For me, it all started After my granny gave me an old handheld world receiver with shortwave on it. I had no clue as to what it was, and listened to it for hours a day, started when I was 9 years old. Then later when I was at a local flea market, I stumbled across an old pile of books that were mostly covered in dust and almost unable to read due to moisture damage. One of those books I was looking at, had weird text on the cover. Leading to the reason of picking up that single book to inspect out of curiosity. I opened the book and some kind of what I think it was a reading card to mark the last page of the book the previous owner was reading to, fell out of it. As soon as I picked it up off the ground, and the guys who were selling the books were not noticing, I simply took just that little piece of paper and put it in my pocket before I put the book back on the pile it was laying. Later that day when I went back home, I decided to take a look at the weird language that was not only on the book but also on that little piece of paper that fell out of it. (I didn’t know it was Russian language, especially not when I was just a little kid.) I typed in some words on the web and I found out it was linked to a radio broadcast located in Russia. And that it was transmitting 24/7 on the shortwave band. And that’s how my journey began.
Now at the age of 23, I’ve been following this station for about 10 years. And my interest has grown up to the point of collecting Russian radios dating back to world war 2 and the USSR.
The inspiration to all this work on collecting nice pieces of old shortwave related stuff all linked back to that single day at the flea market.
But even before that I was already interested in the shortwave band. As I heard low quality amateurs voices through that simple world receiver. I became hooked to it. I had no idea what I was listening to. As a kid, I was always wondering what it could be, and my mind was like “ is this the police? Are those people military agents? Is this the phone in the living room I’m listening to? And the list of thoughts goes on and on.”
I remember me always sitting alone in the dark attic while my other sons were playing video games or watching tv. All I needed at that time was my little world receiver that has been a real gift to me especially as I was still a child who always was busy with discovering things. And like now, 10 years later, I never changed my habits. I can’t sit still doing some pointless stuff like watching propaganda tv or news that was always about negative things. I’m still the same as I was back then. When I just listen to shortwave, it makes me feel young again. A lot of memories pop up every time at night when the tubes are glowing and keeping me warm at night.
When I was at the age of 6 or so, I always started building things from simple disassembled components. I had a simple science kit based on electricity that I played with a lot. And I also used radio transmissions to drive a wireless car on the local road. So I can understand now when I look over my past life, I have been dealing a lot into radio even without really thinking about it. Like driving a radio controlled car. I enjoyed that for many many years. And often modifying electronic stuff also bought me to the collection part I am into since a few years. Repairing computers was the first successful project I have been diving into. And now to this day, I want to do more than just building and repairing computers only. So radio comes into my next hobby to have fun with.
I feel really really uneducated when it comes to radios, as it is completely new and different than what I already did with pc’s. So I am just entering a whole new field of opportunities and fun to spend years of time into. Especially now as all the pc’s I once bought from the dumb are recovered and working fine. I need something new to work on and learn from.
I hope that I will be able to repair all kinds of old radios especially in the future. Just like I did with those old vintage pc’s. But it’s still a lot of hocus spocus to me. New stuff like the life of tubes, SWR meters, and antenna designs are really confusing at the moment as I never heard about those topics. But I have enough spare time so I will be diving into those things little by little.
Overall, me as a 23 year old guy, am extremely interested and hooked to shortwave and all about radios. Especially the older ones. My experience with new stuf is that it is easy to fail over time. So now I need to see if that applies to old tube radios (which I doubt, due to their long history and the fact that they still work like new).
So that’s my short overview of how I got into radio at the very early age of 10.
If you made it to this end, I hope you enjoyed my little writing about my early experiences and how it evolved into what I am now.
Kind regards,
Telegrapher
Show Posts
