# obituary: my uncle showed me real radio // 18-8-12
Yesterday my uncle Bernie died, after several heart attacks and a
stent surgery. I did not have very close contact with him recently,
but he was for sure influential in my interest concerning radio,
especiall shortwaves, Morse code and maritime radio.
For several years (before I was born), he was a sailor on commercial
ships, and my mother told me she was listening to short wave radio
broadcasts for/from areas where he was en route, when she was a
little girl (she was a lot younger than he). From that time, he got
his interest in shortwave radio, which he kept even when later on
he was a service and installation engineer travelling all over the
world to clients with textile manufacturing machines he was getting
up or in shape.
When I was about 15 years old, he gave me a rather high quality
shortwave/VHF receiver with BFO (beat frequency oscillator, allowing
to render CW and SSB transmissions audible by mixing a variable
local oscillator signal to the received one at the intermediate
frequency stage). This opened a new world to me, of shortwave
transmissions from near and far, and especially CW/Morse code, which
some years later I learned during preparation courses for the army.
That first receiver unfortunately broke some years ago, but I still
have two SONY receivers I later got from him (those were the days
when SONY still had an excellent radio division with capable people
building excellent receivers), and of course my fond memories of
him showing me the initial path into the world of communication.
