by Karl D. Forth
Richard E. Wood may have been the best-known DXer ever.
I first met him briefly at a radio convention in the mid-1970s; it may have been Columbus or Atlanta. A friend, Robert Kramer, had met him earlier and hadn’t enjoyed his first encounter. Rob had asked Richard to autograph his copy of the book “How to Listen to the World,” and apparently Richard, the closest thing to a celebrity in the hobby, had for some reason refused.
A few years later, Richard was teaching languages at Southeast Missouri State University. With fellow DXers Rob Kramer (who had forgiven the earlier snub) and Jeff Roberts, we traveled from our college, Southern Illinois University, to visit Richard.
We were recruited to erect a television antenna on the roof of his house in Cape Girardeau so he could TV DX. There was moderate, persistent rain, and the roof was a bit slippery. Richard supervised our efforts but didn’t join us on the roof. Our own 1970s interest in television DX led us to understand the urgency of the antenna raising. (We also bought Coors beer that was then unavailable east of the Mississippi River.)
That day, I asked Dr. Wood which languages he was studying, and he said he was brushing up on his Albanian, producing a German-Albanian dictionary to support this claim.
Richard, originally from Newcastle, England, was a regular contributor to all of the DX clubs, providing important updates and useful information. He had taught in Indiana, Baton Rouge, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Hawaii, and other locations. Hawaii was his favorite location, and he showed that you could receive most of the world on mediumwave from those islands.
He was very intelligent and rubbed some people the wrong way.
He was also a prolific writer, authoring Shortwave Voices of the World (the Finnish version outsold the English), How to Listen to the World, and the Communications Handbook magazine in the 1970s.
Richard also developed a language recognition course, and studied and wrote about propagation and other subjects.
My last visit with Richard was in early 2007, when my wife and I were vacationing on the Big Island, and we rented a house for a week not far from Richard’s base in the Hawaiian Paradise Park development, southeast of Hilo. We visited Richard several times in Hilo, where he sold local coffee at a space in the market, and we went to his source of Kona coffee farther south on Hawaii Island. For the rest of the trip, the rental car had the rich aroma of the Kona coffee cargo. Richard and I talked about DXing, especially mediumwave DXing from Hawaii, which was his current focus. With my portable radio on that trip I had received two California local channel stations at a distance of 2300 miles. My wife observed that our conversation about DXing was like listening to two people speak another language.
Richard died of a heart attack in Hawaii at the age of 67 in September 2007.
Karl D. Forth has been interested in radio and DXing for more than 50 years. This story was included in the book Radio Nights and Distant Signals.
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I met Dr. Richard E Wood in Baton Rouge, LA in the 70’s when he was a professor at LSU. He gave me a autographed copy of his book. I spent an evening with him & felt overpowered by his knowledge. He had a 50 foot tower erected next to his home. He needed the antenna mounted & none of his friends offered, so I told him that I would install the antenna. I climbed up the tower & installed a monster FM antenna that looked like a VHF TV antenna. I didn’t have a climbers belt or a safety harness. I had spent 3 years in the Army in Germany. We had tilt over antennas put up with a J Pole to setup, just never told him. I still climb to put up antennas. I’m also 80 years old & weigh the same as I did in 1963.
“I still climb to put up antennas. I’m also 80 years old”
“Danger Will Robinson! Danger!” Be werry, werry careful. 😉
— Richard Langley
The Finnish version of Shortwave Voices of the World was published in 1971 and it was the first comprehensive guidebook on DXing in Finnish, even though the first DX clubs in Finland were set up as early as the mid-1950s. The Finnish edition was not merely translated—it was also adapted to suit the conditions of Finnish shortwave listeners. This was done in full agreement with Wood, even partly based on his suggestions. The translator, Jyrki K. Talvitie, knew Wood personally—he even invited him to write articles for the Finnish DX Association’s bi-monthly newsletter in the 1960s.
Karl and John, I believe “How to Listen to the World” was a Jens Frost book, that was published separately from the annual WRTH.
Title: How to Listen to the World
Editor: J. M. Frost
Edition: Fifth edition, 1969/70
ISBN: 0852420900
My memory is that Wood was a contributing writer, along with a number of other DX luminaries of the time. The book was highly influential in sparking my enthusiasm for the DX hobby.
However, Wood did author other books:
“Shortwave Voices of the World” (1969)
“Radio in Foreign Language Education” (1975)
“Shortwave Radio as a Teaching Aid for German” (1972)
Cheers, Rob VK3BVW
I sure recall his language recognition series on RCI back in the 80s. Sounds like a bit of a prickly guy, at times. Perhaps a bit like another genius, Dr Dallas Lankford. I never met Richard, but would have liked to!
Dr Richard Wood was a contributer to the book
and not the author
How to listen to the World is a BBC publication
and most of the articles are by BBC staff
I have a copy of the book which with Hank Bennett’s The Complete Shortwave Listeners Handbook and a copy of WRTV Handbook gave you
a good start in SWL DX in 1970