Hams are Often SWLs, Too

I got started in radio by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts on my grandparents’ old Philco console radio, and I still enjoy listening to shortwave broadcasts. So, I was kind of surprised when I got an email from Karl KG8LD, inviting ARROW members to a tour of some local radio stations being sponsored by the Michigan Assn. of Radio Enthusiasts (MARE). Here’s the text from their membership application page:

Introduction to MARE (the Michigan Area Radio Enthusiasts)

Did you know there is an honest to goodness “local club” in the Great Lakes area for radio buffs? We publish a bi-monthly bulletin, have regular meetings of the members (held in Southern Michigan), and we also publish (since January 1994!) an e-mail “TipSheet” (ISSN 1075-2471) for members only. It appears weekly in the winter, less often during other seasons.

Radio hobbyists are usually a solitary bunch, but if you haven’t met others who don’t look strangely when you say “The BBC had a neat game show on last night”, “the local cops have just gone to a Motorola Trunked System” or “60 metres was REALLY hot yesterday”, you really don’t know what you are missing. Just putting a face to the names you see on USENET or in the club bulletins is a treat in and of itself, and you will find that Michigan has a group of very active DXers and SWLs unlike any other similarly populated area in North America. [Southern Californian DXers may be more numerous, but we have it all over them in the “heart” department! ;)]

Some more info on us: The bulletin, The Great Lakes Monitor, (ISSN 1054-1071) is published every other month, and is provided as a part of the membership dues. A sample is available for US$2.00 from the address below.

Some of the columns in The Great Lakes Monitor include:

• HQ edited by Harold Frodge, publisher and MW DXer extraordinaire. This area highlights the coming events of the club — such as meetings and DXpeditions, as well as other “local” (ie within the Great Lakes area) radio events, and has a section of “MARE Bits” — little items of note that don’t quite fit elsewhere.
• Q&A edited by Ken Zichi, SWL & SW/MW/TV DXer who’s been around as long as dirt (or so it seems). This column is an “open forum” for members’ tech- nical (and non-technical!) questions and to help us all learn more about radio hobbies.
• Shortwave Space edited by Larry Russell. SWBC Station schedules. *PSB Channels edited by Ira Paul. This column provides info, loggings and tips for stations broadcasting above 30 Megs.
• Medium-Wave & FM/TV edited by Neil Wolfish, MW DXer of some infamy. Loggings and station news for domestic stations in the Great Lakes area.
• QSL/Verifications edited by Mark Humenchyk, QSL Hound of some notariety. This is MARE’s “bragging place” for members to share their latest QSLs.

MARE also organizes regular “face to face” meetings, roughly every other month from September to June. We usually have one or two picnics, a couple of informal meetings, a couple of “formal” meetings (with a topic and/or guest speaker) and we hold at least one (and often more) “DXpedition” per year. We also occasionally have a special event such as a station tour. [In the past we’ve toured WJR’s studios in Detroit, the VoA Bethany Ohio transmitter site, and the WKBD (Channel 50) studios and transmitter.]

If you would like to learn more about Michigan Area Radio Enthusiasts, Inc., (a Michigan non-profit Corporation) founded in 1984, write to:

MARE, Inc.
PO Box 200
Manchester, MI 48158
United States of America

Annual membership dues are US$11.00 in the USA and Canada (more from outside North America — but our emphasis is on members in the Great Lakes area). A sample newsbulletin is available for US$2.00. If you are at all interested –check us out. For less than the price of a pizza, you can get a whole year’s worth of information to make your hobby time more enjoyable!

If you’d like to receive a couple of the E-mail tip sheets to see what kind of information we put out, drop us a note at [email protected] and we’ll see that you get the next couple of issues.

At only eleven bucks, this is a great deal. My check’s in the mail.