I decided that I wanted my own shortwave radio, so I began selling Wallace Brown greeting cards door-to-door. From the profit of the card sales and a birthday gift of twelve dollars, I had the $25.00 needed to purchase this Hallicrafters S-19R from the local pawn shop. (The receiver sold for $29.50 new in 1939.)

I brought it home and with my Dad's help put up an end-fed wire antenna. I spent hours listening to Radio Australia, Radio Free Europe, the VOA, Radio Moscow, and Radio Canada on shortwave.   I also listened to WBAM (Montgomery, AL), WSB (Atlanta), WLAC (Memphis), WSM (Nashville), WWL (New Orleans), and KMOX     (St. Louis) on the broadcast radio band. I then found frequencies where people were carrying on interesting two-way conversations - the ham radio stations. I listened to F7GL, a club station for some solders stationed in France and K3BIW, a housewife in Pennsylvania. My Dad knew a ham operator, Jack Adams (W4CVY). Dad took me and my friend Fred over to Jack's house to see his radio station.

His 'shack' was full of racks of equipment, meters, colored lights, and glowing mercury vapor tubes and big transmitting tubes. Relays kicked in as Jack pressed his microphone to talk. As he spoke, I could hear transformers humming and could see the lights dim. This made a big impression on a couple of nine-year-old kids! Jack told us about the Novice class amateur radio classes that were being taught by the Columbus Amateur Radio club. Fred and I attended and received our licenses.

I used the Sky Buddy for about four years, and then it stored it out in my father's utility shed for 25 years. It was very dirty and extremely rusted when I finally retrieved and restored it a couple of years ago. It required a lot of cleaning, some black wrinkle paint, a filter capacitor, and an audio output transformer.

The above picture is the Hallicrafters receiver in its current condition.