{"id":187,"date":"2017-04-30T14:28:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-30T14:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/?p=187"},"modified":"2017-04-30T14:54:23","modified_gmt":"2017-04-30T14:54:23","slug":"shortwave-nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/shortwave-nostalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Shortwave Nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lafayette<\/a>
\nHere is one of the most prized possessions of my high-school years \u2013 a Lafayette HA-350 amateur band receiver. In the days before home computers, amateur radio was a popular pastime among nerdy teenagers \u2013 right up there with reading comic-books (in fact, early issues of Marvel Comics featured occasional appearances by a group of young \u201cradio hams\u201d called the Teen Brigade). Nowadays, amateur radio is recognized as a valid educational activity \u2013 with, for example , astronauts on the ISS regularly using it to make contact with schools all round the world. That\u2019s an opportunity I would have loved to have had \u2013 but as it was, teachers in those days tended to look down on amateur radio, just as they did on comic books, as a waste of kids\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have enough perspective at the time to dispute that view. In hindsight, however, it really is a very educational pastime. I had a map of the world on my wall with pins in it showing all the countries I\u2019d listened to \u2013 giving me a much better understanding of geography than most teenagers have. I didn\u2019t have a licence to transmit \u2013 you had to understand Morse code for that \u2013 but I was an avid listener and a member of the International Short Wave League (my membership ID was G-14007 \u2013 I was very pleased with the \u201c007\u201d part). Amongst other things, the ISWL ran a QSL bureau, through which radio hams would send you cards acknowledging reception reports you sent them.<\/p>\n

Here are a few examples. To start with, four countries I bet most teenagers in 1972-3 wouldn\u2019t even have been able to find on a map \u2013 Monaco, San Marino, U.A.E. and Oman:<\/p>\n

\"QSL<\/a>
\nNow for some DX (i.e. long-distance) countries \u2013 Argentina, Bolivia, Australia and Malaysia (in these days of satellites and the internet, it\u2019s easy to forget that radio waves normally travel in a straight line \u2013 so hearing someone on the other side of the planet is an impressive feat):<\/p>\n

\"QSL<\/a>
\nIn geopolitical terms, the period we\u2019re talking about was the height of the Cold War \u2013 but as a shortwave listener, I had no difficulty hearing both sides of the east-west divide. Here are two cards each from the USA and the USSR:<\/p>\n

\"QSL<\/a>
\nIt was in the context of shortwave listening that I first saw my name in print \u2013 with an SWL report in the September 1973 issue of Practical Wireless<\/em> magazine (reproduced below). The YV5 prefix that appears three times in this list refers to Venezuela, while 4X and 4Z are both Israel. The last two are from Africa \u2013 5U is Niger and 6W is Senegal. In the course of 1973 I heard no fewer than 303 different prefixes \u2013 as you can see from my entry in the \u201cladder\u201d printed in Short Wave Magazine<\/em> in March 1974.<\/p>\n

\"SWL<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is one of the most prized possessions of my high-school years \u2013 a Lafayette HA-350 amateur band receiver. In the days before home computers, amateur radio was a popular pastime among nerdy teenagers \u2013 right up there with reading comic-books (in fact, early issues of Marvel Comics featured occasional appearances by a group of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Shortwave Nostalgia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,27],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-amateur-radio","tag-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andrew-may.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}