Short Wave Magazine - Nipper The Dog Is In The Pub Again

That's the trouble with writing nostalgia pieces.

Two things happen. Firstly, you get letters from young limbs banging on about wasting space on boat-anchors, my least-favourite phrase to define classic wirelesses still revered by designers today. And secondly, if you write enough nostalgia, you must reach a point where you arrive at the present day. In the editorial offices of your soaraway SWM, the astute can hear muffled mutterings of, "That should shut him up, then". Not quite.

If you have followed this run of articles, you will now know that I have worked out the psychological problems caused by years next to the wireless by writing about it then inflicting it on you, dear reader.

Up here in deepest Derbyshire, there is a pub near Carsington Water called The Red Lion. The landlord is Pip G8NOP, a rather odd surname, who has a model Nipper dog, the one that stared longingly into the horned phonograph on the HMV logo. I stare at it; it stares back at me, although I have to say there is more life in the model dog these days. If we stand side by side, Pip says he can tell us apart because in the dog's eye, there is a spark of humanity.

We are much the same vintage; we got our experience in much the same way. And, knowing he has the same radio bug as me, he avoids eye contact with Nipper. Last time I was in The Lion, mine host had the poor dog wearing spectacles slightly to one side in an Eric Morecambe style. Anything to avoid eye contact with the dog. Follow you around the room, those eyes.

In between pulling pints, Pip - not the dog - will shamble over to my end of the bar and in low voice suggesting under-the-counter dealings, come out with, "Did you ever use an EF50 as an audio pre-amp? Microphonic as hell and more hiss than a reptile house". With eyes more glazed over than the dog's, we will go on forever about the red ones being the worst and the trouble you had finding the locking rings for the valve-holders. We'll remember buying boxes of valves from Club junk sales only to find that about 60% of them were EF80's.

When I went to the Celebration Dinner for the Derby Club, all I was known for was the boxes of valves. The club has been around for ninety years and the room was packed. All of them to a man trying to avoid eye contact with Nipper.

Later generations feel the same about the EF86, the OC71 glass transistor and finding the extra few pence for the low-noise version of the 741. The OC71 was light sensitive so if you scraped the paint off, you could make a radio that only worked in the dark.

People are already getting nostalgic about the sound cards that came with first generation 386 computers. The hiss they remember is coloured with the gentle buzz of processor hash. Sometimes when a GSM mobile phone breaks through the radio, the sound reminds me of my early days going digital and why I don't bother anymore. There will come a time when today's Pentium 4 used to control a PC radio will be regarded by some with the same affection I have for an AR88. Today's tech is tomorrow's boat-anchor.

My copy of Studio Sound - I get it for the loose-coupled resonators on Page 3 - is full of the hottest digital techniques that will be old hat in less than a year. It may seem odd coming from somebody who used to warm his hands over a pair of KT66's but I feel so much digital audio streaming, either by PC or DAB, is a triumph of marketing over delivery.

Was it the great JT, designer of the modern-day classics such as the HF225 who said that Digital Radio was a streaming form of MP3 and will just about equal a well-installed FM radio for quality? Is it really worth the effort? Is it true that MP stands for Might Play?

Thanks JT for all the work you did on the AR7030. As I write this on the wettest Sunday afternoon ever, I am hearing AIR India on 10330 half way through the morning raga. When you are listening to the station and not for faults in the radio, you know you have got a good one. It is so wet today, I think I just heard Noah testing on 2182. That channel has been quiet for a while now. Another thing I can bore Pip with.

The AIR India I refer to is not the national airline but the national broadcaster. Listening to Shanwick Air Traffic Control on 6622, there is a genuine sense of relief in the operator's voice when an aircraft calls in for a SELCAL check. So much has changed.

On September the 11th, the TV went off, the short wave was switched on. Six hours after the tragedy, BBC World Service had a studio discussion asking who the winners can be after such an act; the Voice Of America was in news free-fall. Presenters could not understand how such a thing could happen on American soil.

The most balanced view came from KOL Israel. They seemed to see both sides. When called by a VOA correspondent concerned about their cool and collected reporting, they simply replied that Israel has been a terrorised nation for over forty years. This is the power of being your own news editor via short wave.

One voice missing was The Voice Of Russia. That economy has learned what it costs to run all those HF TX sites, so the once ever-audible Radio Moscow is only heard here with armchair copy in the evenings.

Even the military comms broke RT practice enough to let you know how they really felt. Time was when New York Radio on 10051 was a real live announcer. I'd like to think he sat in his best tuxedo in a studio at the top of the Empire State Building ready to tell a waiting world of falling dewpoints and the reassurance of NOSIG. Today he is a voice synthesiser. Perhaps with the emotion of that day, it's just as well.

One thing our hobby does is licence you to think. One day, when the laptop I am writing this on is the subject of a nostalgia piece for a computer magazine - it will happen but I won't be writing it - the question will be asked. Where were you on September the 11th?

I was sitting by the radio looking at Nipper looking back at me.