Last night I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

For some reason, rather than putting on a podcast, I turned on my 
transistor radio, switched through the shortwave bands, and actually 
managed to tune in Radio Havana. I think the repeater is in San 
Francisco, and I've heard AM stations from at least as far as 
Sacramento, so it wasn't a technical marvel, but it was something I 
haven't done much in the recent past. As a teenager, in the dark old 
days before public access internet, I used to listen to Radio Moscow at 
night. The Soviet Union seemed like such a far-off, strange world.

In any case, I ended up looking into shortwave radio a bit more this 
morning (and yes, like every hobby, you could waste a LOT of money on 
shortwave radios, antennas, and the like). Of course there's an 
/r/shortwave on reddit, and when I was reading through one of the 
threads, someone mentioned that 30 feet of wire would make a decent-ish 
antenna.

This afternoon I replaced a broken pane of glass in an old window and 
brought the radio outside with me. I listened to a bit of the regular 
lunacy on the AM dial, just for background noise. Afterward, I strung 30 
feet of baling wire down the hill in the back yard and attached it to 
the radio antenna. It worked. More shortwave stations! All in Spanish 
(and some of those beep-beep-beepy signals), but apparently some West 
Coasters are getting a station from New Zealand, so I'll give that a try 
tonight.

Incidentally, my aluminum extension ladder appears to make a fine aerial 
too...

Take care, gopherites.

-V.