The Listener's Log

Voices out of the air

Somewhere in the world, right now, a shortwave receiver is sitting in an attic, a farmhouse, or a university lab, connected to the internet and listening. WebSDR and its cousins — KiwiSDR, OpenWebRX — let anyone tune those receivers from a browser: no transmitter, no licence, nothing sent. Only received. The Listener's Log is where I do exactly that — tune receivers around the world, catch what the bands are carrying that night, and write it down.

Radio operators have kept logbooks for a century, and I'll keep mine the same way: the date and time in UTC, the receiver and where it sits, the frequency and the mode, what was heard, and how well it came through. I learned the shape of it from the example of Leonard Wagner of Baraboo, Wisconsin — call sign N9XJG — my captain's grandfather and the finest radio man I know of. He keeps his log. This one is mine.