My Radio memories

I am fascinated with the radio, and I always was, although there are differing reason today and when I was a kid. I remember those old Ramsons radios which was like having an iPhone at that time. There were some brands I never figured out, but they also worked flawlessly, just a minor tradeoff in sound quality. I remember me figuring out the best place to figure out the best signal. Sometimes it used to work only if your body is in contact with the antenna, the second you remove your hand, it ruined your favorite song. I somehow figured out that if you rig the antenna of a radio with the TV antenna (Yagi antenna- I did not know the name at that time) then it worked like a charm. All the channels that used to play modern songs like Red FM, Radio city etc.; frequencies were on my fingers.

Then over time as TV got more popular and then phones, smartphones took over, the radio got lost, until one day I found one catching dust. It was a Ramsons model, but the string that connects tuner to external tuning knob was broken but overall, it was in good shape. I opened it, half of the solders had come out and half the wires I broke in the process. It used to work on the big D size batteries which is almost impossible to come by, but I got the info about the voltage, and I knew I can manage with a phone’s battery if I manage to solder one.

My first challenge was to figure out which wire goes where and that proved to be the most daunting task. I figured out the transistor model and then after a lot of google searches and research I found the schematics of it. It took some time to figure out what each component of the board does. It took me a few days to tweak connections and play with solder then one day I actually made it work. It was all static, no sound, no music or anything. I totally forgot about the antenna, I took a aluminum wire and used it as an antenna; and here we are, my radio was working. I was able to tune to like 4-5 channels, at night I got few more. I was so happy and for few days I only listened to it, my mom was thinking I had gone mad, but people do not realize that satisfaction.

Although I did not manage to close it properly because the external tuner knob and the tuner inside had this complicated pully-spring kind of system and some parts of it were missing. Then I got busy with all the other stuff, and it again went catching dust somewhere. I had some plans to build my own radio from scratch someday.

I recently got interested in radio again because I got tired of listening to the same kind of music. I realized that radio used to give you exposure to new and random music taste but now I am stuck in my own filter bubble. Whether I use Spotify, YouTube, whatever they are all same algorithms. It trapped me in my own music bubble, and I am tired of it. I wanted something new, something surprising and then I tuned to the radio.

Recently I am playing around with an app called RadioGarden, although I have used it before but I am again gone back to using it. You get a map of a lot of radio stations around the world as little-little dots and then you can just play around. I found it so cool, not only do you find something new, but you also get to know what people are listening to around the world.

I found this channel called Ujala Radio which is an Amsterdam, and I am addicted to it (not because it bear resemblance to my name). First, I was surprised by a Hindi channel in Amsterdam until I realized there are many around the world. I looked for places in US, Canada because I knew that a lot of Indians live there, and I found more. I like radio garden, although sometimes ads are annoying but If I had money, I might have paid for it as well, but it does not interrupt your music like Spotify does. It also has a very beautiful website as well.

Here are some of the channels I am listening to these days:

Ujala Radio Amsterdam, Netherlands

Radio SBS Utrecht, Netherlands

Sangeet Radio Houston, US

Radio Zindagi Edison, US

Radio Privet Nytva, Russia

It is not just RadioGarden; I am also playing with the local radio on my smartphone, but you need more patience for that because you can’t be moving around.