Thursday, June 1, 2017

Seavers in the News - Searching for My Name

It's time for the latest episode in my "Seavers in the News" series, in which I try to find interesting, humorous, macabre, or puzzling.

I was curious if my own name had entries in the online newspapers on GenealogyBank, so I searched for "seaver" and "randy" and checked the Exact name box.  I got two hits in the Newspaper Archives collection, both from San Diego.  One was for Tom Seaver and Randy Jones in 1975 - not me.

The other one was for, apparently, my only entry in the San Diego Union newspaper, dated Friday, 20 August 1963:


The transcription of this article is:

"International Radio Club Meets Today

"The national convention of the International Radio Club of America will be held at El Cortez Hotel today through Monday.

"Randy Seaver, 2119 30th St., convention chairman, said 30 to 40 members plan to attend.

"The meeting will be highlighted by a banquet at El Cortez Monday evening."

The source citation for this article is:

"International Radio Club Meets Today," San Diego [Calif.] Union, Friday, 20 August 1963, page B16, column 1; digital image,   GenealogyBank  (http://www.genealogybank.com : accessed 1 June 2017), Newspaper Archives collection.

Yep, that is me, at age 19, acting as a convention chairman for my hobby radio club.  My hobby from 1960 to 1988 (i.e., before genealogy) was to listen to the radio for faraway stations - it is called DXing (for "distant reception").  I specialized in the AM broadcast band, 540 to 1600 khz, and in 1963 was using my family's Zenith console tube radio.  With this radio, I was able to hear distant stations in between the local or regional radio stations - stations from Central America, the Caribbean, South America, Hawaii, Australia/New Zealand, eastern Asia, Canada and most U.S. states - late at night when many U.S. stations would go off the air.  I "graduated" to a Hammarlund communications receiver in 1964, which had better sensitivity and selectivity, especially with a long wire antenna or a tuneable box loop.  The club had a weekly mimeo bulletin mailed to members, and I had a column in it from 1964 to 1968.  

The IRCA was a new group, having broken away from the venerable National Radio Club in 1962, and San Diego was the second annual convention for IRCA.  Of course, I didn't know what I didn't know, so I volunteered to host this shindig at one of the best business hotels in San Diego. We had a core group of about 5 San Diego area DXers who helped set it up and execute it.   I got a free room at the hotel for my efforts, but had to pay for the banquet dinner.  We had a great time - I had not attended one of these before, and had not met anyone in person outside of Southern California.  I don't recall all of the activities - we had displays of radio station verification cards in the meeting room, discussions about stations, equipment and techniques, etc.  I think we visited several San Diego radio station studios (KCBQ-1170 was across the street) and transmitter sites, plus we listened into the wee hours to available radios.  And talked, and talked, etc.  

This event led to attending subsequent conventions in Denver, Milwaukee, Montreal, Boston, Vancouver, Sacramento and several other locations in the period 1964-1973.  I still love conventions and conferences!


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Copyright (c) 2016, Randall J. Seaver

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3 comments:

Unknown said...

I was also a member of the IRCA.

Randy Seaver said...

Hi Ron,

I tried to answer your email but when I did I got two Zip files that downloaded with a virus (my computer security told me so). My email response disappeared. Please check your email provider.

Unknown said...

Randy,

I received the email you sent me. Thanks for the warning.