Modulating
For those of you who have followed my “Adventures In Amplitude Modulation” posts here at Beware of the Blog, I want to let you know that the regularity of these posts here is over. And frankly, my weekly posts on BOTB will not continue as well.
However, I’m a guy who likes to keep my options open (and somebody who hates saying goodbye) and this doesn’t mean I’ll never publish here again. I’m looking to take on another project or two, and (especially given my tendency to be a bit of a long winded blogger) I won’t have the time to keep up a weekly grind here as I have.
Nonetheless, I do plan to get together at least one more “Amplitude Modulation” post in the coming weeks, as soon as I can spend some quality time away from my RF infested apartment and roam the world again with one of my portable radios. And I'm leaving my options open to add futher entries in this series when I have the time and have a good scan to offer. Actually, I’m a bit gassed up to take my radios into the countryside after finally getting my 2007 edition of “Passport To World Radio.” I really should have purchased one of these a while ago. In working up these posts it would have saved me a LOT of internet hours stalking station ID’s. While the web is quite an amazing tool for figuring out a reception log (and international broadcasters can and do change frequencies without notice), it’s still much better to have a book like this in front of you when you’re slipping up or down the dial. If you have anything more than a passing interest in shortwave radio it would be a good idea to pick up your own copy of “Passport.”
While I’ve had a lot of fun posting here, it’s been especially rewarding for me personally to publicly delve into my own fascination with DXing. It’s also given purpose to my habit/hobby of recording dial scans, and perhaps along the way I've informed some folks about radio beyond FM, local stations (and the new broadcasting technologies). In over thirty posts I’ve learned a lot and offered some people who will never turn on a shortwave radio (or hunt distant signals out of the atmosphere) a chance to hear what it sounds like to pick up overseas broadcasts the old-fashioned way. And what’s great about this blog (and the way WFMU operates in general) is that all the posts and the accompanying audio will remain available (and subject to search engine hits) for some time to come.
I have yet to find anybody online who is posting realtime dial scans or random shortwave tuning recordings. It’s always baffled me that there isn’t more interest in such things, but through this series I’ve been able to share what I hear with headphones in the middle of the night with you. And it was nice you didn't laugh.