On Shortwave Radio

Shortwave radio listening (or DX’ing) is another hobby, somewhat like stamp collecting, that seems to have fallen on hard times. You can sort of blame this on the internet, I suppose; with stamps, e-mail is the method of choice for sending letters all over. Many nations have figured this out and either reduced their shortwave radio broadcasts, or cut them outright.

As a hobby, it’s not like baseball or football cards in that you can collect a set of them relatively easily as there is a card shop or two in every city, it seems like. The same can be said of comic books; and with both not only is condition a factor, but then, you have to put them somewhere. You try storing ten years of comic books; if you take ten titles a month, that’s 120 issues a year...and that doesn't count back issues!

Nor is is like collecting coins in which you really need to quit looking at your change and start with things like proof sets in order to have a collection worth something. Trust me on this one. You might have a complete set of old wheat ear pennies, but if they look like they went through the mill, they won’t be worth more than about 14 cents each, if that. Better you should collect proof sets.

For openers, to listen to DX programming...you need to have a shortwave radio. They are not cheap; in fact, a really good one will set you back over a hundred and fifty bucks or more. I actually have two: A DAK model DMR-3000 (which is small and digital) and an older Realistic DX-150A (which is a large boxy thing and analog). Both are in really good shape.

You will also need a good antenna; the best one I ever had was about 100 feet of copper wire that ran the length on my folks attic, and out to a tree in the backyard. Currently, I use a small powered antenna with a core made from all that old wire. Not as good, but serviceable.

Then there’s trying to get a signal here. As alluded to before, many nations have cut their DX signals to North America, making it a little harder than before to get a signal worth listening to. With the DMR-3000, I can punch in the frequency and hopefully get something. With the DX-150A, it’s fiddling with the dials and hope it pulls in a signal.

Once you have a signal, you log in your log book the frequency, the time, what you heard, the broadcaster, and several other bits of info. Then you send off to the broadcaster for verification, using your own cash to do so (unless they have an e-submission form). They often will require you, if you want a response, to enclose some sort of remuneration. (It used to be a International Postal Money Order. Today, it may well be PayPal.)

What do you get once you’ve actually logged something and sent off a reception report? If you’re lucky, something called a QSL card. And if you’re really lucky, a few other goodies such as pennants, pins, buttons, patches, etc. (You can click here to see a number of my QSL cards.) Oh, yes--you’ll also be added to the their mailing list for a year or two. Or three.

It sounds easy, but it’s not. Sunspots, weather conditions, time of day, antenna length, signal strength, the number of trees in your way, power lines, and a host of other factors can keep you from getting anything fit to log in.

So, why bother at all?

Well, it can also be fun and somewhat educational. Granted, with the internet you can just go to a country and and see if they have a podcast in English, but that does not teach you things like patience. Fiddling with the knobs on the radio, waiting on the mail, and waiting sometimes for the station ID (especially if you just missed it) teaches one patience. It does not teach you several other things. (True enough, however, listening to a podcast does teach you some about the host nation.)

It also teaches you perseverance. Because every year or so, these QSL cards change designs, many of them. So for some of your favorites, you have to go back and mail a new report, to get a new QSL card. (Of course, some never change. I have several from a DX station that essentially hadn’t changed in ten plus years.)

Every once in awhile, I’ll pull out the DX radio and see what I can catch. Even Canada-which is only 360 miles or so from where I live-isn’t really easy anymore, but I figured I’d start there and see where I could go to after that.

Hmm-makes me wonder where I can get some stamps for an old album I have....

Enough for now.

What’s In A Name…

As it turns out, Shakespeare was right.

People ask me why I consider myself an electrogeek, instead of a technogeek. It’s a bit of a long story, so I’ll make it easy for you.

There are two primary differences. A Technogeek usually refers to those who are usually into computers, or digital gadgets generally. That’s cool, and I like looking at all the new toys that come out that we all want to have. The fastest computer, the best and coolest programs, the flashiest cell phones, etc.

An Electrogeek, however, is far more interested in what makes all those toys work. All the chips, resistors, lasers, and so forth that comprise the toys and make them work. We’re also more interested in making them that much better.

For most people, if a flashdrive casing breaks, they’ll put it together long enough to get their stuff of it and on to a new one. Not me—I look at the guts of the thing, marvel at how it was done, then glue the case shut, wrap some electrician’s tape around it…and keep on using it. It still works, and unless you look at it closely, you’d never know it had broken.

Now you’re catching on. The other principal difference is that Electrogeeks fix their toys if something goes wrong. Soldering irons, electrical tape and multimeters are the most used essentials of our toolkits.

I come by these traits honestly. Dad’s an Electrical Engineer; he was always fixing or tweaking something or other out in the shop. We had one of the first computers in our neighborhood; a TRS-80 level 2 (which was a Model 1, with a whopping 12KB of ROM instead of the standard level I 4KB ROM) that was…ummm, modified, shall we say…a bit, by the time Dad got done.

One of my favorite “toys” as a kid was the Science Fair 100 in 1 electronics kit. I built everything I could with it, then started to build things with it (and some spare parts) that I wasn’t supposed to build. Then I raided some of the parts off of it for other projects. (And I’m paying dearly for that now, as I recently bought a second one off Ebay for the vintage parts to fix my kit up again.) I blew the relay out—no mean feat— and had to replace both transistors and a few resistors. (Don’t ask what I was trying to build. You really don’t want to know.)

Why pay some guy to hook up a speaker to the stereo setup in the bedroom? 10’ of 18 gauge speaker wire and the speaker, 15 minutes of my time, and there it is. Wasn’t the first time I’ve hooked up speakers—and won’t be the last, either.

10 years ago, when digital batteries weren’t as good as they are now, I built a battery trap to drain the last bit of juice out of them, so they’d last longer and hold a charge better. (I don’t need to use it now, though—the rechargeables are so much better then they were—but I still have it.)

I could go on, with things like the Realistic DX-150A shortwave radio I had in high school that got better reception than some better, modern units of the day. (I recently reacquired one of those as well, to add to the digital shortwave I currently own.) And before you ask—the first thing I did was take it apart, clean it, and adjust it. Dad would have done the same thing, I’m sure.

Anyway—thanks for asking.

Enough for now.

(posted 3/5/08)