My Adventures over the Airwaves Part 1: "This... is London..."*

I was inspired to start writing about my history with radio after a comment by Shintar about my usage of the term "Dayton Hamvention" in this post. And after far too many words, I've broken it out into multiple parts. I'm not sure how far this will go --or if I'm going to post these on successive days or not-- but we'll see.

I'm old enough to remember my parents having a radio with a shortwave band on it.

I don't think it was this exact model, as ours was covered
by a leather case that matched the leather handle you see
above. Still, between these GE models and the Radio
Shack Patrolman series of portable radios, you get the idea.

Ours was a model similar to the one shown above, and it resided in our kitchen. Dad would take the radio outside when he sat on the back patio and read while listening to 700 WLW broadcast Cincinnati Reds' baseball games, with Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall in the radio booth.** 

Marty and Joe from the Reds' glory years.
From The Notorious Meddler's post on the two.

When it wasn't outside, the radio's place was atop the refrigerator so my mom could listen to the radio while she cooked.

All I knew about that little section marked "SW" was that whenever I tried to listen to it, there were no audible stations. I figured it was busted, and as long as my parents didn't think I broke the radio I never called attention to it.

A couple of years later I asked my mom about that SW band, and she told me it was for listening to radio stations from all over the world. That sounded intriguing, but I remembered my experience of trying that band in the past and I left it alone.

Then the Pope got shot.

I was at my Catholic grade school when it happened, and being the dutiful Catholic I prayed for the Pope's recovery. After the announcement on the intercom, one of the teachers --or maybe it was one of the nuns, I can't remember who-- happened to mention that we might get more information from shortwave radio rather than our local television stations, so when I got back home I tried in vain to find anything on that shortwave band. Defeated, I left it alone, but Mom told me that she'd never gotten any stations to come in either.

So that was what I thought of shortwave radio: some radio band that basically was a waste of space. My dad eventually replaced that portable radio a couple of years later with one that had VHF television audio instead of a shortwave band. To him, that was far more useful.

Fast forward 7-8 years later, and I was in my sophomore year at UD, just beginning work as a lab assistant in a Physics professor's research lab. Part of my duties involved working on the lab bench that the professor had acquired from the Department of Electrical Engineering, and to say that drilling and tapping holes in steel weren't a lot of fun is an understatement. So to pass the time, I looked around for a radio to listen to. Surely, in this room with all of this junk there had to be something.

Tucked away in one corner, there was.

The radio in question didn't have those aluminum "wings"
on the sides, but otherwise this is the model.
The S20R Sky Champion, circa 1939. From eBay.

At first I wasn't exactly sure if it was a radio at all, but the bands on the main tuning wheel gave it away. I plugged it in and turned it on, and... 

Nothing.

I made sure the radio was on the regular AM band, and still there was nothing coming out.

Another of the professors in the department saw me fiddling with the radio and took pity on me. "You need to set the switch on the right to 'REC'", he told me.

"Oh."

I flipped that switch, and like magic the radio came to life. 

"There's a small bit of wire in the back for an antenna," he added, "but this was part of the ham station we had in the building."

A what?

"An amateur radio station. The professor who ran it passed away before you started here, so we dismantled it your Freshman year." He pointed out another device next to it: 

From eBay.

"This is the transmitter, but don't turn it on unless you've got it hooked up to an antenna, or it'll fry the circuits."

I made a mental note of that, tuned into one of the local AM stations on the Hallicrafters radio, and got back to work. When my day ended, I went back to the radio and began flipping to different bands. Surely if there was any radio that might receive shortwave stations, it was this one.

Lo and behold, something came out of the radio.

It was in Spanish, but it was better than nothing. I got an actual shortwave signal!

So, knowing now that shortwave radio wasn't a myth, I did what I usually do when confronted with a problem I was eager to know the answer for: research.

I went to a bookstore at the mall and roamed the stacks until I finally found what I was looking for in the Electronics and Hobbies section. I then visited the Radio Shack at the mall and picked up another book, so I had this as my haul:

If you're old enough and into science/electronics,
you might recognize the publisher of the one on
the right, TAB Books. Yes, it still exists
as an imprint of McGraw-Hill Education.

The Radio Shack book was very light on details, but it did provide a basic framework on shortwave radio. The other one, The Complete Shortwave Listener's Handbook, was much better overall. It provided me with real details as to how radios worked, and more importantly how shortwave radio worked. I also learned that those old portable radios --such as the one my parents had-- were terrible for shortwave reception. The book also explained how the shortwave bands were active at certain times of the day (the higher frequencies in the morning/afternoon and the lower frequencies in the evening/night) and broadcasters would take advantage of those differences to change the frequencies they broadcast based on the time of day. Finally, the book recommended the World Radio TV Handbook to get access to the current listings of shortwave frequencies.

"Okay," I thought, "back to the bookstore."

I couldn't find the World Radio TV Handbook, but I did find something that looked like it might be almost as good:

I haven't kept all of them, but a few
are worth keeping for sentimental value.
As the cover says, the 1989 Passport
to World Band Radio.

In it's own way, the Passport to World Band Radio was even better than the WRTH, because there were easy to follow reviews, reviews of shortwave stations --both reception and content-- and there was a huge section in the back showing the shortwave band activity in a graphical format.

If you zoom in, you'll see some old stations such
as Radio Moscow and Radio Yugoslavia.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

Using the 1989 Passport as a guide, I learned to surf the bands and listen in while I was working. (The professor I worked for finally tired of hearing shortwave all the time and told me to listen when he wasn't around.) I also learned that in the absence of a "real" antenna, just using random wire as long as you can make it is your best bet. So, I did what any self-respecting student would do: cut some wire from the huge spools in the basement storage of Sherman Hall --the basement that at one time was a student run nuclear reactor***-- and ran it out of a second floor classroom and down to the basement. I then brought the wire into the lab I worked at and to the Hallcrafters radio, and it was like magic. The bands opened up, and I could hear all over the world.****

The thing was, I really couldn't take that radio home with me. I did ask the department chair if I could have the radio, and he said "is there a Department tag on it?"

"No," I replied.

He just gave me a look, as if to say "there's your answer." The thing was, I couldn't justify taking it back to my dorm: it was heavy, and my (then) roommate would not have been amused.

Living on the Eastern side of the US, Radio Australia
was always a more difficult station to catch.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

That Fall, I resolved to buy a shortwave radio of my own, and since I now had a dorm room to myself*****, I didn't have to worry about annoying any roommates. Thankfully, one of the best rated portable shortwave radios could be found at my local Radio Shack:

It's the one on the bottom left. Definitely not
the one on the right. From radioshackcatalogs.com.

That page, from the 1989 Radio Shack catalog, was right up my alley. There were shortwave radios, a CB radio base station, and some handheld CB radios. But the focus of my attention was the Realistic DX-440, a Radio Shack rebrand of Sangean's ATS-803A. It may have not been the highest rated portable radio of its era --that belonged to Sony's ICF-2010-- but it was fairly well regarded and could easily be found at the thousands of Radio Shack stores across the country.

Oh look, the DX-440 on the top of the right-hand page.
Later editions of the Passport to World Band Radio
revised the rating upward to 3 1/2 stars.
From the 1989 Passport to World Band Radio.

All I had to do was scrape up $200 to buy one.

That actually didn't turn out to be as big of a problem as I thought it would be, since I worked about 15-20 hours a week for the Physics Department as a Lab Instructor and a Lab Assistant, and the radio went on sale a lot. One week in October I found it on sale for $179, and I somehow managed to scrape together the money, got to the closest Radio Shack to campus (I think I borrowed a friend's car), and bought it before they closed for the night. 

I still have the radio; it's sitting behind me
atop the bookshelf. The strap is in storage,
but I have it too. The box is long since gone,
however. The clock is set to UTC time.

I listened to shortwave religiously in the mornings before class and when I was in the dorm on the weekends, and in less than a month later I was eternally grateful for blowing a month's worth of pay on the DX-440 because I had a ringside seat listening to the Warsaw Pact implode.

From Wikipedia.
By Sue Ream, CC BY 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8377443

The day the Berlin Wall fell, November 9th, was just one of a series of events that proved (to me, anyway) the relevancy of shortwave radio.****** Getting to hear the news reports at the Berlin Wall from Radio Deutsche Welle, the Velvet Revolution from the newly independent journalists of Radio Prague, the broadcasts from the invasion of Kuwait by the BBC World Service in 1990, and the failed Soviet Coup of 1991 from Radio Moscow --who defied the Communist Party and began reporting without the "official" state bias--  were all ingrained into my mind. 

*This is the version I remember:

**This was back when the Reds were the best team in baseball. Kind of hard to imagine that now, but the 1975 and 1976 teams were two of the best baseball teams of all time. It's weird, really, but if you're of the right age when a sports team was dominant you just accepted that things were always going to be that way: the Reds playing in the World Series, Manchester United winning the Premier League, the New England Patriots winning the Super Bowl, the Detroit Red Wings winning NHL's Stanley Cup.

***It had long since been decommissioned, and no, it wasn't the sort that would create a nuclear accident akin to Three Mile Island. The isotopes used were very tame, but the reactor did provide some power. So no, I'm not gonna get cancer. (At least from that.)

****About a year later I was in that same classroom with a professor and two grad students talking about something, and one of the grad students noticed the wire I'd tied to a corner of the window. "What is that wire there for?" he asked.

"Looks like someone put that wire there as an antenna," the professor replied with a look at me. 

I feigned innocence, but I knew I'd been found out. (I still miss our classes together, Dr. Graham.)

*****I'm still not sure how that happened, but while I did request a single I assumed that I was going to get stuck with a roommate. I mean, that happened for my sophomore year when the person I was to room with decided to not return to UD, and that meant I was grouped with a Freshman. THAT was an interesting experience.

******That day was also quite important because that was the day that my now wife and I started dating. That was before I got back to my dorm and turned on the radio to find the reports about the Berlin Wall; I was a wee bit distracted, you know.

#Blaugust2025

Meme Monday: Dad Joke Memes

Yes, dad jokes. Because I'm a dad, and there's plenty of jokes abound.

I'm here till Thursday. Try the veal!
From Imgflip.

From Memebase (and PunHub).

Ah, Star Trek and dad jokes. You never
know if Worf actually got the joke.
From Imgur.

Although my wife is usually a bit better sport
than this. But yeah, been there. From Pinata Farms.

My kids do make me proud about their dad joke
prowess. From Reddit (and mematic).

Sometimes, the dad joke is visual.
Can't remember where I found this one.

And yes, I was a proud dad when the kids
started making these jokes. From Reddit.

#Blaugust2025

EtA: Added the reference for the last meme.

Time Marches On

My wife and I met our son and his partner for lunch today at our local bookstore, and afterward we wandered the stacks. I espied a few boardgames that the store had for sale, and I immediately felt a bit wistful. It reminded me that the first boardgame store I visited here, Boardwalk Hobby Shop, had closed during the pandemic. The owners had decided to retire, and like I said in a previous post, I couldn't begrudge them that. 

The day before I was out as an advanced scouting party for getting my youngest a new laptop, as her current one is far too old and slow to handle Windows 11, and I needed to reacquaint myself with how the various brands and models handled.* Naturally, I went to Microcenter, and afterward I stopped by my nearby Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS), YottaQuest.

I wasn't there to buy anything --because laptop, you know-- but it was good to simply roam the store and watch the steady flow of customers into the place. Those included a couple easily old enough to be my parents, and they weren't there just because their grandkids wanted to visit,** but to actually buy something themselves. 

I took this pic last Fall, when there were
leaves everywhere. Even on a nose or two.

Time marches on, but I hope that some things continue. Such as good bookstores and game stores.

*Having spent the last 12+ years buying laptops for the kids, I've seen a lot of trends. Such as the decline of HP in terms of quality --holy hell are those laptops flimsy-- and the rise of Acer as a viable brand. I remember when Acer's Aspire line used to be nicknamed "Expire" because of how poorly powered and built they were, but HP has certainly passed them on the way to the bottom in terms of consumer grade stuff. I still refuse to touch Dell because of my own personal experience with the brand courtesy of a work laptop that refused to have it's fan spin unless it sat perfectly flat. Tilt it just a hair and the fan would simply stop working. And I won't get into the overheating problems with that laptop, either.

**That was my experience as a kid when I'd drag my grandparents to a video game arcade or a bookstore.

#Blaugust2025

Wait, What WAS Considered Beautiful in 2004?

Okay, I'll admit that I wasn't expecting to be writing this post when I sat down on Friday morning before work, but things happen.

Well, this happened:

I've been watching Angelika's videos for over a year now, and her focus on items such as clothing, art, style, and other things in MMOs and RPGs (mainly Elder Scrolls and WoW) are interesting to me. So, when she decided to focus on the standards of beauty in WoW (primarily WoW Classic), I was interested in her take on it. 

The biggest takeaway for me was how she viewed Vanilla WoW through the lens of what was considered attractive and stylish in 2004, which was when the game released. I'll be honest in that I couldn't tell you much of what was considered "in" at the time, because our youngest was a year old and overall the years 1998 - 2005 were a bit of a sleep deprived blur. 

Then, this morning, this dropped:

I haven't watched the trailer either (I haven't watched a Retail WoW trailer except for Dragonflight since Mists back in 2012), so I can't speak to it myself, but I found her critique very interesting in that Blizzard is basically "going generic" as far as the Blood Elf look. If you looked at Liadrin, you'd not know it was a Blood Elf from WoW. She just looks like an elf, not a Warcraft elf.

Of course, that's not enough, because apparently there's a big divide on the reaction to the trailer. People either adore or despise it, with not that many opinions in the "meh" middle. Which is pretty much standard for anything in Retail, but a lot of the hate is focused on Liadrin's look and how "masculine" she looks. The pictures I've seen of her simply don't look like her, masculine or not. Liadrin has a specific look to her that dates back to TBC, like Angelika pointed out, and Blizz moved away from that.

Oh well. Nothing I can do about that, but yes, the videos are worth a watch.

#Blaugust2025

That Was Annoying

As a matter of course, I don't have my video settings to automatically play. There have been plenty of times in the past when I've been doing some research or prepping for something and a video automatically plays on either my phone or my computer, disrupting everything and everyone. Of course, advertisements are the worst offenders, so I very rarely open YouTube on my phone because I won't pay for YouTube Premium and adblockers don't work on YouTube's mobile phone app. 

So, imagine my surprise when I got the Battle.net alert last evening on my phone that said something along the lines of "Adventure is Calling You Home", and before I basically swiped left and ignored it, I thought "You know what, I might as well see what ad they're sticking on people's phones first."

It was this:

I took this after I stopped the video.

Yeah, I was not pleased.

The trailer started playing straight away, ignoring my settings, and I was definitely not a happy camper. The only thing that would have made this more annoying was that there were video ads before the trailer played, which I'm surprised wasn't the case.

You know, I should have known better, but given that the Battle.net app tends to be pretty well behaved overall I was thinking it wasn't going to go full Google on me. But nope, not the case.

Oh well. Live and learn.

#Blaugust2025

It's Not Exactly Being Unshackled, But...

...four of the toons in Operation Spread the Love are at L42 or above.

These are the levels as of August 20, 2025.

Oh, I still like to play Azshandra, but when I play a Rogue I tend to spend more time sneaking around and getting into places than actually questing. Plus there's the additional issue of Rogue-hate out there, because some members of the Rogue Brotherhood simply have to behave like asses.

"A lot of Rogues suck, but you're okay," I was told in a Scarlet Monastery run the other week.

I should just take the compliment as it is, but it does get me down a bit knowing that some people simply take delight in torturing others just for shits and giggles. I was whispered out of the blue in Arathi (or Southshore, not exactly sure which) by a player if I wanted to go to SM: Cathedral. I was wracking my brain, trying to remember if I'd run an instance before with the person whispering me, but I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and said "Sure!"

During the long run up to the Scarlet Monastery I found out that the group was partially through the run and originally had another Rogue in the group, but said Rogue stealthed up to the front of the altar inside the Cathedral and attacked the end boss, causing all of the mobs inside the Cathedral to attack at once. The Rogue then dropped group, their mischief complete. 

I had a few choice words for such behavior.

So, when I behaved like a normal person and didn't act like an asshole, the rest of the group was appreciative enough that they were fine with another Cathedral run since I came in halfway through.

***

That whole whisper out of the blue to run a dungeon is by far the exception rather than the rule for my experience in the Anniversary servers. Typically, if I want to run a specific dungeon, I'll begin making my way there before I'll even make myself available by either LFG chat or the in-game tool. This is especially important if I get into a run as either as a Warlock or a Mage: the Warlock for the summons, and the Mage to make food and water for the group. I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten into a group on a Mage where I've been making food and water for people throughout the first third of the dungeon. My response to that is to either make all the food and water prior to making myself available, or make food and water while going to the dungeon entrance.  

I also just figure that it's the polite thing to keep people from waiting. I'm personally fine with not having instant summons to dungeons like in later versions of WoW, but I also know I'm in the minority. Dungeons that are hard to get to, such as Maraudon, Scarlet Monastery (for Alliance), Gnomeregan (for Horde), or Shadowfang Keep (for Alliance) are ones I make a conscious effort to be at least well on my way there before I make myself available for a pug run.

***

Overall, the past couple of weeks in-game have gone pretty well. The pace of leveling has picked up again, as you can see by the results, and I weathered the cost of all of the mounts at L40 and all of their training costs upon reaching L42. 

Yikes, L42 had a nasty amount of training cost for some of these toons.

While my original plan was to get people to L50 by August, I think it more likely that late September-early October is a reasonable goal. So we'll see how it progresses.

EtA: Apparently I can't count. There are four toons at L42 or above, not five.

#Blaugust2025

At The End of Everything be Sure to Buy the Merch

There was something that was supposed to happen yesterday, but I can't remember what it was...

Hmm.... Not exactly.

No, that's not it. Something else...

Kind of funny how this is likely going to upstage

that other announcement yesterday. Then again, Microsoft
owns them both, so I guess it doesn't matter to them.

Maybe? It is video game related...

I don't know about that. Midnight in Goldshire
is a wee bit different than Midnight in other places.

Oh yeah, that was it: something was supposed to happen at Midnight.

Or something like that.

Under the headlines of "I'm not sure they know their audience," This appeared in the WoW Classic tab this evening:

Mists Classic, 20th Anniversary Servers, Retail Midnight. Same difference, I guess.

But what got me was that email I got this afternoon, even before the "Adventure is Calling You Home" email:

I guess Blizzard knows their audience, but... Meh. The universe is ending; buy the merch! And buy the top end package for the housing exclusives and Early Access!

Unfortunately for me, I apparently never bothered to post about Retail's impending player housing --because I checked under "Retail" and couldn't find it-- but if I had I'd have said something along the lines of Blizzard making some aspects of housing dependent upon the Cash Shop. Well, the Expansion Price Tiers isn't the Cash Shop, but it's close enough for me. 

To be honest, I'm surprised that Blizzard isn't abandoning the lower price tiers entirely and just having everybody pay $100 or more for the expac. After all, look at what Nintendo is doing for the prices of their new games on the Switch 2, and WoW is deliberately orienting the contents of the various packages that if you want to be "serious" about raiding or collecting, you'd better shell out for the top end price.

I don't really have a leg to stand on here, it's just that what I spend money on is different than what others in MMO spaces do. Like on raw materials to make another one of these:

No appendages were lost in the construction
of that end table.

#Blaugust2025