{"id":1490,"date":"2013-12-24T22:55:29","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T20:55:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=1490"},"modified":"2014-01-25T22:18:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-25T20:18:11","slug":"the-quiet-soothing-hum-in-the-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=1490","title":{"rendered":"The Quiet Hum in the Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/strong>hen I was a kid in Grade School, I received a crystal radio set for Christmas.\u00a0 It was kinda funny looking now that I think about it, but it gave me hours of enlightenment.<\/p>\n

It had a plastic box that resembled a radio with a copper coil inside and a small germanium diode attached to it.\u00a0 The headphone had one ear piece.\u00a0 The radio had a wire hanging out to attach an antenna to it and that was pretty much it.\u00a0 All in all, a very simple setup.<\/p>\n

I would run the antenna up to my window and attach it to the outside window screen.\u00a0 Listening to it while laying in bed at night, the radio would only pick up two local stations, KGRO and KPDN in the Texas Panhandle.\u00a0 Most of the times they overlapped.\u00a0 Not much of a selection, but the amazing thing about the radio, was there was no power source, and the reception was absolutely perfect.\u00a0 Crystal clear, and no batteries or power plug.<\/p>\n

A few years later, I acquired an old radio from my Aunt.\u00a0 Many of you may remember those types that had the vacuum tubes in the back that glowed and gave off heat with the dusty smell.\u00a0 There was the hum that was often heard in the speaker.\u00a0 The back of the radio was always opened and had a place to connect a ground wire and an antenna.\u00a0 Back then, we referred to them as short-wave radios.<\/p>\n

I spent a great many hours sitting patiently, slowly fine-tuning stations from the other side of the world.\u00a0 It was always best to be in the dark, so you could watch the unusual \u201ctuning eye\u201d that many radios had to show when a signal was coming in strong.\u00a0 The green luminescent eye would close as it became stronger.<\/p>\n

One of the characteristics of short-wave is its ability to bounce off the ionosphere enabling it to curve around to the other side of the earth.\u00a0 And I found by increasing the antenna length, I could pick up stations further away.\u00a0 So one day I rode my bike to Radio Shack and bought some copper antenna cable.\u00a0 Crawled up in the attic and strung it from one end to the other and lead it down to my bedroom through a little hole in my closet.<\/p>\n

I picked up places in the world that I never knew existed.\u00a0 Radio Quito<\/i> in Ecuador was a religious station with a very strong signal.\u00a0 It was found several places on the frequency bands.\u00a0 Another good clear station was Radio Nederland<\/i>s.\u00a0 One of the most intriguing stations to a young boy was Radio Havana<\/i> down in Cuba.\u00a0 This was during the Vietnam War, and would broadcast English language newscasts to America with propaganda, telling how many American Capitalist planes were shot down that day.\u00a0 It was always in the hundreds.\u00a0 They referred to President Nixon as the \u201cNumber One War Criminal\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the one I found most fascinating was Radio Moscow<\/i>.\u00a0 I would get the big thick world atlas out and open it to the USSR page, and look at the city of Moscow with all its roads traveling in and out.\u00a0 I remember thinking; there are people that actually live there.\u00a0 Probably a million or more.\u00a0 What are the houses like?\u00a0 \u2026 the roads, the cars.\u00a0 I wonder how cold it really is.\u00a0 Does it ever get warm there?\u00a0 Are the people really standing in line to get bread in the mornings?<\/p>\n

Then there was the BBC World Service<\/i> and the Voice of America (VOA).<\/i>\u00a0 Years later I would realize the VOA is operated by the CIA to provide news to countries that repress outside information to its people.<\/p>\n

A station located in Fort Collins, Colorado, WWV<\/i>, was used as a time standard throughout the communications and the aeronautical industries.\u00a0 It had an ominous click ever second and gave the official Greenwich Mean Time<\/i> at every minute.\u00a0 You could set your clocks to that time, which I did often.\u00a0 It is now referred to as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).\u00a0 <\/i>Whether it\u2019s still located on the short-wave bands, I do not know.<\/p>\n

Over the years, I picked up a few more short-wave radios here and there.\u00a0 But the World has moved on and now they sit in a storage unit, quiet and dark.\u00a0 No warm dusty smell.\u00a0 No steady hum.\u00a0 No green luminescent eye.\u00a0 I really do think of those machines at times wishing I was a young kid again, listening in the dark room to a radio station that is 7,000 miles away.\u00a0 It now pales in comparison to home satellite systems, computers and me being able to call my mother every week using the Internet, from over 7,000 miles away.<\/p>\n

The World indeed moves on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid in Grade School, I received a crystal radio set for Christmas.\u00a0 It was kinda funny …<\/p>\n

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