Nobody to listen to
I recently bought a box of D cells and “resurrected” an old shortwave receiver that I’ve had for years. It might seem like yesterday that I received it as a gift, but my children don’t remember, and when the wife spotted it she asked why I’d kept that old thing around, since she’d given me a newer, smaller model some years ago. Maybe it’s the “some years ago” that brings to mind how much faster my life is going by these days.
Anyhow, the receiver didn’t turn on with new batteries, which is always one of those troublesome things with older electronics. What could have happened to it in simply installing batteries? The wonderful thing about having always on Internet is that an answer is never far away. This is a DX-440 (Sangean ATS-803A) receiver that is still a popular item for the best reason – it works well.
It turns out that the internal computer is sensitive to voltage change, such as installing new batteries. The cure is also simple; remove the batteries, wait a few minutes and then plug them back in. The truth. My receiver came back to life exactly in the state I remembered, with lots of frequencies to check out. The only problem is that the world has changed in the last decade.
I haven’t found any Morse to listen to, not even at the bottom of the 4o-meter band where there used to be something any time I cared to check. Hardly any stations in the shortwave sectors, and no ship traffic. It seems that the world has started to abandon the HF section, at least that’s the view from here. Your mileage may vary.
Obviously this is a short sampling time, on a limited number of frequencies, but I’m not going to rush out and rebuild my antenna farm this winter. There’s lots of other stuff to eat up the hours. Still, it’s strange to think that the bands aren’t nearly as busy as they used to be.
