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...

Much of the United States is experiencing a bit of a cold spell, my southern California home included (by which I mean it was about 3° Celsius first thing this morning), so I thought now might be a good time to tell this story. On the way to the punchline, we'll visit thermodynamics, computer science, and the ultimate fate of the universe. Poor climate control in offices is a common complaint. In particular, people often complain about their offices being too cold. I've heard plenty of explanations—it's difficult to keep the temperature consistent across such a large volume of air, different people have different temperatures at which they're comfortable, etc—and I haven't found any of them convincing. Movie theaters and airports, as just a couple of examples, don't seem to have too much trouble keeping large numbers of people comfortable in a large indoor volume.  I once worked in an office where my desk was under the air conditioning vent. When the air conditi...

  Francis Fukuyama famously declared in the early '90s that we had reached the end of history. The end of Soviet communism and the triumph of liberal democracy was humankind's last great struggle, and it was a done deal. Watching the horrifying events of 6 January, 2021 unfold, I reflected on the prematurity of Fukuyama's conclusion. Liberal democracy's triumph is far from assured, humankind still have plenty of struggles left, and there's still a whole lot more history to be made. It can be tempting to think of history as a great sweeping arc of change and development that existed for the sole purpose of bringing us to this one static moment when nothing much else happens, but it's an illusion. If you view a small enough section of a curved line or surface, the curvature goes away. This is why the surface of the earth appears flat to an observer near the ground. It's not just a limitation of perception; it is a practicality within defined cases. A Formula O...

The tradition of telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve is one that my family didn't practice. More to the point, I hadn't even heard of that particular tradition until several years ago when I read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Like any good ghost story, James' novel avoids deciding for the reader whether the story's events should be attributed to the supernatural or to the protagonist's own state of mind, a distinction that I argue doesn't matter as much as we might think. With The Turn of the Screw began for me maybe not an obsession with, but certainly more than a passing interest in, the Victorian Christmas Eve ghost story. Presented here then is my own attempt at a little entertainment as the long, dark, solstitial night of Christmas Eve draws near. Merry Christmas, if that's what you're celebrating. And if it's something else you're observing this time of year, Happy Holidays. To all my radio friends, 73 ES CUL. For their help in...

  The box that sat under the tree on Christmas morning of 1980 was of a size and weight that gave away its contents long before I tore through the wrapping paper. The artwork on the box boasted that I would soon hear "ships at sea", "ham band operators", and "news from major cities around the world". It was right. The Radio Shack DX-100 had OK sensitivity, so-so selectivity, and absolutely horrible stability. The tuning dial was neither accurate nor precise. Naturally, I straight up loved that radio. The three-band transistor radio that I've mentioned a few times piqued my interest; the DX-100 made me an SWL. For the first time, I could monitor SSB signals. The amateur bands, as some now-forgotten Tandy Corporation copy writer pointed out, seemed a good place to start. On a spring day in 1981, I heard an operator on twenty meters who was just beside himself with the joy he was sharing with a fellow ham. "Two meters is just great," he enthus...