My cartoon from this month’s CQ Amateur Radio Magazine. This was inspired by a visit I made recently to the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting between Cincinnati and Dayton.
The museum is located at what was once the Bethany, Ohio, shortwave radio relay station for Voice of America, beginning in 1942. It was located there because it was built by Cincinnati-based Crosley Broadcasting Corp., which had already been doing experiments in high-powered shortwave radio and AM radio broadcasting. (The Bethany station is next to the transmission tower for WLW 700 AM radio, which for a short period of time broadcast at 500,000 watts — 10 times the most powerful AM stations legally allowed today in the U.S.)
It also was located there because it was well inland from the reach of German bombers, if World War II had ever come to that. Programming never originated from Ohio; it always came from VOA studios elsewhere, including New York City and Washington, D.C.
Although Voice of America still broadcasts on shortwave radio, those transmissions come from radio stations mostly overseas in U.S. allied countries. The Bethany station was closed during Clinton administration budget cuts in 1994.
Anyway, if you’re in the Cincinnati or Dayton area, the museum is well worth your time.
As always, a reminder that these cartoons are posted after they’ve appeared in CQ. If you want to see them when they’re new, and catch up on the amateur electronics hobby, why not subscribe today?