"John J Stafford" wrote in message
In article <wYbeq.33129$>,
"Carrie" wrote:
Do people still have shortwave and CB radios? Now with the internet, cell
phones, smart phones, etc. Just thought of that.
My Brother-in-law was a shortwave fanatic all his life. He had an antennae stretched over 100 yards over his farm, and shorter ones at odd angles. He used to bring us news that was shocking, some of it debatable as first-person.
Four years ago he said that the Internet has taken over the same role, however just recently he said that short-wave has become the internet’s undernet. Life has resumed its interesting communication.
My uncle had a "radio shack" in his yard. Long time ago, when I was a child (and that was a long time ago), I didn’t realize at the time he was involved in starting the first radio station in MA. It might be the first one in the country, but they had a fire in the 50’s (the station) that burned a lot of the records so they can’t prove it. I learned this when I inherted a lot of his pictures and papers, and got in touch with a radio historian, who was very interested in them, and I donated them. Though nothing in them could prove it WAS the first radion station in the country. Had info and stories about how they had to maintain the towers and actually climb up them to fix things. I don’t understand all that, but to do with transmitting and frequencies, and such. Radio-electronics it might have been called. Hard to imagine what a big deal it was at the time. And being in touch like that. When I first got online and learned there was an instant message program called ICQ I realized that was from radio talk. C-Q looking for someone to talk to.
Later, when I was in my teens/20’s I had a short wave receiver and got into listening to the calls, and wanted to get a license and a transciever. I got to know some of the people who did, and was a SWL. I used to make attempts at learning morse code, which was required for the license (first step) Don’t remember much, and never did learn to read/send it very fast. Makes one wonder what will be next, if the internet and cell phones, etc is like short wave and radio was "back then". I’ve read the some think the next step will be having communication devices implanted so we can communicate without having a computer, phone, etc.
I used to love listening to people from around the country and world.
