This image is the cover for the book Travels with High Frequency

Travels with High Frequency

Travels with High Frequency is a travelogue memoir of the people and places John Jacobs has visited while working as a radio engineer. All the stories are true and many are associated with geopolitical events or natural disasters where the UN and international aid agencies have used HF (short wave) radios. There is a small amount of technical content for those of whom it is of interest. There is humour and sadness, pathos and bathos, irritation and fear as we see how different characters and Jacobs respond to stressful circumstances. Each of the 40 short chapters takes the reader by the hand and lets them ‘be there’ through his eyes, seeing and feeling the environment, engaging with aid workers, victims, government officials and many others. Events covered include the Rwanda genocide, Serb attempted ethnic cleansing of Kosova, Libya during the Arab Spring, Afghanistan and Pakistan while the Taliban are active, South Sudan shortly after its establishment, and many more.

John Jacobs

John Jacobs has been a traveller since the age of eight years. After dropping out of university he spent two and a half years backpacking around the world, working in an iron ore mine in Australia and a farm in Manitoba. Returning to England he gained a qualification as an electronic engineer. Often travelling to places in the throes of disaster or conflict to assist UN and aid organisations with their communications. He has been to more than 85 countries; always interested in people and with an eye for the humorous and bizarre. In this book, he recounts having been shot at in Zaire, enjoying generous hospitality in Kazakhstan, being propositioned in Liberia, working with Kosova Albanians after the attempted Serb ‘ethnic cleansing’, nearly freezing to death in Israel and visiting Libya during the Arab Spring. He is a subject matter expert in High Frequency radio communications and has written a technical handbook on the subject.

Austin Macauley Publishers