Midland Stories: Mapping Your Stories with Midland

22 February 2024
MidlandStories

Your Story with Midland: Introducing Midland Stories

How many experiences can one live through in 65 years?

If we stop to think, from that first crystal radio built by Corrado in the distant 1950s to today, it seems like a blink of an eye, but in reality, it's our entire history.

A history that has allowed us to travel millions of kilometers, alongside truck drivers, RVers, motorcyclists, farmers, and anyone for whom the paved or dirt road is a daily reality.

On an imaginary map, your voices have traced endless paths that sometimes met and at other times, continued on without ever crossing.

After all, this is also the charm of radio communications: they manage to connect people far apart, but who very often share more than they might think.

Following the thoroughly Emilian mantra of an old sage that goes: “A stér a cà a s’impèra gnînto” (Staying home teaches you nothing), today we want to start a new journey and turn this imaginary map into a real one.

How?

We'll start!

The First Midland Story: Corrado, Ennio, and Minnie

It was the 1980s (to be verified), Corrado and Ennio were driving back to Italy after attending the amateur radio fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Instead of returning via Chiasso, as they usually did, they chose to cross a mountain pass emerging above Merano. A rather isolated pass, where sheep outnumbered cars.

In these situations, nothing beats the trusty radio for keeping in touch with others (at the time, it was also the only means of communication available on the road).

That time, to Corrado and Ennio's "CQ" (is anyone there in the CB vocabulary), Minnie responded, inviting them to have coffee at her house to break the long journey.

After the coffee, Minnie and her husband invited them to a party happening in the woods behind their house: it was a local CB radio enthusiasts' party. Thus, Ennio and Corrado found themselves surrounded by fellow enthusiasts and, as one thing leads to another, their return to Reggio Emilia was postponed by a day.

Without the radio, they would have never met Minnie and her husband, never had that coffee in that remote village of Südtirol, and never known such a close-knit community of CB radio enthusiasts.

This was our first “Midland Story”, a tale of meetings and experiences made possible precisely by the Midland radio. However, thousands of such stories have occurred, and many of you have shared them with us in various ways over the years.

Listen at minute 16.30 to Corrado Torreggiani's story:

Your Midland Stories

Take Loris, a fly-fishing enthusiast who in 2000 began using the Alan 777 to maintain communications during his fishing trips in Eastern European countries (at the time, cell phone networks were not always available).

His story with Midland started on the recommendation of a friend from Pesaro who was already a loyal Midland customer. Thanks to some modifications to the electronics that increased its reception capacity, he still uses that transceiver today and it has never let him down during his numerous fishing expeditions, even in unfavorable weather conditions.

But it's also about the hundreds of letters we've received over the years, from people all over Italy, asking for information on the best models for their needs or for information on catalogs and products. Those handwritten letters, some with coffee stains, others on scrap paper, we still keep them today with great affection, because each one is the beginning of your story with Midland.

We said... we want to create this real map of your experiences, your meetings, your stories born precisely thanks to Midland products.

Like an acquaintance you made through radio communications, an adventure you lived with our walkie-talkies, a story born also thanks to our motorcycle intercoms: now it's your moment.

We can't wait to read you and build together the map of Midland Stories!

You can send your story via email to [email protected] by writing it down, with a video, or with an audio!