Incredible Radio Tales

When radio officers hit the beach in San Francisco they went immediately to "the Dog House", a rooming house in Powell Street that, for reasons lost to time, was the home away from home for seafaring brass pounders.  There were probably similar places in every port around the country if not the world.  And what must these Sparkies have talked about at table?  Why radiomen, radio conditions, and radio equipment of course!

Ah!  What one would give to sit in on one of those bull sessions.  These were men who could coax a sweet note from a decrepit quenched gap transmitter, copy through static and interference (using their own personal Audio detector smuggled on board) and look the Radio Inspector straight in the eye when he strode self importantly into the shack.

Our time machine is out of service at the moment due to a shorted power transformer.  So we won't be able to join the boys at the Dog House tonight.  But we can preserve and present some of our own radio tales, all of them true, for your enjoyment.

As you read, let the sounds of static on 600m at midnight and the dim light of glowing tubes in a dark room become real.  Imagine the silence and smell the dust in the abandoned transmitter gallery of a once great station.  And above all remember the men and women who came before us and made the profession of radio-telegrapher one of honor and skill.