I was born and raised in Turkey. In those years of elementary and junior high school, 1960-1968, we all enjoyed listening to an AGA-branded tube radio at home. As far as I know, although the text on the AGA radio is mainly in Swedish, I found a photo of the AGA radio marked in Dutch on the Internet.
I remember when I was 9 years old, trying to listen to the live broadcast of the football match between my favorite team Fenerbahce and Nice in France. There's a word "NIS" on the mid-wave dial, which is a spelling in Turkish, so there must be a radio station here, right? Wrong. Later I learned that in the radio field, it was not so simple, and alas, my team still lost 1:5. Searching the radio for "the signal sent by Russian satellites to the world" found nothing but the sound of "like a diesel engine bombarding work". I wasn't a stupid kid, but no one taught me basic radio knowledge at the time.
A few years later, because of my father's work, my family moved to Samsun City, a city on the Black Sea. I was about to graduate from the Middle East Polytechnic University, and in 1968, there was a famous leftist boycott here, and later, I had to live with my parents, and my college courses were still suspended.
Ironically, the city has an American radar base with a low-power, medium-wave radio station that broadcasts news, rock, country music, and other programs to the base staff 24 hours a day. The call is AFRTS, and the frequency used is 1590KHz. Shortly thereafter, the base was closed and the radio station was suspended, probably because of the boycott and political turmoil in Turkey, so I had to look for another similar station.
I also had a portable radio at home, a transistor radio with a simple appearance but a tough look, but I can't remember the brand name, maybe Ve-Ga or some other brand. It helped me find three precious radio programmes: the weekly "Sweden Calls for Long-Range Weak Signal Reception Enthusiasts" hosted by Arne Skug; the Dutch Radio program in Shortwave, which delivers brochures on shortwave introductions; and the last, the strange radio station that plays heavy metal music and calls itself "Radio Europa Liberty". It soon became clear to me that Radio Europa Liberty, in Romania, was a CIA-run radio station that would broadcast similar programs directly to other countries in other languages. I started sending reception reports to Arn Skug, while also hearing radio stations like ETLF and HCJB on portable radios.
Wait a minute, though, this post isn't about how I became a shortwave listening enthusiast, it's about AGA radio. The university was still closed, the AGA radio at home began to show its might, and in the long night, I began to listen to radio stations elsewhere, such as Radio New Zealand. What antenna do I use, you ask? That was the long zinc thread my mother hung on the long balcony, facing the Black Sea, and I introduced it into my room and clipped it to the radio with a fish mouth clip. Anyway, the boycott ended, and after 3 consecutive semesters of non-stop study, I successfully graduated.
I moved to Istanbul and started working in advertising. My parents eventually moved to Istanbul, but the AGA radio was gone. I deeply blamed myself for being too busy to figure out what was going on.
I managed to bring me back a Sony IEF-6700W radio from Germany, and I began to receive long-range weak signals more easily and more seriously, receiving QSL cards from Radio Sutattensa in South America, Radio Brazil, Radio Benin in Africa, Radio Mauritani, Radio Rwanda, Radio Chad, etc.
As the years passed, I retired and moved to Canada, but still taught advertising and creativity at a Turkish university, became more serious about old-fashioned radio, and joined the online group of Turkish shortwave listening enthusiasts.
Back to the topic of AGA radio. We did a podcast with the group manager about how I started having this hobby, where I also described AGA radio in detail. A few more weeks later, Shaheen of our group, who is also an avid radio listener and collector, told me that turkey's second-hand items website has an AGA radio. In fact, it is the AGA radio model that I have been mentioning, please enjoy the photos.
I urged Shaheen that if the radio was clean and there was room for repair, he would buy it for me at the right price. Not only did he buy the radio at a cheaper price, but he also asked a local tube radio teacher to check the radio, and the result was: "The radio is very clean, all the components are original, and the machine can be used normally." Only one amplification tube needs to be replaced. "The two small bulbs that illuminate the dial should also be replaced, but that's fine. Shaheen found that the tube was universal and easy to find. He didn't want to spend more money, so he figured out that there were some electron tubes in the teacher's house and persuaded the teacher to find two idle tubes.
And voila! The AGA radio of my childhood and youth was resurrected, crossed the river of time, and became my AGA. Shaheen tested the medium- and shortwave performance of the AGA radio with his long-line antenna, and sent me a lot of videos of receiving signals and sound quality performance from Keseri in Turkey. Meanwhile, I was already in tears in front of a Canadian computer screen...
Today, I'm stranded in Canada and can't travel for almost two years, but once I have the opportunity to work at the Izmir University of Economics, I take back shaheen's AGA radio for my parents, who revived it.
Text: Haruch Messi Translation: Radio Review Translation Source: swling