Before the Internet We Communicated; We Will Again:

It was inevitable, really. When the power went out three weeks ago, I spent the evening enjoying the delights of a battery-powered shortwave radio. I wrote about it the following Monday. But I was hooked. Well, re-hooked. In the pre-internet days, shortwave listening was a passion of mine. It was a useful one, too: I'd roll tape on Radio Moscow or some other international broadcaster and would now and again get a bite of sound to use in radio newscasts with which I was at the time involved. It was even my privilege to be a reporter for a few years for "Media Network," a prestigious program broadcast by Radio Netherlands, out of Hilversum, North Holland. So it took only one evening of electrical privation and resort to the radio to re-spark my interest. For a long time, shortwave radio was how we remained informed of events in the world, either by listening ourselves or by reading or listening to digests put together by others. A recent published photo essay showing The New York Times being put together long ago included the radio desk, where foreign broadcasts were monitored. Because of the internet, many international broadcasters have abandoned their shortwave services or greatly cut them back. So in the last few weeks I've devoted more and more time to listening to the amateur operators who have ham radio licenses and equipment. Many of them also have generators and other gear that would let them stay on the air in time of disaster - in fact, that's much of the purpose of amateur radio. I've discussed with local amateurs how they could be of use in relaying information during local crises, such as the derecho storm of 2012 or the sudden snowstorm and sub-zero mess of March 2015. I remember in 1988 sitting at my radio and listening to OU1UN, the shortwave station at the United Nations, as it tried to get in touch with Caribbean islands hit by Hurricane Gilbert. The first reports from many of the smaller islands, and the only reports we got for many days, came from radio amateurs. (In fact, I wrote up some of those reports and sold a little story to one of the New York papers.)

from Ham Radio Times http://ift.tt/2qiMTv8
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