The basic science is the easy part; it's the black magic of things like antenna design and analog circuit design that intimidates me. (Light, radio, gamma, etc

The basic science is the easy part; it's the black magic of things like antenna design and analog circuit design that intimidates me. (Light, radio, gamma, etc are all electromagnetic waves at different wavelengths, with radio at the long (10m) end. Long wavelengths bounce off the ionosphere giving shortband radio its superpower of being transmittable over the horizon. FWIW all EM radiation emission occurs due to the acceleration of electrons, and reception is that process in reverse. Antennas are electrical conductors that produce a small current in the presence of EMR, which is amplified and put through a speaker for the human operator to hear. And in the exact same way, a microphone (which is just a speaker in reverse) is used to move electrons in the antenna such that they produce an outgoing radio wave. The theory is quite elegant. The practice...not so much.)