Some notes on perpetual progress, you really should read this, and the old immoral/amoral conundrum...
I saw the other day that a guy giving up on cruising was selling an RDF (radio direction finder) and it got me thinking...
Not all that long ago everyone sailing off into the sunset had to have an RDF and for good reason as in those pre-cheap satellite navigation days they made a whole lot of sense. They were pretty simple to use, did not cost an arm and a leg, and just about anywhere you wanted to go had a radio beacon or beacons pumping out their "I'm here, I'm here" siren call.
We had the cheapest RDF available at the time (the NASA Radiofix) and we used it all the time both to find where we were going, where we were, and to just listen to the radio while on watch...
It worked flawlessly but I always lusted after the much more expensive and modern looking Lokata with its digital readout and, as much as I tried, I could never quite get it through the need/want test...
Sadly, most navigational radio beacons are no longer in service and even the ones in use at airports around the world are being phased out in 2015 so the usefulness of RDF's is not what it once was. That said, the ability to figure out where a radio signal (or signals) is coming from, whether it be radio beacon, radio station, or VHF/SSB signal, is not a bad thing to have in your arsenal of tools and might just come in handy some day.
Listening to Johnny Cash
So it goes...
