the state of my hobby

The date is 28 September 2015. I'm standing on the roof of a parking garage, which was my first regular outdoor shortwave listening location in July 2005. A beautiful sunset took place tonight, and orange remnants are still visible on the horizon. It's always pleasurable to climb the stairs of this structure to view the sky and surrounding area.

There's an airplane approach overhead, for jets coming from the Pacific towards SFO's 28 L/R runways. So a continuous line of carefully-spaced airplanes is often visible. Occasionally, a widebody jet approaching from the north flies to this location and does a U-turn for the approach. (In fact, that's exactly what happened when I finished composing that paragraph.)

As the sky gets darker, a nightly opportunity opens up with the removal of the D-layer of the ionosphere. Sure, daytime skywave propagation occurs under different characteristics, but I'm primarily a nighttime listener. And I'm comforted by my hobby of outdated technology of analog radio broadcasting, despite my daily usage of the Internet. I remember Radio Havana Cuba, in particular, coming through my Kaito 1102 portable. Naturally, when I went home that evening, I wrote my reception log on a computer.

When I began this hobby over 10 years ago, it was already declining. Shortwave transmission sites are being decommissioned and disappearing, and international news organizations prefer Internet distribution. RF noise levels are problematic due to the complicated infrastructure in the average modern home, making cheaper indoor shortwave receivers and their antennas seemingly perform poorly. Shortwave is a niche and a hobby in my country. Smartphones and portable music players tend to focus on digital audio files and Internet streaming. And if a radio tuner is included, it's FM only.

An argument in favor of Internet broadcasting is that the content matters more than the medium. The Internet can deliver better quality further and more reliably than analog radio broadcasting, which is subject to atmospheric conditions and geographic limitations. And shortwave broadcast equipment is expensive to operate.

But these are not reasons to abandon a hobby or a passion. They are limitations and realities to be taken into account so that one may adapt. Rather than complain about what has changed, it's possible to enjoy what's still available. And that's what I plan to do.