ionosphere

William Cauffiel Beauchamp
Holland, Pennsylvania — 2010

Born in Towson, Maryland on July 4, 1957 to Janet C Beauchamp and Theodore M Beauchamp, Jr. Both Janet and Ted were formerly residents of Wilmington, Delaware. Brother of Theodore M Beauchamp, III — who was ten years my elder. Lived the tender years, until 7 years of age, in Towson, Maryland a suburb of Baltimore. Moved to the New York metro­politan area when I was about to start 2^nd grade. My Dad’s job with WR Grace had required him to begin working in Manhattan so he found a home for us in Summit, New Jersey. At one point, my Dad’s job required his on-site super­vision for the construction of a plant for Ochoa Fertilizer in Guanica, Puerto Rico. This made it necessary for us to live in Ponce, Puerto Rico for a couple of years.  On return I continued my education in Summit through High School.

“An interest in Art was always strong and an under­lying motivation throughout my entire life. Art and Drawing moved to the forefront when outside of the Continental United States in Puerto Rico. It was comforting.”

Reading and drawing were my enter­tainment in the Caribbean as television there was minimal and the sparse programming that did exist was broadcast in Spanish. Armed Forces Radio and Television Service did broadcast to those of us who spoke English as there were several fair sized military instal­la­tions in the area. We had the news each evening with trans­mis­sions on both shortwave and the AM Radio bands. It was a time of conflict and turmoil back on the US mainland. This was the time of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and Woodstock in New York. I remember seeing a black and white photo on the cover of LIFE magazine with a guy yelling and giving the finger to the camera. It was an inter­esting time. Vietnam and Southeast Asia. I remember intense arguments at the dinner table between my Dad and Brother Ted when we returned to Summit. Dad spoke of “Ted’s respon­si­bility to go to Vietnam”. (Dad was a Navy man in both World War 2 and the Korean War)Fortunately my Brother never went. Finally Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard M Nixon decided that a futile battle had been fought and started to bring our men home. Brother Ted married a nice Cuban woman named Victoria Isabel Santiago DelRio and that lasted for a couple years. Then as so many marriages do these days — it fell apart and Ted and Vicky were divorced. She moved back to the Miami area or there­abouts and we never heard from her again.

After High School I applied to only one college. Friends asked where I was going to go? Fortunately I was correct when I told them “Parsons School of Design in New York.” I got their catalog and I loved what everyone was working on in the photos that they showed of the school. So after a big fat Guidance Counselor told me “Lets be realistic Bill — You’ll never get in there with these grades”… I took the home exam and went in for an interview with somebody and sure enough — it was like a job — When can you start? This school felt so right. I majored in the Illustration program and loved it. The best thing about being there was that nobody told you how to do something — just the proper materials to use in creating. There wasn’t a right or a wrong way to paint or draw. There was your way. That was impressive. One of the biggest things we were told to pay attention to were the concepts. That was so true. If you can concep­tu­alize — you can do almost anything. So there I was learning to paint & draw and self promote. I had some work being copied at different scales and a Publisher saw them and they gave him my phone number. I think it was the following weekend that I was working for this fellow doing my first adver­tising comp for a pharma­ceu­tical ad. Within a very short period of time I was working till all hours and just about everyday. I actually got so busy that I dropped out of Parsons during my final semester. That was wrong. I had gotten pretty serious with Jean — my wife to be — and this allowed us to think about getting married and getting an apartment. Too much too fast.

Neither Jean Forbes Shelby nor I had any experience in being on our own. Especially me. I commuted to Parsons in New York by way of the Erie Lackawanna — Conrail line into Hoboken, NJ. Home each night and out each morning on that train. Jean had at least gone away to school in Ohio and traveled to Europe for a semester. We had pre-marital counseling from a Minister at the Central Presbyterian Church in Summit. We were told by Minister Johnson that if we didn’t have our children within the first couple years that we would resent them as they would be in the way of our lives as we had gotten used to them. That advice came from a man who committed suicide not long after we were married. In retro­spect, you have to look back and wonder. Sage advice? I don’t think so. Jean and I had two sons. Thomas Forbes Beauchamp and Jonathan Cauffiel Beauchamp.

Enter Susan B Leffler and life changes for the very best -

I met the best woman in the entire world and we dated. And we got married. All done having children, we can just look forward to enjoying each other’s company when the nest empties. We never run out of things to talk about. She likes drawing too. I’ll be showing her artwork in this blog also and her photog­raphy as well. I wish she wanted to write some of these articles. My three stepdaughters have added and whole new perspective to my life. The eldest, Lauren, is a student at Ohio State University. The two younger girls — Olivia and Caroline are still within the Bucks County school system.

But — Why “ionos­phere” you ask?

Once upon a time on my sun porch studio in Somerville, New Jersey I sat working on an adver­tising design or magazine drawing. Most likely about 3:00 or 3:30 in the morning. In the background there was a Kenwood R-5000 Shortwave Receiver and some tinny sounding voices were just making their way beyond the base static level of atmos­pheric noise. First Gulf War… a C-130 Aircraft on the ground surrounded by guards refusing to let the air crew off the plane. Requesting immediate Diplomatic Support… I won’t tell you which country they were on the ground in… When it came time to police the area — there were days on end of daisy chained US Air Force equipment and personnel deploying around the clock.

Out of Panama in the middle of the night a Joint Task Force moved toward Manuel Noriega… It was on the radio. First use of the Air Force F-117s  against ground targets was that night.

Multiple Hurricanes — including Gilbert and Andrew moved across the Caribbean Sea — over St Thomas and Jamaica. All power was cut-off to those islands and while listening I could hear amateur radio operators broad­casting with wind gusts of near 150 mph before one by one — they and their trans­mitters just blew away. In Jamaica I heard a broad­caster give a status report over the Shortwave while in water up to his chest and powered by salvaged car batteries. This was real life as it happened and in my mind it was far more inter­esting than Cable TV. It was my entertainment.

All Shortwave Radio signals get from one spot to another by bouncing off the layers of the ionos­phere. The signal reflects from near space to the planet and back many times in just milliseconds… Dependent upon charges in the atmos­phere — when the sunspot cycle nears it’s peak so does the quality of Shortwave signal and depend­ability of communications.

My Shortwave listening was made very inter­esting by being a beta tester at the time for a program called “Scancat” that was written by Jim Springer of Computer Aided Technologies in Louisiana. He also wrote a second program called Copycat that would control the Universal Communications terminal that I had running along with the radios to be able to read several packet and teletype signals as broadcast on Shortwave frequencies. He has some great software for this sort of activity and most likely would still be an inter­esting website to visit if you have any interest in this kind of thing. I still have a very good receiver that is unsur­passed — The DSP NRD-545 by Japan Radio Corporation. These days though… there just isn’t as much on the formerly active frequencies. These “green” compact fluorescent bulbs create a lot of RFI radio frequency inter­ference right there on the shortwave bands. In our house here we’ve replaced just about every incan­descent bulb that we had. Makes a nice solid hum on a good swath of bandwidth. Hams used to go nuts if somebody so much as had a noisy rheostat down the block on their Dining Room wall. The quest for radio quiet. The next big thing to kill shortwave and something that I spoke of with my late brother Ted (KA2USU) just before he died was data trans­mission over power­lines. Add direct broadcast satel­lites and cellular phones and you have little reason to strain an ear listening to the stuff. But there is a romance of a bygone era in that Shortwave Radio. Today you are most likely to hear some extremists getting airtime over WRNO New Orleans or what had previ­ously been referred to as Bible Thumpers. It is every­where on Shortwave… Sermons. Not a bad thing in context with Sunday… but 24/7 is a bit over the top… I’m not far from another International Broadcast source in Red Lion, PA.

Even today though — There is something very cool about amateur radio and hearing Florida and Wisconsin having a QSO (chat) on Upper or Lower Sideband. The effects that you hear indicate various terres­trial events. Suddenly strong signal of brief duration — signal reflection off the ionization trail of a meteorite during the various meteor showers and a warbly sort of watery voice quality that was induced as an effect from Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). It was always a curiousity flipping on that power switch. What would it be today? Barges reporting location on the Mississippi River through coastal station WLO? A freighter breaking up in the Atlantic with the US Coast Guard responding? Maybe a vessel carrying automo­biles would try to aid her crew while the Coast Guard would drop pumps to assist. C-130s and helicopters working search grids based on the last EPIRB trans­mission of a boat in distress.

I wanted to write books that would incor­porate computer databases of known “intrigue” frequencies and commu­ni­ca­tions. I’d wanted to create what I was consid­ering calling “ionos­phere publi­ca­tions”. One big thing stopped that from happening. The reality of what happened on 9/11 and the vulner­a­bility of the mainland US to additional infor­mation being made public. That just would not be a good idea. All of the Mainsail frequencies — all of the Mystic Star frequencies that were so inter­esting to listen to. Just about anybody would enjoy listening to priority traffic from Air Force One. I remember hearing James Baker very clearly with phone patch traffic. Citizen Carter on a diplo­matic mission to Haiti. Alexander Haig… It’s a long list. Computers were being merged with the receivers and you could keep track of activity with other Utility Listening enthu­siasts and know just when you’d hear the military nets sign on.

We just don’t do that anymore. Got to say that I miss it.
It truly was fasci­nating stuff.

Shortwave Radio — Amateur Radio Chat Shortwave Radio — Radio Canada International Shortwave Radio — Transatlantic Air Traffic Shortwave Radio — New York Aeradio Weather