DAB or SWL? I Must Get Out More

I've always regarded the world of SWL as a sort of club. Sometimes, a rather seedy affair approached by foggy back alleys where a coded knock on the grubby door causes a panel to slide back. On the other side of the panel is a bloodshot eyeball.

"What's the password?" demands the bloodshot eyeball.

"Zoë sent me", you stammer. The door creaks open and you are shown to a musty room equipped with a gray-imported R1000...

Sometimes, our club is a rather swish affair. Bond Street, perhaps. Cocktails. Top line Ten-Tec DSP, racks of it. Beverage antennas all the way down The Strand. Carriages at eleven. That sort of thing. The only reason I mention clubs is because I tend to get chucked out of them.

Take the Scouts for instance. I was in the Cubs on a fast-track to the Scouts. I dibbed, I dobbed and I DX'ed. Making it to the Scouts with woggle intact, I was out in my third week for swearing. Never even got a badge for it. Now I think I could be on the way out of the SWL Club.

You see, I've gone digital. In mitigation, I plead it was an impulse purchase. Personal morale was low, needed a booster. Treat myself to a Christmas present now that I have found out about Santa Claus, a body blow when you learn he’s not real. It can send you mad;

“Listen kid, there ain’t no sanity clause” (That’s your first official warning on old gags – Ed.)

It was to be like this. DAB was to be a disappointment. My conditioning as a radio ham (“You’re a G8, you’ll know your stuff, you’ve been around the block a few times”), my passing out of The University Of Cynicism (dropped out after Apathy Module, Level 2, Working With Enthusiastic Staff), my Sunday mornings on 80 Metres (“…no it’s DAB not DOB. I spell; Diuretic, Aardvark, Belligerent…”) should have prepared me. Expect the indifferent. Anyway, if it’s no good it can go in the kitchen. Can’t be seen to take something back. Too proud. Anyway, don’t they know who I am? One word from me and markets crumble. DAB-handed at writing off new technology. Show me back to the ward, Nurse…

I’m not a chap you find in Curry’s. When I asked about DAB, I was horrified to find the bloke knew his stuff. An Evoke-1 will do me, he said. It's in a wooden box, remember those, Sir? Sir would like a wooden box, Sir? Rather like that Roberts the lad’s granddad still keeps for Test Match Special. Suit you, Sir. Would Sir like to leave a deposit?

Suppressing my need to say, “What! From here!” I meekly hand over a tenner. Will the thing turn up before Sir is in a wooden box? The Evoke-1 is flying off the shelves. Rarer than hen’s teeth. Scarce as Womble droppings. Could be two weeks before I see one…

My well-to-do chum had this with his Morgan. Put down an arm and a leg as deposit and wait eighteen months for your handcrafted car to arrive. The expectation is everything.

As I waited for my wireless, I checked the Internet for reviews while listening to Feedback on BBC Radio 4. Long wave, of course. Real radio. A man said the download rates were low compared to CD. They will be. CD is digital audio in the raw, DAB is Eureka 147. Whatever that encoding may be, he was not comparing like with like.

Some of stations are in mono. Fine for speech stations like World Service and the excellent talking books on OneWord. There can be reception issues. OK, but if anyone knows about aerials, we do. Anyway, the call has come in. They have one in stock. Just the one, then…

The walk back across the park is about a mile. As a younger man, I judged a wireless by its weight. Would I have made it through town with an AR88 or an RA17 under my arm? During my time at Lowe’s, what would John Wilson have said if he’d seen me swinging a Curry’s carrier bag? Stand not on the order of your going. Be gone and never darken my towels again.

I hate to admit it, but my arm hurts a bit under the weight. Can’t bear to admit it but this is a substantial little unit…

Home at last. Open box, chuck manual to one side in the true tradition of our calling. Plug in, switch on. Nothing. See, I was right after all.

Then it hits you. It has a toddle around 220MHz, has a game of Spot The Multiplex and finds two of them. All of a sudden it’s 1975 and I’m back in the college day room listening to Free Ride by the Edgar Winter Group on RNI. The DAB wireless has found Planet Rock. Yes, I know you guys with Sky have had this for three years but it’s all new to me. And I love it. The last time the World Service was this clear I was standing in Bush House reception. (Please don’t try any gags about it being a good reception or that it measures five by nine or you’ll get a second official warning. I’ve had a long day – Ed.) If anyone wants an FM tuner, mine’s in the skip.

Has DAB killed SWL for me? Well, no. I miss it. I miss the skill of listening through all the crud to hear the message. It’s all too easy on DAB. I see a generation grown up on digital delivery. The gunshots and squeaks this thing makes on poor signals nobody seems to notice. Digital artifacts, the reviewers call them but they are as foreign to my ears as sideband splatter would be to them.

But hearing a live concert on Radio 3 DAB on headphones is a real treat. Hang on a second in which 192kbs of data will have already hit the buffers (where does it go?), didn’t the very first radio I ever had use headphones? Not comparing like with like along with the best reviewers, that’s me…

The morning trawl over 80m has given over to book readings on OneWord except at the weekends when the AM’ers have their net. Will we ever talk of bit error rates with the same affection as these guys bang on about 807’s in the modulator stages?

When that freighter dumped £300,000 worth of BMW’s in the sea, you did need to hear 5680KHz if only to hear the Search & Rescue pilot’s suppressed laughter. I still need to hear the RSGB News if only out of respect for Fred Ward G2CVV (“You’re a G2, you’ll know your stuff, you’ve been around the block a few times. Blimey!”). During his time with the Home Office, Fred took quite an interest in my broadcasting career.

BBC 6 Music covers World Music but It’s nothing compared to finding gems on the Tropical Band. I was just about to say short wave still wins by a short head when they launch BBC 7. I write this as a classic edition of The Goon Show has just ended. I can’t switch DAB off. This is because it’s compulsive not because I have thrown the manual away. Now that I’ve forced myself to read it, the blurb about getting a good aerial reads much the same as it did in the Book Of Words that came with my QUAD II, some 45 years ago. Everything has changed and everything stays the same so let’s finish with a classic gag:

The boss of the local rental shop got married and all the lads in the Service Department saw them down the aisle under an archway of TV aerials. The marriage did not last but the reception was excellent. (That’s three warnings, your journalistic license is endorsed – Ed.)