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When Short Wave Listening Still Mattered

On April 18/19 of 1995, there were two significant events in world history.  One was the machete slaughter of some 2000 (mostly women and children) in the Kibeho refugee camp of Rwanda. Only 24 hours later the bombing  of a U.S. government building killing 300+ civilians in Oklahoma City by a single person.

 
Most Americans main source of news in the US was and remains television. (at least for now) And during that spring week in 1995, the American Networks broadcast near non-stop Oklahoma stories about the 300+ persons that were murdered by an armed militia sympathizer, Timothy McVeigh.  Little else was mentioned on the still dominant evening news casts of the big three.

Like many Hams, at heart I'm an SWL.  It is where most of us were introduced to the "magic" of radio.  And also like many hams, I have a bedside short wave radio that I listen to a couple of times a week. And so it was, by late in the week during that spring of 95, I tuned across the BBC's World News Feed for the 8:00pm broadcast.  And there for the first 20 minutes of the program, I was exposed to the world beyond the parochial interests of the American news organizations. There I learned for the first time of the brutal murders that spawned a week of chaos and blood thirsty killing throughout Rwanda.  The scale of the deaths in Rwanda paled the Oklahoma  City event.  And the fresh BBC reporting was mesmerizing when compared to the insular American coverage by commercial networks.

Now recall that Marc Andresson's Netscape Navigator was only in Version 1.22 by the spring of 1995. The Web was still in it's infancy. Internet connected mobile devices were some years away.  Even TV news still mattered.  And so did Short Wave Radio broadcasts. 

As the wireless-net connected world nears ubiquity, and despite the reduced number of short wave broadcasts, to me, Short Wave Listening still matters.  Enjoy it while you can.

The Age of the SDR is about to explode

 
As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I once took an Economics development course under Professor Walt Rostow.  He had been Lyndon Johnson's NSC advisor and a proponent of the Vietnam War (which I participated in).  Rostow was best known in academic circles for his book, The Stages of Economic Growth: A non-communist manifesto"

Professor Rostow held that after certain "pre-conditions" were met in a society, growth "took off". Often explosively. This "Rostovian take-off" concept was widely hailed as a significant model in understanding how economies evolved.

Now I don't know if Professor Rostow was a Ham radio operator. But I do believe his "take-off" theory is valid with respect to SDR adoption in ham radio in 2010.

The emergence of SDR's has been proceeding for some years now. As creative ham techonologists make ever more incremental advances in software defined radios. Domestically the Flex Radio is probably the best known. SoftRock.Org has enjoyed a serious "cult"  like following amongst software radio enthusiasts. And many other creative  SDR's have come onto the scene in the past few years. the Perseus has enjoyed wide spread commercial success and my fav the Quicksilver SDR is an impressive leap forward in the use of open source on a FPGA.  Ham Radio SDR "Impressario" N9VV is promoting many of the new entrants into this field.

 But were Professor Rostow alive today I think he would say that the entry of HB9DRV (Simon Brown's) SDR application would be the beginning of a rapid take off and wide spread adoption of SDR's across amateur radio. It could be argued that Mr. Brown's HRD has been the single most successful software application ever introduced into the hobby.  And by bringing his imaginative vision to SDR I predict HB9DRV will be a "Rostovian take-off" catalyst.

Dedicated RF devices will not disappear. But it is clear, the age of the SDR is about to explode. And Professor Rostow saw it coming decades ago.

WA4D Ham Radio 1982 "Hinckley Beach"

FLASHBACK: WA4D "Special Event Station"  1982

In June 1982 as a Cameraman for NBC News based in Washington D.C. every Saturday for a month I was assigned to stake out the U.S. Federal Courthouse where the trial of attempted Presidential assassin John Hinckley was underway. All the networks and the print media set up on the front lawn of the courthouse. (This was back when Federal Courthouse security was waaaay more lax than it is today.) Our job was to await new developments and the lawyers would periodically come out and stand in front of the microphones and update the press.  We in the Press Corps called the setting, "Hinckley Beach" since it was summer and little happened until the end of the trial.  We'd bring lawn chairs, coolers and umbrellas to beat the DC summer heat and humidity.

One weekend, I threw my Kenwood TS-130 HF rig in the microwave truck and and a Hustler Mobile Whip that I mounted on an upside down trash can (a faux ground) and set it up on the roof of the van. A Washington Post photographer thought my radio set up was interesting and shot the photo above. It didn't make it into the paper, but he sent me a copy.

My recollection is, I worked alot of DX on 15 meters that day. Foreign Hams would express surprise when I told them where I was operating from. Surely operating from the courthouse would be prohibited!  I was on the air, MC-60 mic in hand when this photo taken. It was fun.