CADX GOES ON THE AIR
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By Austin Kelly
(This article first appeared in the June 1985 issue of DX Chicago)

On this month’ cover is a photo of Mike and I babbling HF radio to the millions of faithful listener’s of Ed Curran’s WIND talk show (photo courtesy of Kevin Mikkel). We had been kicking around ways of getting publicity for ourselves; the hobby and I came up with the brilliant notion of writing the hosts of radio talk shows and offering our services. It was a big surprise to me when we got two offers out of 7 letters. It was that easy for us to become media superstars by appearing on the Ed Curran show the night of June 26 and the Steve Sajko show (WLNR in Lansing) the morning of June 28.

With a week to show-time, I began taping Moscow, Havana, Marti, BBC etc., while Mike Nikolich dusted off his NASWA Interval Signal tape. Monday night we put together about 20 minutes of SW monitoring on a cassette and brought it to Ed’s producer. Strangely enough, we had about two minutes of contact with WIND personnel before we got to the studios Wednesday night (after a disaster at Geneo’s East that will stay undiscussed). Ten minutes before air time Ed said hello to us; we then found out that Ed Curran was a DXer in 1969. No wonder they didn’t have to ask anything, this guy actually knew the hobby! He brought some QSLs to show us (his name really is Ed Curran) and told us about his Hammerlund.

They did spectacular things with the tape we brought them. The way TSA’s Interval Signal was blended with the start of the show was incredible. I believe everyone was surprised when a full bank of phones lit up, and stayed lit for a good part of the show. Mike Knitter got cut off at the end of the show, and there were other callers waiting to go on! Dumbest question of the show: "Can you hear police calls from Bangladesh on short-wave?"

After Wednesday night’s success you would think that we’d be calm media pros, when Mike and I rendezvoused in the Lansing parking lot of WLNR (next to Ommsma’s egg and cheese warehouse) Friday morning. But this was no ordinary radio show. Until the spectacular firing of a few weeks ago, this was the Warren Freiberg show. Steve Sajko, the new host, seems determined to restore an aura of normalcy to the airwaves, but the bulk of the callers during open lines are still the crazed Commie killers of Warren’s days. I was prepared for the expected "You listen to foreign radio a lot. Are you guys communists?" My answer was to be "Not originally, but I heard a broadcast on Havana about the joys of socialism, and got hooked." I don’t know what Commrade Mikhail Nikolich planned to say.

It was a relief to discover that those calls weren’t coming our way. The action was a bit lighter than at WIND, but we still got a lot of calls from people with legitimate questions about the hobby, including one call from a guy who said he heard us on WIND and wanted to follow up and learn more about receivers. Maybe CADX now has groupies.

Mike will try to follow up his success by getting Ed Curran and Steve Sajko together with some broadcasters passing through town for ANARC, and by getting us on WGN’s Ed Schwartz show. Can Oprah Winfrey be far behind? If you’re sorry you missed this HF extravaganza, come to a get-together. Mike has tapes, which I’m sure he’ll be happy to play for us all. We sound great.