Sunday, January 10, 2016

Radio Free Chuckie.....

Chuckie Calling……

I think that will be name of one of my programs once I win the one billion dollar ($1,000,000,000.00) Powerball Lottery next week.

You see, I plan to start my own international shortwave radio station. It will be called “The Voice of Chuckie” and will broadcast is as many languages as I can find friends who speak a foreign language. 

The reason? Well I’ll be honest. If I win a billion dollars why the hell not? What would you expect me to do? Party and drink and fuck myself to death? Where’s the fun in that?

Shortwave radio has fascinated me ever since I was a kid. Dad was a HAM radio operator and made for me a little crystal radio set out of some wire and a toilet paper tube. With an old set of headphones I could pick up WTIC 1080 am in Hartford Ct. Sure it wasn’t from thousands of miles away, but that didn’t matter to a 10 year old kid. I would sit on Dad’s lap in his basement “Radio Shack” and listen to him talk to people all over the world.

It was fucking magic to me plain and simple.

Years later I started getting hooked again on the hobby. In high school, before the demise of Radio Shack stores, I bought a digital shortwave radio. That was really something. Dad showed me how to orient and calculate the length of my long wire antennas so I could pick up stations from around the world. As a poor college student, I had another  much cheaper radio from the “The Shack” that I listened to at night. My friends were out drinking and scoring ugly drunken women and I was home listening to the Russians and British on the shortwave. Yes I was a Nerd of the first order.

I started collecting old Hallicrafters radios at flea markets and off of eBay. I would send them to my dad to restore and play with. It gave him something to do I suppose. He never bitched about it and seemed to enjoy that I was sort of following in his footsteps with my hobby.

later on I became a HAM myself. It used to be that once you retired from the amateur radio hobby your call sign was retired. When that rule was changed my dad’s old call sign was available again. So I studied up, took the test and received his old call sign. I still have it and play with the 2m and 70 cm bands especially during Hurricane season in Florida where I live. Down deep inside I think he is proud of me and secretly pleased that I got his old callsign.

A couple years ago Wifey gave me a very nice (Like $500 + nice) icom digital shortwave radio for Christmas. It is freaking awesome. But there is only one problem. Most of the countries I used to listen to  have discontinued their world band (Shortwave)  broadcasts to North America or closed up shop altogether. Budgetary reasons they say. They now broadcast on the far cheaper internet. Which really sucks.

Sure you don’t get the pops and crackles, fading in and out and whistles like old time shortwave gave you, but the internet stations can be blocked or shut down by the push of a button. You also need a computer or a pretty advanced “idiot phone” to listen nowadays. More government censorship the conspiracy center of my brain tells me.

It pisses me off, it really does.

So therefore I want to start my own radio show. I’ll get Joe, who speaks Spanish, to be my News director, hire a jock to do my sports show. Wifey will be my medical editor. I’ll get Lady Finn’s kids to do the musical segments and I will do the commentary. Joe also has a catholic thing going on so he can be my vatican news update reporter as well.

This makes perfect sense to me as I have already conquered the internet with my award winning informative and entertaining blog which you are now reading.


How can I lose with a line up like that?