I've been interested in radio, since I first got a mutliband portable radio from Radio Shack, back in the mid 1960's.
It seemed amazing to pick up AM radio stations from far away places, like Des Moines, Iowa, St Louis, Missouri, Indianapolis, Indiana and on occasion Denver, Colorado.
I had that radio up until I left Iran in 1979, it got lost in shipping somewhere trying to get back to Chicago.
I would tune into the Voice of America at night, to get the current US news, as the local news outlets in Esfahan,Iran, had no international news to speak of.
My brother was a ham radio operator in high school and college, and during the month of June, there was a US Civil Defense operation called 'Field Day', the purpose was to have a communications network in place, in case of a 'national emergency' which I took as a nuclear war.
The objective was to contact as many other ham radio operators in a 24 hour period, and document the contact.
The site was to be self sufficient, not connected to the local power grid, so generators and the like had to be set-up
It was kind of ironic, that the site that this group of my brothers fellow ham radio operators had chosen, was the final resting place for the world's first nuclear reactor.
Out in the southwestern suburbs of Chicago, the first site of the Argonne National Laboratory complex, which is now part of the Cook County, Illinois forest preserve district.
For you gps fanatics, the co-ordinates are : 41 degrees 42 minutes 08 seconds N, 87 degrees 54 minutes 48 seconds W.
