We tend to take the ability to communicate for granted these days but there is still a thrill to be had when a faint voice bubbles up out of the static from a distant corner of the world. That's the magic of good, old fashioned radio and I'm not really at all sure why it sets the pulse racing.
Today, for instance, whilst still 200 miles from land I thought nothing of clearing down my home email account a dozen times and dealing with the every day business that pursues us even to the Labrador Sea.
A neighbour of one of our tenants was getting agitated by an alarm in the tenant's flat and she didn't know how to contact him. I forwarded the email and the problem was sorted within an hour and the tenant marvelled that we had email contact from the middle of nowhere.
Another example. This blog is written on an iPhone, sent wirelessly to a sat phone, beamed into space and, within an instant, sits on the www for anyone to read anywhere. It works every time and all the spelling mistakes and typos are my own and not corruptions of messages as they bounce around in mysterious ways. Because it always works I take it for granted.
All of that has become routine and unremarkable. But things change at
2330 UTC when we tune into the hissing cacophony of static that is our SSB radio. Definitely a thing of the 20th century and not the 21st. Usually static is all we hear. Tonight though a familiar voice rolled out of the whirls and warbles. 'SHIMSHAL this is DESTINY' . A thrill of excitement as we heard, faint but recognisable, Andy's familiar voice bounced to us off the ionosphere and caught by our rigging which acts as our aerial.
I could have emailed him in a moment and at anytime I could pick up the phone and called him sat phone to sat phone or sat phone to cellphone but it wouldn't have been the same. Weak radio waves beamed into the sky and dragged into our radio set a thousand miles away add a magic and a mystery to an everyday correspondence. Just like it must have been in the Second World War when desperate messages were sent by desperate people risking their lives to pass on intelligence.
Maybe it's because I can understand things analogue that require ingenuity and cunning to make them work? Whereas thinks digital are beyond my understanding and are, therefore, expected to work first time and all the time.
I think the attraction is some kind of nostalgia for a time when communication was tenuous and, as a result, more precious. Long live the SSB!