Size of the world

I have translated the series of KE9V, Jeff’s fiction stories and they have been published on CQ Ham Radio Magazine for 4 months.  My translation work will be finished with “So long as the world is big” which will be on August issue.  I started to translate it this morning and was deeply moved by the story.

I found a photo of an old radio called Hallicrafters SX-28 on the story and I was new to see it.  I have known the name of the manufacturer but didn’t know what kind of radio equipment they had produced.　This looks gorgeous and expensive.  I’m sure some of brasspounders recall thier good old days when they see the photo.

This photo reminded me of my childhood memory.  I think I was 5 years old when my father got his radio in my family’s bedroom.  I don’t know what type of receiver it was but it was big and seemed to be heavy.  I have a distinct memory of my father’s back shot which was wearing only a white running shirt and strange tuning-noise on HF bands.  Hearing unknown language was startle enough to my childish mind.  It was a hot summer moning, maybe on a Sunday.  He was 31 and I was 5 at that time.  I didn’t know how this young bank clerk got his radio and where it had gone.  I asked my father about this memory a few years ago but he didn’t remember it well.  “Maybe, I think I borrowed it from a friend” he replied.  Anyway, the world was big and mysterious enough for a 5 year-old boy in 1963.

When I was a middle school student, one of my friends was a Ham.  He brought his 6m rig to our school trip and made a lot of QSOs in front of me.  I thought he was cool and I wanted to have a license of amateur radio but my parents didn’t allow me to do so.  Instead, I enjoyed shortwave broadcast listening with my tiny HF radio.  Listening to the broadcast stations such as BBC, Radio Australia, VOA, Radio Equador and etc. was so exciting and I was enchanted by the mysteriousness of radio-wave propagation.  The world was still big enough for me.

These living experiences led me to bear the Ham license in 1992 for the first time.  I came to operate CW with some bumps and detours and I met a lot of good people to share this very simple but depthful communication method.  Folks who instantly communicate with friends overseas on the intertnet might say ” hey, world is now small and you don’t have to stick to the way as dead as a dodo. Give it up!”

No way.

As long as we sit down before the HF radios and hear the typical noise of the bands, we are the serious leaners of a class which teaches us the secret and rules of nature.   As long as you pound the brass and emit your weak RF toward the ionosphere, the world is still mysterious and huge enough for you.   And I’m sure that you ponder on the distance to your friends and appreciate the warmth of thier signals.

I would like to raise my glass to Jeff and his fiction stories!

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