QSL WTAR Norfolk VA 850 AM

This one is from WTAR Norfolk VA, 7800 miles (12500 km) from Cape Point. The QSL was from very friendly Dave Morgan, who is the engineer for this station and also WNIS. Dave actually alerted me to listening out for WTAR on AM 850. In the past I'd been so used to hearing the more powerful 50 kW WEEI Boston with its sports format that I didn't think to distinguish WTAR with its sports format on the same channel. In fact, WEEI is affiliated to ESPN while WTAR is with FOX Sports. WTAR puts out 25 kW at night more or less in our direction. Subsequently, WTAR has come in here quite often.

QSL CJBC Toronto ON 860 AM

OK reactivating this blog. For the time being I'll be posting QSLs that I've received since the start of 2017. That was when I stared using my Excalibur Pro and long Beverage-on-the-ground antennae to listen to AM station, mainly in the Americas and Australia. The place we go to is near Cape Point, south of Cape Town, South Africa, where the level of electronic interference is low.

The  first one to post is CJBC on AM 860. This is a 50 kW non-directional signal produced by Radio Canada for French listeners in the Toronto area. It was the first time I've heard this here but since then it has come in on numerous occasions. Nice to hear a bit of French from the Americas!

This was my 33rd Canadian AM QSL and the first since 2006!

Distance = 8100 miles or 13100 km.

Radio St Helena, revisited

Just returned from Swakopmund in Namibia, where we hung out with our son, who flies tourists around that amazing country, from game lodge to game lodge. Namibia's population is about half of Cape Town's and the country is twice the size of Germany. The topography is spectacular, albeit phenomenally arid. Swakop is a civilised coastal town of less than 50k people. It's supposed to be the 'watering hole' Namibia, with crowds descending on the place over the summer holiday season. While the population certainly expanded, it was still remarkably genteel. You don't have the crowds you see in Hermanus and Plettenberg Bay, or the traffic jams. Our trip reminded me of another sojourn in Swakop nearly 30 years ago. I persuaded my wife to accompany me and we flew via Windhoek. My main goal was to hear St Helena Radio, then just a 1kW power AM transmitter on the island in the mid-Atlantic, target of many dxers over the years. I knew nothing about Swakop but found a place called the 'A-frame cottages' right on the edge of town. I managed to negotiate that we had one at one end of a row of about 6 or 7. Brazenly, I strung up a length of copper wire out from our cottage and down the entire row, about 100 metres. I spent many happy hours dxing at night. This was 1987, when electronic noise was still in its infancy, especially in an out of the way place like Swakop. One evening St Helena Radio came in: weak but clear as a bell. One thing I clearly remember was, after the news, a classified ads programme with someone offering a Morris Minor for sale. I sent a detailed reception report to the station which would have gone from Cape Town via the ship which left periodically to Jamestown. And in due course I received this excellent letter from Anthony Leo, station engineer. He mentions that I had picked them up in South Africa, when in fact I'd said South-West Africa but I guess many people didn't know the difference, or care, even though independence for Namibia was just around the corner. We visited the A-frames again on this trip and, looking at the rows of cottages, I can't believe I was able to get away with stringing that copper wire down the row. I wouldn't have managed it today, I'm sure.

Of chiropractors and motor mechanics

Visits to the chiropractor come and go. This time followed a lower back sprain from kiteboarding. He did all the usual things: checked me out, did some massaging and ended up with the traditional wrench that extracted a satisfying vertebral click. Initially he told some interesting stories, including a fascinating one about the Ryukyu Islanders, whose approach to old age is to become increasingly youthful in attitude. This is not the fabled 7 ages of man where you end up mewling and puking like a baby but an approach to life that becomes increasingly playful and joyful. Thereafter, though, it went pear-shaped, as he unveiled a string of extremely unappetising stories about people with chronic scoliosis or nervous disorders, a woman's corpse with huge layers of fat exposed and other unwanted anecdotes, some of which would be repeated in later sessions. When you are face down on the bench it's hard to converse but I tried to discourage these tales from the war front, with little success. During this period of treatment I was actively self-medicating, doing stretches several times a day. I asked him for exercise recommendations to supplement my own and he reluctantly produced some diagrams which had his name on top but were in fact virtually straight off Google. At the end of each session he was quick to sit down and write up the next appointment, claiming this was a complicated, long-term spinal project which needed regular and frequent attention. He would also drop names like Gary Player and Bobby Locke (two great SA golfers, who had used his services in the past). But he would never actually give me his current diagnosis of my condition. He simply wouldn't commit himself as to how I was progressing in his eyes. As I was self-medicating, I was also self-diagnosing and could feel the improvement as I went along. So increasingly I became aware that I was actually just a part of his annuity stream, cloaked in this mystical process, which he was never able to fully explain or link up to my progress. When you are young you believe that doctors know everything and invest in them all your trust but as you get older you realise that many are also subject to moral hazard, not unlike motor mechanics.

Knock your socks off with Cybernetics

Maxwell Maltz wrote Psycho-Cybernetics in 1960, celebrating the concepts of self-affirmation and positive visualization, all taken up by athletes and others in years to come. It had this striking red, black and white cover, with a little medallion claiming that 3 million had been sold. I came across it in 1971 when dropping out of university, having lost interest in accounting, if I had ever had any! Surfing was much more fun. A dose of self-help was called for. The first chapter ended with the instruction: before you move on to chapter 2, tie your shoe laces each morning in a different way for the next 7 days. As I had no shoes with laces at the time, this was a bit of a deal-breaker, so I never made it to Ch 2 or any subsequent chapter. I'm not sure I would have made it even if I had lace-ups, the whole message just seemed so buttoned up. The volume still languishes in the psychology section of the bookcase. But over the years, not in the interests of self-help but more for efficiency, I still adopted some unconventional dressing techniques. For instance, one way to remove your shoes and socks is to roll back on the bed, feet in the air and use both hands to remove both shoes, then socks, at the same time. If they're lace-ups, you can undo both laces simultaneously too. To round things off you can try to toss both shoes into their accustomed place across the room, making them land soles down. An efficient way of putting a coat on is, instead of struggling to push one arm through at a time, take the coat from the back with both hands holding the collar. Then fling it over your head and push your hands into the arms at the same time. There are loads of variations on the theme e.g. put your deodorant on while brushing your teeth and running the comb through your hair while shaving. All very useful if your alarm clock failed to go off and you're late for work.

The post Post Office era

On Sunday, surf at the Corner was running following some big winds. I worked across to the westernmost section in front of the rocks where the waves had better shape and pitch. In big surf it's harder to latch on to the wave: you have to take it when it's quite critical, so need shape to turn and stay ahead of the white water as it tumbles over. Between sets I had close-up views of the attractive buildings along the Muizenberg 'Historical Mile', including the old post office. Completed in 1911 it was later used as a courthouse and has recently been renovated and taken over by an ad agency. There are loads of other old buildings including Cecil John Rhodes' cottage and Rust en Vrede, one of architect Herbert Baker's best residential works. The SA Post Office business is in turmoil with scores of branches closing down. It has run at a loss in recent years, aggravated last year by an insane, long drawn out strike. This was a wake up call for many businesses, not least magazine publishers (yes some people still read hard copy magazines!), who couldn't distribute their product. Inevitably they have sought other forms of delivery. You have to feel for unionised workers whose leaders are prepared to sacrifice jobs and livelihoods in return for unaffordable salary increases. In the photo you can see  from the quality of the building that, back in 1911, post was a profitable and respectable business, vital for firms and individuals alike. E-commerce has not really caught on here as it has in the UK and China. The Royal Mail has gained a new lease of life from the likes of Amazon.com, delivering stacks of parcels all over the country. I still get the odd radio station verification (QSL) in the snail mail along with local postage stamps. I don't hang about waiting for the postman to arrive anymore but when one does come it gives me a real kick.

China's has its way

I recently read Evan Osnos' book on China, "Age of Ambition". It was fascinating and had the virtue of following a number of diverse characters through time, a sort of longitudinal study. But I felt it had too much ideology about the inevitability of democracy - the ticking clock for China. I don't seem to detect that feeling among Chinese themselves, although I can't claim to have my finger firmly on the pulse. A few years ago I read all the biographies of Han Suyin in which she covers the worst of the Mao periods, inter alia. Some criticised her for being too forgiving of Mao. But when I look at China today I don't detect nearly such vitriolic hatred of Mao and his appalling destructions within the country as I do in Europe/USA. Perhaps it's just human nature: you move on, the new generation forgets the past, especially if you have to live there. This is all mixed up with big doses of patriotism and ancestral memory. I do follow the company Tencent closely and see the explosion of internet usage, e-commerce, classified ads and mobile phones across China. Services of all kinds are dramatically spreading through cities and provinces, rich and poor alike. That all has a very long way to run, most people have no idea. You see JD.Com delivery scooters everywhere and there are said to be over 1000 peer-to-peer money lenders, I could go on.... Osnos' book seemed to examine China via a pre-selected lense, whereas it's more likely developing along its own course, veering this way and that but never actually conforming to a handed-down ideology from the 'West'. We see the same thing in many economists' analyses of 'Africa' (all 50 plus countries!), where if only Africa adopted this way of doing things, or that, it could more quickly resemble/replicate the rich countries. Get real! As with China, 'Africa' is going to do things its way and there will be many different ways. Ditto India.