Thanks For Everything

Last weekend, as the days lengthened over England, I went back to childhood and had an antenna rigging afternoon. Why not use all that experience from Lowe’s to get the best out of our hobby?

Why not? After all, I write this at a solar minimum so I’m going to need all those years of listening to hear anything. I’ve survived through four solar minimums so I can do this…

I now have a loop antenna, balanced against the noise, that was doing the business for the five minutes or so I spent testing it.

My problem is I can’t find anything I want to listen to. Time was when I could write a schedule for a weeks listening across the main European broadcasters, before I ever went looking for that rare DX. The main draw for short-wave was news but you can get that anywhere now. BBC and CNN will give you two sides to a story. Do you need more?

There were those listener-help programmes like Waveguide, Swiss Short-Wave Merry-Go-Round and Media Network that dragged us anoraks in. Once hooked, you tended to hang in for the rest of the English Language portion of the days broadcast.

But what is there now?

Most stations are more news-lead now. The constant need for change means you have no idea when to listen as management goes for short-termism in programming. SWL’s are traditional, hence the problem in getting new blood, but change for changes sake alienates. We need continuity…

The new audience - if there is one - will love DRM and will never notice that flagship programmes like Media Network once spoke to you rather than being just a web page, rather like this one…

A rainy day could be spent trawling the broadcast bands learning new stuff as innovation was the name of the game. That trawl takes less than an hour now. I know I’m older, less tolerant but SWL used to inspire. Now it’s just more of the same, no matter where it comes from…

But I can’t switch the set off. If you want a view of tradition taken too far, 80 metres on a Sunday morning is the place. Hams in ivory towers, GB2RS wondering how to get new people involved and asking where everybody has gone.

My most-listened-to channel?

5680 Search and Rescue; old values of courtesy and professionalism and that gentle air of contempt as they launch a several hundred thousand pound Nimrod to rescue a man on a three pound inflatable toy in the Atlantic…

SWL, you have changed. But come Saturday, I’ll be back…