Russia.

Way back in the 1970s, during the heady years of the Cold War, there was an awful lot of anti-Russian propaganda about in 'the West'.

I am glad today that my children don't have to grow up reading the kind of bizarre and frankly absurd 'advice' once issued by our government on how to survive a nuclear attack. In short, this advice consisted of ripping some doors off their hinges and somehow fitting an entire family underneath as the house was obliterated around you!  Then again, it's the awareness of nuclear weapons that has been lost in today's younger generation, not the risk of a war itself.  Perhaps that is a bad thing.

Though I was born in a backward, rural part of Wales, I did have strong curiosity about the wider world.  I was always thinking: 'I'm pretty sure that all this stuff the government tells us about 'the Commies' is a bit biased, and I'm sure the people of Russia have no more enthusiasm for a nuclear winter than we do here'.

In a very real sense, the propaganda against Russia was one of the main reasons I was driven to take an interest in 'DX' radio.  This initially took the form of turning on my dad's old valve SW receiver sitting in a very cold, spiderweb-infested workshop - the kind of receiver with city names like 'Moscow' written on the dial - and tune in to what was being said.

Of course, all sides, of all colours, were sending propaganda out in an endless stream.  The current obsession with social media-based 'fake news' seems not to realise or to have long forgotten the era when hardly anything you heard on the radio or TV could be considered very reliable.

It took me a long time - many years - to take my interest up in amateur radio and pass the exam.  But when I did, I found myself being very happy to speak to real, everyday Russians.  Then as now, of course, there was no animosity between us, because we all just want to get on with our lives in peace, enjoying radio, a beer and sharing experiences from afar.

 

It is often said - and is always true - that if politicians were like amateur radio operators, the kind of warmongering that the idiotic Trump and the gangster Putin are today throwing around would not come to pass.


So, whilst we have our various differences, none are so grave that we should risk escalation to war.  Life is too short, and time on the radio shorter still, to waste time on threatening and killing one another.

And messages like this (not sent by any of the identified stations), received on 14MHz FT8 this morning, have no place - at all - in ham radio: