9 ms·

Bring Back Shortwave

179 points by austinallegro 2y ago

austinallegro 2y ago
https://archive.is/a5lqU https://archive.is/a5lqU
euroderf 2y ago
Having a shortwave (with a decent antenna) is fun. You twiddle the dial and find all kinds of goodies. Pretty soon you'll be scouring teh interwebz for programming schedules.
- sneak 2y ago
  I have never been able to pick up anything on my SW radio with its integrated antenna. What am I doing wrong?
  - the-grump 2y ago
    It helps to be high up and to have an unobstructed view. An antenna extension (https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/sgn-ant-60 https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/sgn-ant-60) would help. Even better would be an active antenna. I have only heard great things about the MLA30+ though I don't own one myself. WWCR (4840) has always been the easiest broadcast for me to pick up in the US.
    - sidewndr46 2y ago
      Height isn't going to make any real difference for shortwave reception unless you're seriously high up and putting up a very efficient antenna like a dipole. At that point it's kind of moot, as you don't need an efficient antenna anyways to receive shortwave.
      - euroderf 2y ago
        I've read (but not tried) that what works is a verrry loooong wire strung up like between trees or in a barn.
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        It's not a bad choice, but the tiny tecsun radio I have has a telescopic antenna that is about 3 ft long when extended. It receives shortwave very well. If there is some distant broadcast (maybe overseas) that you want to receive you can definitely build a very efficient antenna system for that broadcaster's frequency. Be prepared to shell out well over $10,000 for this.
        TheAlchemist 2y ago
        What kind of equipement one would need for that ? Also interested in what kind of equipment broadcasters use - it's some off the shelf stuff ?
        _whiteCaps_ 2y ago
        For reception, a tower with a 3 element Yagi antenna with a rotator so you can point it in exactly the right direction. Although I think you can do it cheaper - people have had a lot of success with a Beverage antenna. It takes up a lot of space though!
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        This explains the process - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUaMXxWYao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUaMXxWYao
        cf100clunk 2y ago
        Regarding simply stringing long wire, if you have a huge, flat land area and don't mind overhead wires, erect a rhombic antenna on dedicated poles for extremely high gain but with a few downsides worth reading about, such as the sheer size needed for shortwave. Don't string wires between trees as they are guaranteed to snap in the wind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_antenna
      - cf100clunk 2y ago
        Correct about altitude... it is a common misconception that height always improves reception, because it doesn't take into account that radio waves propagate in vastly different ways according to their frequency and wavelength. Thankfully there are organizations like the IRAU and ARLL that have vast amounts of info on what does and doesn't work in a wide variety of locations, bands, and altitudes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_radio_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_radio_organiza...
      - the-grump 2y ago
        It helps as far as avoiding obstructions is concerned. I can barely pick up anything in my porch. On my ceiling it's many times better.
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        Unless the obstruction is a faraday cage it is not going to matter in the least bit for shortwave.
    - rpcope1 2y ago
      The MLA30+ is ok if you throw away the crappy bias tee power injector that comes with it and replace the coax with something a little more durable. There's other gear like the cross country wireless loops that aren't much more expensive that perform much better, at least in my experience.
      - lormayna 2y ago
        A Youloop antenna is good too and no issue with the power injector.
  - thenthenthen 2y ago
    Check for noise sources (tube lights, solar equipment) as well. A friend had an old thinkpad and the psu brick was so noisy, it was blanking out my radio within 6-10 meters…
    - lysace 2y ago
      Cheap LED light bulbs...
    - ChainHacker 2y ago
      IIRC Ethernet over the Main Electricity can interfere with Shortwave as well.
  - lutusp 2y ago
    > I have never been able to pick up anything on my SW radio with its integrated antenna. What am I doing wrong? If the radio and its antenna are indoors, that's the problem. As a test, take the radio outdoors to an open area. You should see a big improvement. To make that change permanent, install an outdoor long-wire antenna that runs inside and connects to the radio. The wire can be invisibly thin and still do the job. Your neighbors don't need to know about your retro pastime.
  - lormayna 2y ago
    The easiest antenna for SW listening it's just a long wire in an high position, clipped to integrated antenna with crocodile connectors. Easy, portable and very effective.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
thenthenthen 2y ago
Shortwave is magic, I recently made this [0] receiver and it is so much fun (in Europe I received about 10 stations with it on a random wire) [0] https://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/08regrx.htm https://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/08regrx.htm
hilbert42 2y ago
Those who've had experience with either transmitting or receiving on the HF band and or lower frequencies (≤30MHz) and who've knowledge of ionospheric propagation just know that short, medium and longwave RF bands are still essential in this digital/cable/satellite era for reasons that when all other communications systems have failed then communications on these frequencies will still be reliable. Moreover, in wartime or during some other major catastrophe when technical infrastructure is likely to be impacted or destroyed then establishing and maintaining communications services on these frequencies is easy for reasons that the technology is low-tech and easy to understand—and there's an enormous amount of engineering experience to fall back upon (about 100 years' worth). That we even have to raise this discussion is a quintessential example of intergenerational information loss. Given their strategic importance, governments should put priority on educating the smartphone/streaming generation that these other modes of electronic communication actually exist and that they may even have to depend upon them. I only need to refer to the current debate over retaining AM-band reception in car radios to illustrate the paucity of understanding. That EV manufacturers are pushing for the removal of the AM band in their car radios is proof-positive of how little the current breed of electronics engineers knows about these frequencies let alone their strategic importance.
- baskinator 2y ago
  A ham technician license is pretty easy to obtain in the US, and a handheld radio can be had for cheap. HF takes a little more hardware though.
  - MandieD 2y ago
    Bonus: all of the US license exams can be taken online, proctored by three volunteers watching you on your laptop and second mobile device camera.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    And I believe you don't even need a technician license for just listening in.
    - 2y ago
YarickR2 2y ago
Yes , please, yes ! Having the world on your fingertips under the dial knob (ok, I'll settle for synthesized frequency receiver) is a feeling of discovering something not polluted by a countless hordes of opinionated ..persons of no interest. Many teenage nights spent catching voices from the other side of the planet.
y33t 2y ago
I love the idea of shortwave but all I ever pick up are Jesus channels.
- kanbankaren 2y ago
  http://www.short-wave.info/ http://www.short-wave.info/ There are other broadcasts too. You just have to listen during certain periods as they mayn't be up all the time. The website above allows you to figure out what you can receive at your location.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    That website is broken. When you drag the dot it says to reload the page for the change to take effect...and then when you do the dot snaps right back to africa.
    - II2II 2y ago
      It works under Firefox. That said, I don't know how reliable the predictions are. My SWR is packed away at the moment.
      - kanbankaren 2y ago
        I used this website to listen to stations just last week. If the signal strength displayed in the right-most column is 3 or 4 bars, I have been able to receive the broadcast most of the time. Of course, it depends on local interference and other conditions too.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
  I'm in Europe, so it's mostly Chinese propaganda in various languages that you pick up on shortwave around here. There's exactly one American broadcast you can get here and that is, you guessed it, a Jesus channel.
themusicgod1 2y ago
seems like shortwave can come back if 2 things come back * access to electronic components [ie something like radioshack used to be being accessible] * local governments stepping back of regulation of airwaves a hint unless you have one or both of those things, shortwave is useful only iff the government collapses
jen729w 2y ago
In the early 2000s I was lucky enough to travel the world for work. I was a football nut and always carried a Sony radio so I could pick up the BBC World Service. I vividly remember turning it on late in a Sunderland vs. Newcastle match. I was in central Bogota, Colombia. Struggling for reception, knowing we'd gone 1-0 down early in the match, I can still hear the commentator: "and who would have thought, after going one-nil down at St. James' Park, Sunderland would be two-one up". I shouted out loud like a lunatic. We won the game. I've strung wire coat-hangers from windows in Nigeria, Ukraine, and Macedonia all trying to improve reception so I could listen to a football match. There's a romance there that internet streaming will never touch.
- don-code 2y ago
  While admittedly not at all the same, there was a certain romance shared by all listeners of a Boston-local FM radio station, WFNX. Whereas many commercial radio stations broadcast with tens of thousands of watts, FNX made do with a Class A broadcast license, limiting them to around 3000 watts of power. This made picking up the station a challenge for all but the closest listeners. My particular romance was taking a pair of TV rabbit ears and hanging them out the window by the twin-lead cable, much to my mother's chagrin.
  - cbarrick 2y ago
    In college, I would listen to WPPP in Athens, GA (100 watts). These days I listen to WPTS in Pittsburgh, PA (16 watts). Low power college radio is great! The broadcasts are always so varied, and there's never any commercials.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  Yep, was my gateway to the world as little boy before the internet/bbs came around.
  - tomwheeler 2y ago
    Same for me. Beyond the broadcasts, I'd write the stations and they'd reply by sending program guides, newspaper clippings, postcards, and other neat things from faraway places. Some of the stations even offered language lessons over the air. I learned basic German when I was 12 from the ones on Deutsche Welle. I attempted to learn Chinese the following year from the big shortwave station in Taiwan.
rpcope1 2y ago
Honestly if we could just make the pirates around 6950 a little more tacitly legit (I mean it's clear the FCC doesn't care, but a little more wink wink nudge nudge might be cool), that would go a long way towards a shortwave revival. Some of the most fun listening is pirate broadcasts in the shortwave bands. Maybe even something like non-commercial ham-esque licenses that also allow people to play music?
JKCalhoun 2y ago
> Britain and most western countries have put all their eggs in one large basket: that of digital communications. In a time of global conflict, this could be a risky and painful prospect. There's a scene in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) where a man (Jewish) is listening to the events of WWII play-out over shortwave. He is living at the moment in relative safety but he understands from what he hears that change is afoot in his country. At the risk of sounding like a prepper, it was clear to me then that having a radio capable of long distance reception was a very valuable thing to have around.
- II2II 2y ago
  There is a difference between being prepared and being a prepper. Having the means to receive outside information is being prepared. Listening to it day and night because you think your government is out to get you is being a prepper.[1] [1] Unfortunately, many exceptions apply.
  - toast0 2y ago
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :p
  - jordanb 2y ago
    Being a prepper is a consumer activity. Conversely trying to prepare for things that could occur by, for instance, getting first aid training, ham radio license, etc. is a communal activity "how could I be an asset to my community in times of trouble?" I think it's telling that in the cold war the "prepper" activity was putting together civil defense groups. In this century it's building a bunker full of guns and spinning fantasy about protecting your hoard of stuff from the mob.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      My plan for the apocalypse is to take down a "prepper".
      - 2y ago
JKCalhoun 2y ago
SDR has started me on the path of exploring the radio spectrum, I encourage anyone who is interested in radio who has not tried it to get a cheap SDR dongle and give it a spin.
- _def 2y ago
  You can even try some websdr servers, it can be really fun, even/especially(?) if you don't really know what you are doing
  - nubinetwork 2y ago
    A lot of publicly available websdr's have a limited frequency range due to the hardware used, or political reasons, I wound up buying a limesdr myself because nobody nearby has the ranges I want.
- _whiteCaps_ 2y ago
  That's what got me into amateur radio - with your SDR you can receive signals from the ISS repeater, and watch the frequencies change due to the Doppler effect.
ggm 2y ago
I used to get the woodpecker, and some very ominous semi-continuous monotonous hums in human hearing ranges with occasional tweedle. And the lincolnshire poacher. Or, something very like it. This was 70s Edinburgh, with a long-line antenna strung from my window to a tree about 50m away. I tried to make a dipole out of it, not sure it really worked. The radio was WW2 bomber surplus store, about 15U high and probably some precursor to a 19" rack width. you swapped out brick sized tuning blocks to reset it's frequency bands and then used a blade-overlap condenser tuner. I also used bakelite headphones, no soft foam. Hardcore! We had a better one downstairs with a vernier which tuned more accurately, consistently and it did MW for BBC radio. When FM became more common we got a small philips and it sat next to it, doing the hard work. Shortwave picked up a lot. I was too young to understand what QSL cards would be about otherwise I would have some.
- frrlpp 2y ago
  Wow, that would be a National HRO receiver. Quite capable radio.
  - ggm 2y ago
    I think it was a variant of what in the UK is called R1155E RAF Receiver 10D/1332 If not exactly that model, very similar.
- tacet 2y ago
  >very ominous semi-continuous monotonous hums could be buzzer perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
  - ggm 2y ago
    Too modern. But similar intent perhaps
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  QSL cards (just looked it up) look like a fun hobby to send or receive, but probably moreso if you live somewhere remote or exotic (not me, I live in peak Dutch suburbia).
jdietrich 2y ago
The UK's last remaining shortwave transmitter site has a power output of nearly 3 megawatts across ten HF transmitters. For all the romance of shortwave, it's an incredibly inefficient way to serve an ever-shrinking listener base. I can see the case for analog radio as an emergency communications system in regions with unreliable infrastructure. I can see the case for limited-area shortwave transmissions to serve populations with poor domestic media. I really struggle to see the case for throwing vast amounts of RF in the vague direction of the ionosphere, on the off chance that someone in the Pitcairn Islands wants to hear the cricket scores. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woofferton_transmitting_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woofferton_transmitting_stat...
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  It's extremely efficient and doesn't harm anything else. What would you replace it with?
  - jdietrich 2y ago
    Any or all of the technologies that people actually use. Like it or not, the number of active shortwave listeners is tiny, even in poor and remote parts of the world. Voice of America and the BBC World Service are the strongest possible case for shortwave, but even they have been scaling back their shortwave operations because most of their listeners prefer local AM/FM transmissions or streaming. Whatever the benefits of shortwave might be, they're entirely hypothetical for the vast majority who have no interest in buying a relatively esoteric receiver, stringing up a longwire and chasing a carrier across the bands. I still occasionally operate on top band with a straight key, but even I have to accept that shortwave is now almost entirely irrelevant and rapidly headed towards extinction. https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentaries/why-reviving-shortwave-is-a-non-starter https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentar...
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    It's extremely inefficient, not efficient. It uses a lot of power. It harms everyone else by wasting power.
lutusp 2y ago
More astonishing than knowing what HF radio can do, is to notice how empty the HF bands are compared to past decades. During my around-the-world solo sail (1988-1991) (https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/), I relied on two-way HF radio for many things no longer present, including open-water phone calls. But that absence represents a choice, not a necessity. Here's an easy receiver project: "Create Your Own Open-Source Software-Defined Radio" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNgPYVpTng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNgPYVpTng). Receiving is cheap and easy. To transmit on these bands, you must get a Ham license. But that's easier than it was -- Morse code is no longer required. I can remember what I thought when I first heard about the Internet -- that it would make Ham radio look slow and stupid by comparison. I was never so wrong about anything in my life (not for a lack of eager candidates).
CraigJPerry 2y ago
This seems like a pretty silly article. A shortwave radio station is a single point of failure. You can either physically interrupt the transmitter - conveniently it tells you exactly where it is the whole time it is transmitting. Or, you can broadcast interference. The internet or digital communications does not share that same single point of failure.
- notepad0x90 2y ago
  I think you might be lacking imagination here. Frequency hopping algorithms can be used. Multiple transmitters, globally dispersed and coordinating with each other can deliver service. Shortwave can be digital. Not everything is a competition, other means of communication don't mean the internet has no use. Imagine being able to push micro-blogs to a local station and having it broadcasted globally over shortwave.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Interference is a problem for sure, but that's only in one potential scenario (open warfare with troops / interference broadcasting nearby); for all the other scenarios it's good to have a backup.
- lormayna 2y ago
  It's not exactly like this. The localization is not easy, because the distances are huge (several thousands of kilometers) and shortwaves are bouncing over the atmosphere. Think about the number stations, that are still not localized after years. And even jamming it's not always easy: the Turkish government usually jam the Kurdish shortwave stations like Denge Welat targeting Europe, but they are moving up or down in frequency to avoid the jamming. Moreover, you need a lot of power to jam another station. Another advantage of the shortwave is that it don't require a complex hardware neither infrastructure to receive them: a rudimentary AM receiver is very simple to implement and can work also on battery for long time.
lormayna 2y ago
I am into shortwave listening since many years and it can be funny, especially when you can catch strange signals and contact them to get QSLs cards. If you want to start, the top is to buy a Belka DX (probably the best portable shortwave in the market) but also ATS-25 or a SI4732 based radio that costs less 50$ on Ali.
nubinetwork 2y ago
Shortwave isn't dead, but locking it behind the amateur licenses does pose a bit of a problem, not many people care about half of the questions on the test... I just checked the Canada one, and it's asking me what license I need to rebroadcast RTTY... Like I don't bloody know...
countWSS 2y ago
Btw ignoring "internet radio"(which is just streaming) the reason shortwave niche as media source is narrowing is sattelite radio, which is high-end long-range media alternative and low-end FM receivers for local stations(at much higher sound quality).
donatj 2y ago
I had a shortwave radio as a kid in the 90s in Minnesota. I never picked up much with it. Some Mexican stations, weather broadcasts, and when the ionosphere was right BBC World Service. On exceedingly rare occasions I could even pick up stations from South East Asia. As a lonely and somewhat isolated child, these fleeting glimpses of the wider world were nothing short of magical.
shrubble 2y ago
It reminds me of the song by Van Morrison about listening to (I presume shortwave) radio… “Athlone, Budapest…” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Syc4hFobLD0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Syc4hFobLD0
cantrecallmypwd 2y ago
I recently picked up a Qodosen SR-286 compact radio that supports LW, AM (MW), SW (HF), and FM but not aircraft/VHF bands, sadly.
every 2y ago
When I was a kid my dad gave me his war surplus radio. He had been a communications officer in WWII. It was a huge metal box with a separate speaker. Inside it was full of tubes, wires and other stuff. I knew nothing about it so I turned it on, ran a wire outside for an antennae and started spinning dials and flipping switches. It kept me amused for years. Eventually I stumbled across actual broadcasts such as BBC and Radio Luxembourg. But the funniest was the English language Radio Moscow. It was filled with vignettes of happy working couples in their modern apartment living a fulfilling life in the Soviet Union. The stuff was risible to even a child in the 1950's...
bobsomers 2y ago
There has been a bit of a shortwave revival in recent years, with activities like POTA (Parks on the Air) and SOTA (Summits on the Air) getting people back onto the HF bands. For those unfamiliar, POTA encourages people to get out to State and National parks, set up a portable radio (usually shortwave), and make as many contacts as they can in a short time. If you make 10 contacts, you’ve “activated” the park. The activator submits their logs to the website, and everyone they talked to gets credit for “hunting” that park. Whoever designed the POTA website… it’s uncharacteristically brilliant for the amateur radio community. There are gazillions of metrics you can track about which parks you’ve hunted and which ones you’ve activated, progress bars for every state, all sorts of awards and “achievements” for various operating times, modes, repeats, etc. It’s turned portable shortwave operating into gamified crack, except these are real skills that are valuable during an emergency. Having the equipment is one thing, but the regular practice of knowing how to quickly set it up and operate it anywhere is invaluable.
ralphc 2y ago
I've been a shortwave listener for over 30 years. I remember listening to Radio Israel when Saddam was sending scud missiles into Israel and the radio was directing people into shelters, real time. One thing I'd like to see, especially if there is a concern for communication, is loosening the licensing restrictions that US shortwave stations cannot broadcast to the US. Back in the day when US station operators were interviewed they had to say that the were broadcasting to "Canada and Mexico", which was code for "to the US".

179 points by austinallegro 2y ago

https://archive.is/a5lqU https://archive.is/a5lqU

Having a shortwave (with a decent antenna) is fun. You twiddle the dial and find all kinds of goodies. Pretty soon you'll be scouring teh interwebz for programming schedules.

sneak 2y ago
I have never been able to pick up anything on my SW radio with its integrated antenna. What am I doing wrong?
- the-grump 2y ago
  It helps to be high up and to have an unobstructed view. An antenna extension (https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/sgn-ant-60 https://www.dxengineering.com/parts/sgn-ant-60) would help. Even better would be an active antenna. I have only heard great things about the MLA30+ though I don't own one myself. WWCR (4840) has always been the easiest broadcast for me to pick up in the US.
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    Height isn't going to make any real difference for shortwave reception unless you're seriously high up and putting up a very efficient antenna like a dipole. At that point it's kind of moot, as you don't need an efficient antenna anyways to receive shortwave.
    - euroderf 2y ago
      I've read (but not tried) that what works is a verrry loooong wire strung up like between trees or in a barn.
      - sidewndr46 2y ago
        It's not a bad choice, but the tiny tecsun radio I have has a telescopic antenna that is about 3 ft long when extended. It receives shortwave very well. If there is some distant broadcast (maybe overseas) that you want to receive you can definitely build a very efficient antenna system for that broadcaster's frequency. Be prepared to shell out well over $10,000 for this.
        TheAlchemist 2y ago
        What kind of equipement one would need for that ? Also interested in what kind of equipment broadcasters use - it's some off the shelf stuff ?
        _whiteCaps_ 2y ago
        For reception, a tower with a 3 element Yagi antenna with a rotator so you can point it in exactly the right direction. Although I think you can do it cheaper - people have had a lot of success with a Beverage antenna. It takes up a lot of space though!
        sidewndr46 2y ago
        This explains the process - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUaMXxWYao https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUaMXxWYao
      - cf100clunk 2y ago
        Regarding simply stringing long wire, if you have a huge, flat land area and don't mind overhead wires, erect a rhombic antenna on dedicated poles for extremely high gain but with a few downsides worth reading about, such as the sheer size needed for shortwave. Don't string wires between trees as they are guaranteed to snap in the wind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhombic_antenna
    - cf100clunk 2y ago
      Correct about altitude... it is a common misconception that height always improves reception, because it doesn't take into account that radio waves propagate in vastly different ways according to their frequency and wavelength. Thankfully there are organizations like the IRAU and ARLL that have vast amounts of info on what does and doesn't work in a wide variety of locations, bands, and altitudes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_radio_organizations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_amateur_radio_organiza...
    - the-grump 2y ago
      It helps as far as avoiding obstructions is concerned. I can barely pick up anything in my porch. On my ceiling it's many times better.
      - sidewndr46 2y ago
        Unless the obstruction is a faraday cage it is not going to matter in the least bit for shortwave.
  - rpcope1 2y ago
    The MLA30+ is ok if you throw away the crappy bias tee power injector that comes with it and replace the coax with something a little more durable. There's other gear like the cross country wireless loops that aren't much more expensive that perform much better, at least in my experience.
    - lormayna 2y ago
      A Youloop antenna is good too and no issue with the power injector.
- thenthenthen 2y ago
  Check for noise sources (tube lights, solar equipment) as well. A friend had an old thinkpad and the psu brick was so noisy, it was blanking out my radio within 6-10 meters…
  - lysace 2y ago
    Cheap LED light bulbs...
  - ChainHacker 2y ago
    IIRC Ethernet over the Main Electricity can interfere with Shortwave as well.
- lutusp 2y ago
  > I have never been able to pick up anything on my SW radio with its integrated antenna. What am I doing wrong? If the radio and its antenna are indoors, that's the problem. As a test, take the radio outdoors to an open area. You should see a big improvement. To make that change permanent, install an outdoor long-wire antenna that runs inside and connects to the radio. The wire can be invisibly thin and still do the job. Your neighbors don't need to know about your retro pastime.
- lormayna 2y ago
  The easiest antenna for SW listening it's just a long wire in an high position, clipped to integrated antenna with crocodile connectors. Easy, portable and very effective.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

thenthenthen 2y ago

Shortwave is magic, I recently made this [0] receiver and it is so much fun (in Europe I received about 10 stations with it on a random wire) [0] https://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/08regrx.htm https://www.qsl.net/pa2ohh/08regrx.htm

hilbert42 2y ago

Those who've had experience with either transmitting or receiving on the HF band and or lower frequencies (≤30MHz) and who've knowledge of ionospheric propagation just know that short, medium and longwave RF bands are still essential in this digital/cable/satellite era for reasons that when all other communications systems have failed then communications on these frequencies will still be reliable. Moreover, in wartime or during some other major catastrophe when technical infrastructure is likely to be impacted or destroyed then establishing and maintaining communications services on these frequencies is easy for reasons that the technology is low-tech and easy to understand—and there's an enormous amount of engineering experience to fall back upon (about 100 years' worth). That we even have to raise this discussion is a quintessential example of intergenerational information loss. Given their strategic importance, governments should put priority on educating the smartphone/streaming generation that these other modes of electronic communication actually exist and that they may even have to depend upon them. I only need to refer to the current debate over retaining AM-band reception in car radios to illustrate the paucity of understanding. That EV manufacturers are pushing for the removal of the AM band in their car radios is proof-positive of how little the current breed of electronics engineers knows about these frequencies let alone their strategic importance.

baskinator 2y ago
A ham technician license is pretty easy to obtain in the US, and a handheld radio can be had for cheap. HF takes a little more hardware though.
- MandieD 2y ago
  Bonus: all of the US license exams can be taken online, proctored by three volunteers watching you on your laptop and second mobile device camera.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  And I believe you don't even need a technician license for just listening in.
  - 2y ago

YarickR2 2y ago

Yes , please, yes ! Having the world on your fingertips under the dial knob (ok, I'll settle for synthesized frequency receiver) is a feeling of discovering something not polluted by a countless hordes of opinionated ..persons of no interest. Many teenage nights spent catching voices from the other side of the planet.

y33t 2y ago

I love the idea of shortwave but all I ever pick up are Jesus channels.

kanbankaren 2y ago
http://www.short-wave.info/ http://www.short-wave.info/ There are other broadcasts too. You just have to listen during certain periods as they mayn't be up all the time. The website above allows you to figure out what you can receive at your location.
- TylerE 2y ago
  That website is broken. When you drag the dot it says to reload the page for the change to take effect...and then when you do the dot snaps right back to africa.
  - II2II 2y ago
    It works under Firefox. That said, I don't know how reliable the predictions are. My SWR is packed away at the moment.
    - kanbankaren 2y ago
      I used this website to listen to stations just last week. If the signal strength displayed in the right-most column is 3 or 4 bars, I have been able to receive the broadcast most of the time. Of course, it depends on local interference and other conditions too.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
AnonymousPlanet 2y ago
I'm in Europe, so it's mostly Chinese propaganda in various languages that you pick up on shortwave around here. There's exactly one American broadcast you can get here and that is, you guessed it, a Jesus channel.

themusicgod1 2y ago

seems like shortwave can come back if 2 things come back * access to electronic components [ie something like radioshack used to be being accessible] * local governments stepping back of regulation of airwaves a hint unless you have one or both of those things, shortwave is useful only iff the government collapses

jen729w 2y ago

In the early 2000s I was lucky enough to travel the world for work. I was a football nut and always carried a Sony radio so I could pick up the BBC World Service. I vividly remember turning it on late in a Sunderland vs. Newcastle match. I was in central Bogota, Colombia. Struggling for reception, knowing we'd gone 1-0 down early in the match, I can still hear the commentator: "and who would have thought, after going one-nil down at St. James' Park, Sunderland would be two-one up". I shouted out loud like a lunatic. We won the game. I've strung wire coat-hangers from windows in Nigeria, Ukraine, and Macedonia all trying to improve reception so I could listen to a football match. There's a romance there that internet streaming will never touch.

don-code 2y ago
While admittedly not at all the same, there was a certain romance shared by all listeners of a Boston-local FM radio station, WFNX. Whereas many commercial radio stations broadcast with tens of thousands of watts, FNX made do with a Class A broadcast license, limiting them to around 3000 watts of power. This made picking up the station a challenge for all but the closest listeners. My particular romance was taking a pair of TV rabbit ears and hanging them out the window by the twin-lead cable, much to my mother's chagrin.
- cbarrick 2y ago
  In college, I would listen to WPPP in Athens, GA (100 watts). These days I listen to WPTS in Pittsburgh, PA (16 watts). Low power college radio is great! The broadcasts are always so varied, and there's never any commercials.
BoredPositron 2y ago
Yep, was my gateway to the world as little boy before the internet/bbs came around.
- tomwheeler 2y ago
  Same for me. Beyond the broadcasts, I'd write the stations and they'd reply by sending program guides, newspaper clippings, postcards, and other neat things from faraway places. Some of the stations even offered language lessons over the air. I learned basic German when I was 12 from the ones on Deutsche Welle. I attempted to learn Chinese the following year from the big shortwave station in Taiwan.

rpcope1 2y ago

Honestly if we could just make the pirates around 6950 a little more tacitly legit (I mean it's clear the FCC doesn't care, but a little more wink wink nudge nudge might be cool), that would go a long way towards a shortwave revival. Some of the most fun listening is pirate broadcasts in the shortwave bands. Maybe even something like non-commercial ham-esque licenses that also allow people to play music?

JKCalhoun 2y ago

> Britain and most western countries have put all their eggs in one large basket: that of digital communications. In a time of global conflict, this could be a risky and painful prospect. There's a scene in The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) where a man (Jewish) is listening to the events of WWII play-out over shortwave. He is living at the moment in relative safety but he understands from what he hears that change is afoot in his country. At the risk of sounding like a prepper, it was clear to me then that having a radio capable of long distance reception was a very valuable thing to have around.

II2II 2y ago
There is a difference between being prepared and being a prepper. Having the means to receive outside information is being prepared. Listening to it day and night because you think your government is out to get you is being a prepper.[1] [1] Unfortunately, many exceptions apply.
- toast0 2y ago
  Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. :p
- jordanb 2y ago
  Being a prepper is a consumer activity. Conversely trying to prepare for things that could occur by, for instance, getting first aid training, ham radio license, etc. is a communal activity "how could I be an asset to my community in times of trouble?" I think it's telling that in the cold war the "prepper" activity was putting together civil defense groups. In this century it's building a bunker full of guns and spinning fantasy about protecting your hoard of stuff from the mob.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    My plan for the apocalypse is to take down a "prepper".
    - 2y ago

JKCalhoun 2y ago

SDR has started me on the path of exploring the radio spectrum, I encourage anyone who is interested in radio who has not tried it to get a cheap SDR dongle and give it a spin.

_def 2y ago
You can even try some websdr servers, it can be really fun, even/especially(?) if you don't really know what you are doing
- nubinetwork 2y ago
  A lot of publicly available websdr's have a limited frequency range due to the hardware used, or political reasons, I wound up buying a limesdr myself because nobody nearby has the ranges I want.
_whiteCaps_ 2y ago
That's what got me into amateur radio - with your SDR you can receive signals from the ISS repeater, and watch the frequencies change due to the Doppler effect.

ggm 2y ago

I used to get the woodpecker, and some very ominous semi-continuous monotonous hums in human hearing ranges with occasional tweedle. And the lincolnshire poacher. Or, something very like it. This was 70s Edinburgh, with a long-line antenna strung from my window to a tree about 50m away. I tried to make a dipole out of it, not sure it really worked. The radio was WW2 bomber surplus store, about 15U high and probably some precursor to a 19" rack width. you swapped out brick sized tuning blocks to reset it's frequency bands and then used a blade-overlap condenser tuner. I also used bakelite headphones, no soft foam. Hardcore! We had a better one downstairs with a vernier which tuned more accurately, consistently and it did MW for BBC radio. When FM became more common we got a small philips and it sat next to it, doing the hard work. Shortwave picked up a lot. I was too young to understand what QSL cards would be about otherwise I would have some.

frrlpp 2y ago
Wow, that would be a National HRO receiver. Quite capable radio.
- ggm 2y ago
  I think it was a variant of what in the UK is called R1155E RAF Receiver 10D/1332 If not exactly that model, very similar.
tacet 2y ago
>very ominous semi-continuous monotonous hums could be buzzer perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVB-76
- ggm 2y ago
  Too modern. But similar intent perhaps
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
QSL cards (just looked it up) look like a fun hobby to send or receive, but probably moreso if you live somewhere remote or exotic (not me, I live in peak Dutch suburbia).

jdietrich 2y ago

The UK's last remaining shortwave transmitter site has a power output of nearly 3 megawatts across ten HF transmitters. For all the romance of shortwave, it's an incredibly inefficient way to serve an ever-shrinking listener base. I can see the case for analog radio as an emergency communications system in regions with unreliable infrastructure. I can see the case for limited-area shortwave transmissions to serve populations with poor domestic media. I really struggle to see the case for throwing vast amounts of RF in the vague direction of the ionosphere, on the off chance that someone in the Pitcairn Islands wants to hear the cricket scores. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woofferton_transmitting_station https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woofferton_transmitting_stat...

bongodongobob 2y ago
It's extremely efficient and doesn't harm anything else. What would you replace it with?
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Any or all of the technologies that people actually use. Like it or not, the number of active shortwave listeners is tiny, even in poor and remote parts of the world. Voice of America and the BBC World Service are the strongest possible case for shortwave, but even they have been scaling back their shortwave operations because most of their listeners prefer local AM/FM transmissions or streaming. Whatever the benefits of shortwave might be, they're entirely hypothetical for the vast majority who have no interest in buying a relatively esoteric receiver, stringing up a longwire and chasing a carrier across the bands. I still occasionally operate on top band with a straight key, but even I have to accept that shortwave is now almost entirely irrelevant and rapidly headed towards extinction. https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentaries/why-reviving-shortwave-is-a-non-starter https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentar...
- IshKebab 2y ago
  It's extremely inefficient, not efficient. It uses a lot of power. It harms everyone else by wasting power.

lutusp 2y ago

More astonishing than knowing what HF radio can do, is to notice how empty the HF bands are compared to past decades. During my around-the-world solo sail (1988-1991) (https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/ https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/), I relied on two-way HF radio for many things no longer present, including open-water phone calls. But that absence represents a choice, not a necessity. Here's an easy receiver project: "Create Your Own Open-Source Software-Defined Radio" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNgPYVpTng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXNgPYVpTng). Receiving is cheap and easy. To transmit on these bands, you must get a Ham license. But that's easier than it was -- Morse code is no longer required. I can remember what I thought when I first heard about the Internet -- that it would make Ham radio look slow and stupid by comparison. I was never so wrong about anything in my life (not for a lack of eager candidates).

CraigJPerry 2y ago

This seems like a pretty silly article. A shortwave radio station is a single point of failure. You can either physically interrupt the transmitter - conveniently it tells you exactly where it is the whole time it is transmitting. Or, you can broadcast interference. The internet or digital communications does not share that same single point of failure.

notepad0x90 2y ago
I think you might be lacking imagination here. Frequency hopping algorithms can be used. Multiple transmitters, globally dispersed and coordinating with each other can deliver service. Shortwave can be digital. Not everything is a competition, other means of communication don't mean the internet has no use. Imagine being able to push micro-blogs to a local station and having it broadcasted globally over shortwave.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Interference is a problem for sure, but that's only in one potential scenario (open warfare with troops / interference broadcasting nearby); for all the other scenarios it's good to have a backup.
lormayna 2y ago
It's not exactly like this. The localization is not easy, because the distances are huge (several thousands of kilometers) and shortwaves are bouncing over the atmosphere. Think about the number stations, that are still not localized after years. And even jamming it's not always easy: the Turkish government usually jam the Kurdish shortwave stations like Denge Welat targeting Europe, but they are moving up or down in frequency to avoid the jamming. Moreover, you need a lot of power to jam another station. Another advantage of the shortwave is that it don't require a complex hardware neither infrastructure to receive them: a rudimentary AM receiver is very simple to implement and can work also on battery for long time.

lormayna 2y ago

I am into shortwave listening since many years and it can be funny, especially when you can catch strange signals and contact them to get QSLs cards. If you want to start, the top is to buy a Belka DX (probably the best portable shortwave in the market) but also ATS-25 or a SI4732 based radio that costs less 50$ on Ali.

nubinetwork 2y ago

Shortwave isn't dead, but locking it behind the amateur licenses does pose a bit of a problem, not many people care about half of the questions on the test... I just checked the Canada one, and it's asking me what license I need to rebroadcast RTTY... Like I don't bloody know...

countWSS 2y ago

Btw ignoring "internet radio"(which is just streaming) the reason shortwave niche as media source is narrowing is sattelite radio, which is high-end long-range media alternative and low-end FM receivers for local stations(at much higher sound quality).

donatj 2y ago

I had a shortwave radio as a kid in the 90s in Minnesota. I never picked up much with it. Some Mexican stations, weather broadcasts, and when the ionosphere was right BBC World Service. On exceedingly rare occasions I could even pick up stations from South East Asia. As a lonely and somewhat isolated child, these fleeting glimpses of the wider world were nothing short of magical.

shrubble 2y ago

It reminds me of the song by Van Morrison about listening to (I presume shortwave) radio… “Athlone, Budapest…” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Syc4hFobLD0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Syc4hFobLD0

cantrecallmypwd 2y ago

I recently picked up a Qodosen SR-286 compact radio that supports LW, AM (MW), SW (HF), and FM but not aircraft/VHF bands, sadly.

every 2y ago

When I was a kid my dad gave me his war surplus radio. He had been a communications officer in WWII. It was a huge metal box with a separate speaker. Inside it was full of tubes, wires and other stuff. I knew nothing about it so I turned it on, ran a wire outside for an antennae and started spinning dials and flipping switches. It kept me amused for years. Eventually I stumbled across actual broadcasts such as BBC and Radio Luxembourg. But the funniest was the English language Radio Moscow. It was filled with vignettes of happy working couples in their modern apartment living a fulfilling life in the Soviet Union. The stuff was risible to even a child in the 1950's...

bobsomers 2y ago

There has been a bit of a shortwave revival in recent years, with activities like POTA (Parks on the Air) and SOTA (Summits on the Air) getting people back onto the HF bands. For those unfamiliar, POTA encourages people to get out to State and National parks, set up a portable radio (usually shortwave), and make as many contacts as they can in a short time. If you make 10 contacts, you’ve “activated” the park. The activator submits their logs to the website, and everyone they talked to gets credit for “hunting” that park. Whoever designed the POTA website… it’s uncharacteristically brilliant for the amateur radio community. There are gazillions of metrics you can track about which parks you’ve hunted and which ones you’ve activated, progress bars for every state, all sorts of awards and “achievements” for various operating times, modes, repeats, etc. It’s turned portable shortwave operating into gamified crack, except these are real skills that are valuable during an emergency. Having the equipment is one thing, but the regular practice of knowing how to quickly set it up and operate it anywhere is invaluable.

ralphc 2y ago

I've been a shortwave listener for over 30 years. I remember listening to Radio Israel when Saddam was sending scud missiles into Israel and the radio was directing people into shelters, real time. One thing I'd like to see, especially if there is a concern for communication, is loosening the licensing restrictions that US shortwave stations cannot broadcast to the US. Back in the day when US station operators were interviewed they had to say that the were broadcasting to "Canada and Mexico", which was code for "to the US".