The Magic of Radio

When I was a child of 14, my great-grandparents had an auction sale because that's what you did when you grew older and you had to move.

Somehow our family got an old plastic radio, and since I was interested in radio, I took it down to my room and began to play with it. 

It had the AM dial on it, but it also had something else called SW, which I would learn was ShortWave. 

It was not easy at all to hear anything on shortwave. Mostly because I didn't know how to listen to the shortwave band 

It requires a delicate and a light touch. You need to have your ears tuned and focused on listening, with full attention on what you're hearing through the static. 

I continued to learn through my listening, and one day I bought a thin piece of copper wire from the Mayfair Hardware store. 

I strung it out through my basement window up to the eaves, and followed the fence to the bottom of the yard. 

I returned back to my radio, and that night I hooked up the wire to the radio. And my oh my. The world opened up to me. 

All those hours I had spent learning to listen now paid off with the extra antenna. 

I picked up England and the Netherlands, Congo, China, the U.S.S.R.  I heard Ecuador and I heard Switzerland and Germany. Austria, Berlin, Australia, Angola, Afghanistan. The Far East and Israel. 

Of course, Cuba and Radio Belgrade, Radio Denmark. Japan and Kiev, Norway, Singapore, Sweden,
And on and on and on, and I have never looked back. 

And that's the difference between a radio full of static and a fun, enjoyable hobby. 

You have to learn to listen and to receive and to actually hear, because that's where you find the joy. 

It is a mix of the magic of radio waves, propagation, and just learning how to listen that makes it fun for me.