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I received my Novice license in 1987. And over the next two years I kept upgrading all the way to extra class. I have long been a short wave listener. I have had a number of short wave radios..my favorite...is probably an old tube type Hallicrafters. This energy swallowing monster was a drifting maniac. You had to ride the tuner to keep a side band station in the clear so you could hear. But it was also very very quiet, a property tube type radios are famous for..and it was sensitive! I once heard an aircraft over Genoa, Italy speaking to an airport in the state of New York. Many times I have caught Norad speaking to the orbiting B-52 bombers. It was all one time use code too I think. This was the Reagan era..and I loved to hear radio Nicaragua..this was immense fun. I can recall at one point, this state run radio station challenging Mr. Reagan to buckle on his six shooters and come down there himself and take them on ! lol Did you know that you can hear the old 49 MHz cordless telephones on a short wave radio? The base unit transmits at around 1700 KHz and if you go sideband, you can hear them.

Once I had my license for amateur operation I got a transceiver, built myself a few dipole antennas and went for some cw contacts. My best contact I think is a cw conversation to Latvia. My antenna was only 20 feet off of the ground! This would have been on 20 or 15 meters band. Being located in the eastern U.S. and operating primarily in the 40 and 80 meter bands, cw contacts for several hundred miles were common. I also once voice chatted with a man driving his car somewhere in the United Kingdom. I was on 10 meters and using about 25 watts of power on a ground plane antenna !

Amateur radio operators can talk the long distances due to a phenomenon known as skip. The sun causes the upper atmosphere to ionize. This means the atoms of the atmosphere become hyper excited from solar radiation and begin to shed electrons. These electrons are in almost a boiling state in that they keep recombining with other atoms that are an electron short due to ionization, and then getting jarred loose again, and the whole process starts over. What this results in, is a layer of ionization that is radio reflective. Radio signals can literally bounce off of this cloud of electrons, and return to the earth hundreds or even thousands of miles from the transmitting antenna. And for a length of time, one can indeed chat with someone else over the curvature of the globe, and much farther away than the output of wattage would normally allow. Naturally, as solar activity is the source of the electron cloud, a more active sun is going to produce a more varied response. The sun has been keenly observed for decades and certain patterns have emerged. For the radio enthusiast the most important pattern is the sunspot cycle. A wealth of sun spots means lots of radiation, and the forecast for high skip activity.

Not all radio frequencies are reflected by this cloud however. It turns out that the higher frequencies can punch right through. This is why your satellite dish antenna has no difficulty receiving it's signals. And your GPS in your car works. Some hams even play around with what is called " moon bounce". They beam a signal at the moon...and about one half second later...they can hear their own voice returning to them.

I feel that skip communications were very good for HF during the late 80's. I never really got into anything FM, or computer oriented. And, I don't recall exactly what the sun spot activity was at that time. Fairly active I expect.
I have since let my license lapse. With the coming of the internet and instant communication for free, amateur radio activity for me has completely stopped.

Learn more about this author, A. Dean.
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