Swan Island in my QSL Collection

I saved this QSL for last because it is for a medium wave station reception rather than a shortwave station reception and the validity of the verification is incomplete, which comes as no surprise due to the nature of this particular radio station.

I received Radio Americas, also know as Radio Swan, in early 1967 (my logs are misplaced, so I don't know the exact date). In response, I received a signed QSL card that is otherwise blank and does not mention the frequency, time nor date of my reception report.

A program schedule accompanied the QSL card and both were contained in an envelope postmarked Miami, but with two conflicting return addresses and a fake Swan Island postmark.

Back in 2008, I wrote the following in my weekly Surfin' column on the ARRL website:

In early 1967, I heard Radio Americas operating on 1160 kc. Honduras-to-Connecticut (almost 1600 miles) on the AM broadcast band is an excellent catch in anybody's logbook, but what made this one more interesting was that Radio Americas was supposedly a clandestine operation run by a secret government agency that was trying to undermine the Castro regime in Cuba.

At the time, the Radio Americas story was just speculation, but it was pretty exciting stuff for this teenager during the height of the Cold War and the era of Goldfinger and 007. Just the words "clandestine radio" sounded exciting and mysterious back then. Needless to say, I was shocked when the Radio Americas QSL card arrived in the mail, since I did not think that spies acknowledged their clandestine operations.

Radio Americas was indeed a CIA operation broadcasting US propaganda into Cuba during the 1960s. The station claimed to transmit from US territory, but the FCC claimed that it knew nothing about it!

Got Log?

"What's the farthest people have heard stations?" was asked on the I Love AM Radio Facebook group last week.

My AM radio log has WWL on 870 kc from New Orleans as my farthest station at 1256 miles. But then I recalled hearing a station back in the 1960s that was farther away: the CIA's Radio Americas on Swan Island in the southwest Caribbean Sea, 1800 miles from my home. I could not recall the frequency of Radio Americas, but I had their QSL card handy, so I checked the card and 1160 kc was the answer. 

Then it occurred to me that I did not have a log of the stations (AM, FM, TV and shortwave) I heard before I got my ham license in 1969. I am sure I kept a log ― how else could I keep track of the stations I tried to QSL? But I have no recollection of that log and I did not have a copy of such a log anywhere in my radio archives.

So I took the fistful of the pre-WA1LOU QSL cards and letters I had on hand and built a log from the information contained on those QSLs. It was an interesting exercise and I will blog about it in the next post.