2 coming in semi snowy. I was about to continue when I recognized the voice & face of Boris Karloff, one of my favorite boogey men. Seems I came in on the tail end of an old Thriller episode from the early 60s. As the reception was almost viewable, I twiddled the fine tune & got it in slightly better.

      The show wound down & as it was the top of the hour, I thought I'd wait for WDTN to ID for the heck of it. Imagine my surprise when it IDed as ch2 KTWO from Casper, Wyoming. Here? In Ohio? WOW!

      It was from that I caught a mild case of the TV DX bug & had quite a bit of fun with it when I wasn't messing with AM or shortwave. (One of the high points was getting chs 2 & 3 out of Cuba within minutes of each other.)

      I always had fun with my radio hobbies but not until that day did I ever think Boris Karloff would have a hand in it. Thank you Mr. Monster.

                                                    Article copyright © Jay Agan

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