Carrying a Shortwave SSB Receiver in My Bag—and Why I Stopped
I didn’t put it back in that day. I told myself I’d been carrying it out of curiosity more than need. The commute is the same every morning. Car, parking lot, elevator, desk. There’s not a lot of room in that loop for tuning across bands and listening for voices that drift in and out like they’re thinking out loud from another continent. It’s not like a flashlight where the use case shows up unannounced and justifies the weight. Most days, the receiver just sat there, quiet, like it was waiting for a different version of me.
The first time I started carrying it, it was because I had been staying late at work. The building empties out after six, and the quiet is different from home. There’s a hum from the vents and the faint click of someone else’s keyboard down the hall. I brought the receiver one evening on a whim, set it on the desk next to my monitor, and ran the little wire antenna up along the edge of a shelf. It felt slightly out of place, like putting a small camp stove on an office desk. But when I tuned into something that wasn’t just noise, a voice cutting through static in a language I don’t speak, it shifted the room a bit. Not dramatically. Just enough to make the fluorescent light feel less like the only thing happening.
After that, it stayed in the bag.
Carrying it during the day is a different story. It has a presence, even when it’s not in a pocket. In a bag, it still asks for a certain kind of awareness. You don’t want to crush it under a laptop or let it slide around with loose coins. It changes how you pack. I started giving it its own spot, which meant something else had to move or leave. A small notebook got pushed out. I told myself I’d just use my phone for notes, which mostly worked, except for the times I reached for paper out of habit and felt that small absence.
There’s also the antenna wire, which is never quite as tidy as you think it is. You wrap it carefully at night, then the next day it has a kink that wasn’t there before, like it’s been thinking its own thoughts in the dark. I kept a little rubber band around it, but that just made it one more small step to undo before using it. Those steps matter more than you expect. If something takes just a bit too long to set up, it starts to drift out of reach, even if it’s right there.
I didn’t use it much during the workday. Maybe once a week, usually around lunch if I stayed at my desk. I’d lower the volume so it was just for me, turn the dial slowly, and stop when something held together long enough to feel intentional. Sometimes it was a steady broadcast. Sometimes it was two voices stepping on each other, fading in and out like they couldn’t agree on who should be heard. It wasn’t about the content, not really. It was the act of listening to something that didn’t care if I was listening.
Then there were the days I forgot it at home. Those days were interesting because nothing actually went wrong. I didn’t need it. No problem showed up that it could solve. But I’d catch myself reaching into that inner pocket out of habit, not to use it, just to check that it was there. When it wasn’t, there was a small, quiet mismatch. Like wearing a watch for years and then leaving it on the dresser. You keep glancing at your wrist even though you know exactly what time it is.
After a while, I started questioning why I was carrying it at all. It’s not light enough to ignore, not useful enough to justify itself in the usual way. It doesn’t help me open boxes or find dropped things under the car seat. It doesn’t even reliably entertain. There are long stretches where it’s just static and fading signals, like trying to tune into a conversation happening behind a wall.
But then I’d have a moment with it that felt different from everything else I carry. Sitting in the car before heading into the house, engine off, just letting the radio scan slowly. Or on a weekend, standing in the backyard, holding it at a certain angle because that’s where the signal seems to settle. It’s a kind of use that doesn’t announce itself. No one asks to borrow it. No one notices you have it. It doesn’t solve anything you can point to.
Eventually, it migrated. Out of the daily bag and onto the desk at home. That felt like an admission, but also a relief. The bag got a little simpler again. Things stopped shifting around to make room. The notebook came back. The inner pocket went back to holding things that don’t require attention.
Still, every now and then, usually when I’m packing for a longer day or I know I’ll have some dead time somewhere unfamiliar, I’ll pick it up and hesitate for a second before slipping it back into that pocket. It changes the weight just enough to notice. Not heavy, just present.
I don’t carry it because I expect to use it. It’s more like I carry it because there are certain stretches of time where having it nearby feels right, even if I can’t explain that in a way that would hold up in a conversation. Most days, it stays behind and nothing is missing. And then some days, it comes along, and the day has this small, quiet option built into it, like a door you probably won’t open but you’re aware it’s there.