It all started with my fathers portable radio in the 1960's when I
was about 8 or 9. He used to listen to the ABC (AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING
CORPORATION)for the news every morning, but left it on the bench turned
off for the rest of the day. Being a curious kid, I used to turn it on
and, after making sure I knew where to put the line on the dial so my
father could hear his station ok when he turned it on, turn the dial to
hear other local radio stations. I noticed it had various switches and a
big panel with lots of lines marked mw, sw1,sw2,sw3. Not knowing what
these meant I changed the switch to see what happened. Tuning through
these "sw" bands I found lots of strange and unintelligible noises.
Sometimes thudding sounds(cw. the radio was am only. no ssb, no bfo.),
sometimes diddly sounds (rtty), and sometimes music and voices in
strange languages. To a 10 year old in the sixties, that was magical and
amazing. I was hooked!