My fascination started when I was around 8 years old, back in the early '60s. There was a tube-type clock radio (pretty common in those days...) in my bedroom that I would fall asleep to. Sometimes I would just start scanning around the dial late at night, listening to all of the distant stations that were just above the noise floor. Back in those days the AM band was a lot quieter than it is nowadays. (I'm old, dammit! We wore onions on our belts, what about it!?)
Anyway, it was fascinating hearing all those stations way down in the dirt, wondering how far away they really were. It wasn't something I did religiously back then, I didn't get into logging station IDs, or anything like that. It was just a once in a while thing that I did. However, it was the fascination of discovery that hooked me!
Fast forward to the early '90s, when I got my first good SW receiver, a Drake R8. Along with that, I had also gotten a fan dipole antenna that I couldn't string up outside, since I was renting. So, I strung it up through the apartment, which was long, and narrow. It stretched from my bedroom at one end, through the kitchen, on through the hallway, past the bathroom, and into the living room at the other end; a distance of about 45 feet, or so. It actually worked, since it was an older building!
I would just sit there, spinning the dial, listening to whatever popped up. Again, I wasn't really so much interested in logging what stations or countries I could bag. Instead, I was more interested in the process of discovering what was out there, as well as the technology involved.
It has been a disjointed, undocumented, wallet draining, soul satisfying, and rather undisciplined love affair of discovery ever since!
Edit: I was scanning around the SW broadcast bands last night, and ran into an interval signal that belonged to Radio Romania. I haven't cruised those bands in quite some time, nor have I heard a real interval signal in many years. It was kinda cool, a blast from the past! Used to be all you heard at the top of the hour were everyone's interval signals. Cruising those bands, and suddenly hearing that interval signal is, to me, like walking down the moonlit street of some abandoned ghost town, and seeing an old friend unexpectedly pop up out of the shadows! This is why I love doing this.
