There are few things in life that have given me as much joy as the marvelous invention of Radio.
This love affair goes way back to my childhood when I would lay in bed late at night with my first transistor AM radio playing softly under my pillow. Tuning around the dial I would listen to dozens of different broadcasts from all over the western US while the rest of my family slept.
For me, it was truly amazing to learn about the world outside of my tiny little home town in rural Utah. I could hear traffic reports from Los Angeles, talk shows from Denver, news from places I’d never seen and thought I never would. Broadcasts from distant places streamed into my pillow with amazing messages from afar. So many things I heard and learned about on those nights.
There were no internet connections back then. Hardly anyone had a computer — my radio was my connection to the rest of the universe. And it was a good one!
In my early teens, my favorite broadcast was the KNX Drama Hour, which I would try to catch from 2:00 – 3:00am. I absolutely loved it! They would play old radio shows from years gone by, including my all time favorite, “The Twilight Zone”.
It was a magical experience being a part of this strange and exotic world. With my eyes closed, I could see everything in my mind with incredible special effects! Nothing on TV or in the movies would ever come close.
Years later I became a licensed Amateur Radio Operator (Also known as a “Ham” radio operator), and along with my ability to listen to many interesting things, my new Callsign gave me permission to transmit my own signals with substantial power. In fact, on many frequencies I am allowed power levels as high as 1,500 watts. That’s enough to cook a turkey dinner on my antenna, and allows for worldwide communications without any dependence on any infrastructure of any type!
If you’ve never experienced such a thing, it is an amazing feeling to talk with a new friend in another country using your own gear and antennas. Most hams are able to do this without any dependency on commercial power, phone lines, internet connections or anything else. It makes us very valuable during emergencies when commercial services fail. Hams can still get their messages through.
Without fail, other hams have the same interests. We can talk for hours about electronics, radios, antennas, amplifiers, recievers, atmospheric conditions, weather, sunspots, and other things of interest to pretty much all hams.
Throughout my life, I have loved radio. It’s as close to real magic as anything gets. If you really think about it, it’s truly amazing. We have an ability to create something that travels as fast as light, goes through solid objects, and travels across huge distances instantly. It is invisible. You can’t feel it, or touch it, hear it, or taste it. Without a receiver, you would never know of its existence. But it’s there, and it carries pictures, sounds, voices, and information with incredible speed and efficiency.
Doesn’t that sound like magic?
If I could go back in time to explain the miracle of radio to people of old, who would have believed it? I’m sure they would think I was crazy. If I were to produce a working radio to prove my claims, they might have declared me a witch and burned me at the stake.
And yet today, radio technology is something that nearly everyone takes for granted — but not me.
Today, you don’t have to be a ham to participate in this amazing world. There are hundreds of shortwave broadcasters all around the world who broadcast to the public.
With a relatively affordable shortwave radio receiver you can tune in the universe. You can receive foreign broadcasts from all over the world. Radio Moscow, Radio Taiwan, the BBC (Not BBC America, but the real one!), China Radio International, Voice of America, Radio Australia, SW Radio Africa, Radio Canada and many, many more.
You can listen to coded messages intended for foreign diplomats and spies, or learn to speak a new language. Many international broadcasters broadcast in English at certain times of the day, and some offer special programs which are intended to teach their language. You can learn many things about other cultures and peoples, listen to their music, or hear about their way of life.
Sure you could use the Internet for many of these things, but the experience is not the same. The information takes on a unique and surreal property when you hear it directly. The signal fades and strengthens with the ionosphere, strange phase distortions give voices and music an ethereal airy sound. You hear static crashes from lightning strikes hundreds of miles away, and sometimes you can’t hear a thing. Other times, the band is wide open and it seems like the whole world is on your doorstep. It’s the greatest thing ever!
The world is at your fingertips — all you need is a radio!
