Archive for the ‘Radio’ Category
DXing
Those who haven’t heard of the word can have look here. During my initial teen years, when I was just getting to understand world affairs through the newspapers, I didn’t understand anything that was written in the papers – neither the vocabulary nor the stories behind the news, nothing. But the urge to understand it was always there, it was those days when Prannoy Roy and Appan Menon were gaining popularity owing to their program – “The world this week” and of course due to their skills in psephology. It was the radio which reduced my bewilderment and became an inseperable aide, especially short wave radio. I got hooked onto short wave radio and would spend hours listening to it. It was easier because, I could do my homework while listening to it and thus didn’t eat up a lot of my time. I listened to a long list of stations and was amused to hear to stations from far-off land. It opened a whole new world to me. I was fascinated. The inimitable chime of the BBC on the top of the hour still rings a strong chord in me! The list of stations I listened to was long – Deutsche welle radio from Cologne, Radio Netherlands, BBC – Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and of course English, Voice of America(VoA) – English and Hindi, Radio Vatican city, radio Philippines from Manila etc. It was in later years that I got to know about ‘DXing’ as a hobby; I never collected any QSLs though. I enjoyed this hobby for well over a decade until internet amused me more than the short wave radio. The short wave radio didn’t stand a chance in front of the internet. But out here in the Netherlands I have rediscovered the charm of the short wave radio, ironically through the internet. Well, that makes ’shortwave’ itself meaningless. Nevertheless, the radio’s charm is there. This time I scoured the internet to look for some streaming tamil music and came across quite a few online fm channels. For radio enthusiats like me it revived old memories of short wave radio. Do check online FM radio stations – they are doing a good job. As expected the larger corporations like the BBC have better organised site with lot more features. Plus, for hardened radio enthusiasts who stick around with their SW radio sets, the net is a place for congregation and sharing latest info on various radio stations. Its surprising to see how different media are evolving, primarily driven by what is offered on the internet.
