It’s hard to believe that I have such vivid memories of from 50 years ago. When Dad tuned in the short wave so I could hear the beep he was a young man in his thirties and I was just six. The short wave radio was ancient. It was red mahogany with push buttons for all the popular frequencies. You could listen to Russia or London or Sidney just by pushing a button. It used an old style heterodyne circuit so it squealed as you turned the knob. Dad had a long wire aerial stretched out the window to trees in the yard in order to pick up the weak signal.
A few years later I would extend that aerial over the whole neighborhood with about a mile of wire. A neighbor was an electrician and he had thrown out bundles of copper wire that I salvaged. Rather than sell it for its scrap value, I ran it from tree to tree all over the block. I could pick up the weakest stations all over the world on my Heathkit radio and when there was thunder and lightning the wires coming into my bedroom used to spark and snap with each nearby strike.