The origin of this madness was simple..."Can I use shortwave radio to forecast surf when I'm in the middle of nowhere?" I first heard of the idea when I bumped into a guy in East Cape, Baja Sur in 1995 listening to a primitive radio broadcast from Fort Collins, Colorado. Since then I learned of weather faxes and SITOR broadcasts used by people sailing across the Pacific Ocean in small boats.
Over break I was successfully able to forcast the surf from the middle of Baja! Using a shortwave radio and a laptop computer, I was able to receive and decode weather broadcasts (while at Point B) being sent from Pt. Reyes, California (Point A). See below for a map demonstrating the total distance.....
I used a home-made antenna constructed of speaker wire. You can see the wire behind my head in the photo below. By the way I'm cutting up our yummy Christmas pineapple (from the Glahs) while on the beach.
So what did I receive? See below for two examples....
Each image took ten minutes using a program called SeaTTY (....and a healthy dose of patience and experimentation just to figure out how to make it work). Of course I could simply follow this link to download the same graphics but then again I'd need the Internet. I could also use Surfline but where is the fun in that?
I'll trade good surf and the sunset below for no Internet any day. Viva Baja and shortwave!
