Trans Oceanic
When I was growing up, my father used to enjoy taking his shortwave receiver out on to the front verandah. He'd raise the aerial like a fishing rod and go out into the shortwave spectrum fishing for the odd stations that he could pick up from around the night air.
At first I imagined that the whooshes and sweeps were landscape passing by some kind of microphone that flew out around the Pacific and arrived at a station. Like the sounds that passed by a car window. The idea of tuning was difficult to understand, and really it's still difficult, but I now pretend to understand it.
Back then there was a wonderful variety of sounds on the radio. I heard numbers stations and communist propaganda, morse code, raving Christians and the beautiful ticking of WWVH Hawaii holding the Newtonian universe together. Two stations would play music on the one frequency and you could sometimes tease them apart on sidebands. But really, two at once always sounded more exciting.
The shortwave spectrum has declined as the Internet takes on a similar role. I have the old man's radio now - the Zenith Trans Oceanic, but there's not much to hear. In fact the computers I use interfere with the reception. I miss the old sounds.
The broadcasts here are all made up. Everything you hear is a fabrication from memory and is a kind of Remembrance of Shortwave Past. The only one that's mildly accurate is the WWVH time signal (I studied the manual) but the voices are all wrong. It's just a memory, not a history.
My old man has died, and is fading away along with the radio stations. I made this to remember being on the verandah with him. I hope as you listen, it reminds you of good times you may have enjoyed.
When I was growing up, my father used to enjoy taking his shortwave receiver out on to the front verandah. He'd raise the aerial like a fishing rod and go out into the shortwave spectrum fishing for the odd stations that he could pick up from around the night air.
At first I imagined that the whooshes and sweeps were landscape passing by some kind of microphone that flew out around the Pacific and arrived at a station. Like the sounds that passed by a car window. The idea of tuning was difficult to understand, and really it's still difficult, but I now pretend to understand it.
Back then there was a wonderful variety of sounds on the radio. I heard numbers stations and communist propaganda, morse code, raving Christians and the beautiful ticking of WWVH Hawaii holding the Newtonian universe together. Two stations would play music on the one frequency and you could sometimes tease them apart on sidebands. But really, two at once always sounded more exciting.
The shortwave spectrum has declined as the Internet takes on a similar role. I have the old man's radio now - the Zenith Trans Oceanic, but there's not much to hear. In fact the computers I use interfere with the reception. I miss the old sounds.
The broadcasts here are all made up. Everything you hear is a fabrication from memory and is a kind of Remembrance of Shortwave Past. The only one that's mildly accurate is the WWVH time signal (I studied the manual) but the voices are all wrong. It's just a memory, not a history.
My old man has died, and is fading away along with the radio stations. I made this to remember being on the verandah with him. I hope as you listen, it reminds you of good times you may have enjoyed.
