Radio, Amateurishly

  I hear fellow hams from time to time expressing frustration over not being able to pick up on CW. I get it. Learning CW is a bit like learning a new language, and that's not an easy thing to do. The CW requirement, long since dropped, is one of the first barriers that stopped me from becoming a licensed amateur back in my SWL days. I now consider CW to be one of the most enjoyable things about amateur radio. Here's how it happened. There are a couple things to get out of the way before beginning this discussion. First, my CW proficiency is a work in progress. I'm not First Class Operator material by a long ways, and I still have a lot to learn. Secondly, there are a number of organizations, like the Long Island CW Club and the CW Academy , who provide structured courses for learning CW. These organizations have long lists of alumni with solid fists and solid copying skills. If you're considering taking one of these courses, nothing in this post should dissuade you f...

I recently found myself in a conversation about how the minimum wage in the United States is likely increasing to $15 per hour . Most conversations about minimum wage laws tend to focus on the moral implications of what workers are expected to earn. That a full-time worker should put in forty hours a week for earnings that are right around the poverty line represents a failure of our society. Or, that a worker who lacks the initiative to progress beyond an entry level position expects the relative comfort of lower middle class earnings represents a sense of entitlement that is neither realistic nor sustainable. A few will bring up economics, pointing out that higher minimum wages will tend to reduce employment. I was thinking in a somewhat different direction. "I think you're gonna see a lot more automation," I said. "You know those touch screens that are starting to show up at Mickey D's so you can punch in your own order? They'll be in every fast food joint...

  The last chapter of the 1980 edition of the Radio Shack Short-Wave Listener's Guide describes how to write and send reception reports to shortwave broadcasters. Author H. Charles Woodruff discusses the value of shortwave listener (SWL) reports to broadcasters—both from an engineering standpoint and from a programming standpoint—and promises that most broadcasters will verify listener reports with a QSL card. It didn't take me long to realize that by the 1980s broadcasters relied almost exclusively on monitors around the world to provide detailed signal quality data to station engineers, and that the primary focus of the reception report-QSL process was on the programming side. I came to think of the process as a substitute for the ratings data that are available to domestic broadcasters. The overwhelming majority of shortwave broadcasters received their funding from government agencies, missionary organizations, or by selling airtime (mostly to missionary organizations). Rece...