The AM Forum

Yesterday while cooking dinner, we had the TV on one of the secondary channels using over the air technology. i think the channel is called (ironically) Antenna. We were watching an episode of the ancient show "Hazel" with Shirley Booth. Don't laugh, i know. Sometimes just a stupid ancient sitcom like this is enough to appease us. Well, lo and behold, on this episode the boy meets a new kid who has a ham radio set. And they talk about it, and he wants one himself. Mr. Baxter, his dad, is trying to watch golf game and it has terrible interference. Hazel calls the TV guru over, who has test equipment and says its interference, not the color TV. He cites diathermy, ham radio, and other possibilities. So Mr. B gets gruffy and goes to the neighbor kid and his dad where he makes a spectacle of himself, and complains its from his ham radio transmission. Pisses off the neighbor kids dad, and then Jr. Baxter tells Mr. B. how any TV built pre-1960 is susceptable to 10 meter transmitters. By now, wife and I are, like, wow, is this really in the script? Well, Mr. B goes home fuming and to prove his point he gets his golf game working, and the family settles down. Then the picture tears up again and makes horrible noise. About this time, a man knocks on door, with a little box, headphones, and a loop antenna. Says he is from the power company and that he was called by the irate neighbor to investigate a source of interference there. And this is night time on the show. Again, I am shocked but overjoyed with this episode of Hazel. Turns out it is a defective electric heating pad on the sofa as Mr. B has a back pain and it keeps tearing up the set when its on. The RFI sniffer guy shows him and says it is a fire hazard and they throw it away. Mr. B has egg on himself due to how he handled the ham kid down the street. So he does good and buys the kid one of those big framed world clocks that shows times in major cities around the globe, remember those? They had a mechanical sheet that moved around the frame I think. Then everyone is happy and the show ends on a good note. Stunned as I was, this old show was great as it painted a positive side of ham radio back in the early 1960s!

John....Darn I recall that series when it first ran along with Leave it to Beaver, Sky King and many others, you make me feel old.  Sky King had cool radios but no ham references.  One of the Andy Hardy movies had a ham theme too.  I forget the call used in the movie but it showed a complete shack and ham radio was part of the movie.

I caught the tail end of that Hazel episode last night also while flipping through the channels.  Happy ending for the JN when it turned out the interference was being caused by Mr. Bs electric heating pad.

When we first moved into our present house, pre-Comcast,  we would often get complaints that I was interfering with Channel 10 out of Providence, even when I wasn’t even home.  What actually was going on was, being close to the shore, we would have co-channel interference from Channel 10 in Norfolk, due to tropospheric ducting propagation.  It was very bizarre at times, since both Providence and Norfolk were both transmitting the same network.  At times when the Norfolk signal dominated, when they went to commercial, it was for a Norfolk auto dealer.

So for once, an TVI complaint ends on a happy note.
Mine never did. >:(

New Year’s Day I was watching the Twilight Zone marathon. They had an episode where a space ship flys over and zaps the town with an EMP.  The residents start getting paranoid and try to blame one of the neighbors as “being one of the aliens” because he spends so much time in the basement. The wife defends him by saying he’s only playing with his ham radio ....

Playing on ham radio and being an alien aren't mutually exclusive. ;D

Even Herman Munster had one!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-8RItOZE30

Wally checked into the old military radio net.

  Hazel treated ham radio better than Drew Carey, who once uttered the line: "All I need now is to dust off the old ham radio, start collecting tropical fish, and I can be the biggest loser in the neighborhood."

"Calling CQ, calling CQ - come in please."  

So Herman was a boot with no callsign...?



John - in the Hazel episode, they had the facts so right that I'll bet the writer or technical advisor was a ham.  :-)   Most shows are so wrong. A perfect example is when they send CW.  Maybe 10% send real Morse code.

T

The good old stuff starts about 5AM here..
https://tvtv.us/tx/dallas/75216/lu17863

All I can say is that there are very few characters on those old programs who display the vulgar attributes of many 'popular' TV characters being shoved in our faces today.
When a boor or criminal was depicted in the old video/film entertainment, it is more as a lesson in whom one should not emulate, than an example of what to accept or even exalt.

Yes it's all fiction and so forth, but so also is music, poetry, and prose, being contrived in a similar manner for entertainment, and which has been in a similar way affected by the increasing acceptance of degeneracy as the new etiquette.

Indeed, Goofus has murdered Gallant and hidden the body in the past.

  I agree.  While today's television may have become a bit more sophisticated in some ways - more complex plots, less simple slapstick humor - it's lost a bit along the way, too.  The older programs were more often object lessons in morality, responsibility and honesty.  Role models abounded, and villains were obvious.  Sure, some of the older values were a bit stuffy by today's standards - never showing twin beds or porcelain bathroom furniture, for example - but the shows didn't need sexual content, bodily function jokes, profanity or political commentary to be entertaining.  There was a simple innocence about them that I really miss, remembering the days when the whole family would gather around the TV after supper.
   But, as far as Ham Radio, the television watching public at large remains as blissfully ignorant today as then; probably more so.

Most times when I try to explain Amateur Radio to someone, they relate it to truckers using Citizens Band radio, like they've seen on television. I have to say, yes, it's similar to that. However, the last person I attempted to explain Amateur Radio to related it to Mexican drug cartels using radios to communicate. I had to say, no, it's more like truckers using Citizens Band radios.

I give up!

All right Guys, if you want to see Ham radio on the old shows, Check out this one.
"Riding on Air", 1937, Joe E. Brown. He's got Tubes, coils and Knife switches, and even a
Hallicrafters SkyBuddy in his Bi-plane. He's got an Aeroplane that flies on the Radio Beam.........Fun stuff.
I applaud !! the comments of OPCOM/ KD1SH on the state of the modern entertainment industry. I AGREE !!
73's  AG5UM

I try to explain it as a highy technical hobby where licensed persons can use electronics engineering skills to design and build their own commercial-grade radio equipment and do that for pleasure. I hope that puts it above the hacks, pirates, and CBs.

One issue may be that the public perception of the word "Amateur" has changed over time.

Rather than the first perception being hobby or non-commercial, it seems to be perjorative, such as "The cabinet is crooked because the builder sent an amateur", etc.
Does that make any sense?

I have that flic -Riding on Air", 1937, Joe E. Brown!

I agree, the word amateur was intended to mean : not-for-profit, non-commercial, but now,
it sounds like someone who does'nt  know what their doing.
I have a similar problem with their terms ;
Technician, General, Extra ; Novice made sense- beginner , in a shop a Technician is a professional skilled builder,etc. not a novice.
General - in general meaningless, Extra- extra coupons, extra what??
Technician implies knowledge- not a novice with a handheld.
well, thats my opinion anyway,
AG5UM