Comic Relief via Shortwave
By DAVID COLMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/fashion/06POSS.html?_r=1&ref=fashion
&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
"THE great joke of our era is that this is called the information age," said
the
actor and humorist Harry Shearer. In other words, if information is free, you
get what you pay for. Since childhood, Mr. Shearer has tried to get the
genuine article, even if that has meant spending a little time and effort to do
so.
It was at the peak of radio´s popularity that Harry Shearer was born in 1943
in Los Angeles. He tuned in quickly: not only was he a child actor whose first
gig was on Jack Benny´s radio show ("I was passing as a child," he said),
but he had a feverish fascination with radio itself. As a boy, he looked down
on the Art Deco carved-wood radio console in his family´s living room,
preferring the more sensitive RCA model in his room ("an early vomit-green
plastic radio"), which he fiddled with nightly like a junior Marconi.
"I would try and find the most distant station possible," he said. "I knew
something happened when it left Hollywood and then came bouncing back
from across the country a half a second later. It sounded weirdly magical to
me. If there was stuff in the air, I wanted to receive it."
Today the vomit-green RCA exists only in the Smithsonian of his memory. A
dedicated hobbyist in the radio tradition, Mr. Shearer has gone through 40 to
50 radios: a Hallicrafters table-size shortwave, an early Sony ICF and
countless others, big, small, portable and pocket-size.
He even forsook the exploding world of television in the ´60s for the
increasingly anarchic world of radio. "I never saw `I Dream of Jeannie,´ " he
said. "I think of it as an enhanced childhood." Even today, though he writes
and acts as prolifically as he always has, it is his voice (of a dozen or so
characters on "The Simpsons") that is probably most familiar to us.
Although he gets romantic talking about his lifelong love of the medium, it is
always his latest radio that gets pride of place in his heart and on his desk.
"I didn´t call any of them `Steve,´ or get attached to them as an object," he
said in the anchorman deadpan for which he´s known. "If they stopped
working, I didn´t keep them."
For some eight years now, his flame has been a Sangean, model ATS-909,
a digital shortwave radio. The 909 may not have the reach of fancier
shortwave radios, but for Mr. Shearer´s purposes, it is nearly perfect. It is
simple enough to involve little in the way of instructions, yet allows for the
obsessive tinkering and tuning that is the hallmark of the radio hobbyist. (An
optional 30-foot shortwave antenna boosts it to another level of sensitivity.)
It´s not the most attractive radio on the market, but Mr. Shearer does not
care. "We have a Tivoli, we have a Bose, all the famous radios," he said,
ticking off high-design brands. "This is my companion. I´ve always been
more about functionality over looks. This has all the buttons I need and not
much else. There is one that says `Page,´ and I´ve never pressed that. I don´t
know what would happen."
Though he loved searching out new music back in the ´60s, he has settled
comfortably into the armchair of the fanatical global-news enthusiast, for
which the Sangean is ideal. Though the BBC stopped broadcasting
shortwave to North America in 2001, a move that still pains shortwave fans,
he has figured out how to receive the transmissions on his own radio via the
Internet.
Getting his news from the most reliable (and often most remote) sources,
Mr. Shearer said, gives him great satisfaction. As even a cursory overview at
the Information Age will tell you, nothing is really free: you pay the price
when you don´t get the real story.
________________________
http://zliangas.logspot.com
http://zlgr.multiply.com (raidio monitoring site plus audio clips )
http://www.worldisround.com/articles/302315/ (Litohoro) 321199/Tinos
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachgr pictures upload
........
Zacharias Liangas , Thessaloniki Greece
greekdx @ otenet dot gr ---
Pesawat penerima: ICOM R75 , Lowe HF150 , Degen 1102,1103,108,
Tecsun PL200/550, Chibo c300/c979, Yupi 7000
Antenna: 16m hor, 2x16 m V invert, 1m australian loop
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THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
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