💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20220803 captured on 2024-08-25 at 02:43:51.
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
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Last night I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. For some reason, rather than putting on a podcast, I turned on my transistor radio, switched through the shortwave bands, and actually managed to tune in Radio Havana. I think the repeater is in San Francisco, and I've heard AM stations from at least as far as Sacramento, so it wasn't a technical marvel, but it was something I haven't done much in the recent past. As a teenager, in the dark old days before public access internet, I used to listen to Radio Moscow at night. The Soviet Union seemed like such a far-off, strange world. In any case, I ended up looking into shortwave radio a bit more this morning (and yes, like every hobby, you could waste a LOT of money on shortwave radios, antennas, and the like). Of course there's an /r/shortwave on reddit, and when I was reading through one of the threads, someone mentioned that 30 feet of wire would make a decent-ish antenna. This afternoon I replaced a broken pane of glass in an old window and brought the radio outside with me. I listened to a bit of the regular lunacy on the AM dial, just for background noise. Afterward, I strung 30 feet of baling wire down the hill in the back yard and attached it to the radio antenna. It worked. More shortwave stations! All in Spanish (and some of those beep-beep-beepy signals), but apparently some West Coasters are getting a station from New Zealand, so I'll give that a try tonight. Incidentally, my aluminum extension ladder appears to make a fine aerial too... Take care, gopherites. -V.