The original global communications hobby

##Ancient history ###When I was 11, back in the mid-1970s, my parents bought me a transistor radio for Christmas. It was a Benkson medium wave and longwave portable, made in Hong Kong, which fitted nicely in the hand, ran for ever on a PP9 battery, and with it I discovered (although I didn't understand the physics at the time) the wonder of over-the-horizon radio communications. The Ionosphere…