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I still listen to shortwave tvdxer. I just purchased a Grundig shortwave radio for $99.00 (it was marked down from $129.00) and listen about every night. I was to replace my portable Grundig shortwave radio that just wore out from use. I also have a floor model 1940s style old tube type radio with AM, Aviation frequency and Shortwave.
In HS I re-coiled an AM transistor radio to pick up the 49 meter band, but the radio broke the night Andropov died.
I used to buy Passport to World Band Radio every couple of years, of course that's gone too.
I still go "beyond the service area" quite often so I miss the opportunity to listen to the Beeb out in the woods or in a remote cabin. The tether to Big Brother through either wired or wireless Internet connection might be more of a theoretical than actual problem for many people, but the tie to the grid to hear the world is still a problem for me.
I had a Sony shortwave radio back in the 80's, I loved that thing. Analog dial, would get all kinds of stuff from all ove teh world.
Like an idiot, I left the batteries in it for years and when I found it, it was corroded and had to throw it away.
I got a digital one from Radio Shack as a gift a few years ago, with push button numbers, but I haven't even took it out of the box. I get wistful thinking about that Sony one and know nothing will come close, so I keep the RS one in a box somewhere.
I had a Sony shortwave radio back in the 80's, I loved that thing. Analog dial, would get all kinds of stuff from all ove teh world.
Like an idiot, I left the batteries in it for years and when I found it, it was corroded and had to throw it away.
I got a digital one from Radio Shack as a gift a few years ago, with push button numbers, but I haven't even took it out of the box. I get wistful thinking about that Sony one and know nothing will come close, so I keep the RS one in a box somewhere.
You should have kept that radio! A wire brush and alchohol or any number of things could have cleaned off the oxidization and it would have worked fine!
I've done this for people and even other hams no less than a dozen times!
Being a ham, we used shortwave all the time (WAS, 5-band DCXX, etc). But now with satellite TV, we get video/news from all over the world, (though you have to turn on closed-captioning for the countries that you don't know the language). Sort of obviates radio. But it was a lot of fun when we were kids. I remember 40 meters being heavily jammed, intentionally to limit communication. 80 meters was good for hitting CA from the east coast at night, but you needed a really narrow bandpass filter because so many people were on it. 15 meters was awesome for the skip, but at around 4:30PM EST back then, it would shut down faster than slamming a door. 20 meters was really good as well. We put up a two-element three-band (10,15,20m) quad in the back yard on a tower, and there virtually wasn't anywhere on the planet you couldn't get reception. For the lower frequencies, a longwire, dipoles, and beverage antenna did the trick. (Our neighbors though we were growing an antenna farm).
Not to digress too badly (as I usually do), there is a band (that is really longwave, 2200M) of 160-190KHz, that you can receive and transmit on, but there really isn't anything there other than radio beacons. In college we had a 40M beam on top of a hill...(talk about floppy ears)... that made Europe sound like they were standing in the same room.
I think the key thing (besides a good receiver), is a good antenna system (and being able to make baluns).
I love to listen to global SW, and as a once-HAM (VE4-AIJ back in about 1979 - 81 in Manitoba, Canada, up in the tundra doing engineering research), I had bought myself a beautiful Sony ICF 2010 all-band in about 1987.
Until last year, I would listen to BBC, and many years ago (circa 1983 - 84), the very hilarious Radio Russia, broadcast out of a seemingly agreeable Kanada (my homeland, but more than a bit socialista nonetheless...) in which the grinning announcer (you could tell, however, that he must have had a Makarov to his head whilst chatting...) read such staged propaganda about the USSR's huge wheat crops, their happy people driving their 2-cycle engined Trabants...
(cough, splutter... wheeze...) and so on. And how wonderful life was in Roosh-yah! Where you didn't have to agonize over exactly which brand of Wawd-kahh you would be standing in line to buy! Ahh... the glory days of our old republic, eh Comrades? Oh well, off topic....
That Sony's internal battery bracket broke once (OK, OK, I sorta dropped the radio..), but I dutifully epoxied it back together for another 18 years of faithful service. But last year it started to "fritz out" on occasion, and one evening the display went really bat-nutzo, and then it showed "error" and would no do anything.
I e-mailed a few supposed Sony repair stations but when they asked what it was doing (I think they hoped it would simply be a loose wire or a broken battery "cage", which was common, and they could charge me BigBux and do a simple repair) most of them deferred when it was obvious it was an electronic problem. They said it was beyond their abilities.
Sony themselves don't seem to do such repairs, esp. on such an older model. So who does make really best-quality receivers now, outside of buying, for example, a big Kenwood HAM receiver? $$$$$$$$
I've since looked at the various offerings from those people George Noory advertises (who is it again? Oh yeah: C. Crane) and they offer a variety of receivers that sorta look like my Sony 2010. But when I see Korean or Taiwan-made, I kind of shudder. As well, the little Grundig so-called SW unit that I'm using interim, when I tested it side by side with the Sony some years back, would not even retrieve a fuzzy signal. Literaly nada when the Sony was singing aaway. Truth in advertising, right?
Perhaps now the alternative is Internet radio? You can find literally thousands of stations, but the fact is, for many of us, the fun is in tuning, with your own long-wire strung outside [long ago when you were agile and had bones made of rubber., or at least mild steel, not pre-fractured balsa wood as you have now.....) to that nearby tree, that etherial signal.
Carefully plucking it out of the night skies by manually tuning in some whispered signal, and then straining to hear the voice of some Nairobi evening announcer who is recounting the day's political events on the ground there. Internet is fine if you don't want ANY challenge and you enjoy crystal clear reception but you also know that it could all just "go down" if someone decides to do that!
Good DXing guys! Oh, and remember to learn your happy Chinese phrases!
I love to listen to global SW, and as a once-HAM (VE4-AIJ back in about 1979 - 81 in Manitoba, Canada, up in the tundra doing engineering research), I had bought myself a beautiful Sony ICF 2010 all-band in about 1987.
Until last year, I would listen to BBC, and many years ago (circa 1983 - 84), the very hilarious Radio Russia, broadcast out of a seemingly agreeable Kanada (my homeland, but more than a bit socialista nonetheless...) in which the grinning announcer (you could tell, however, that he must have had a Makarov to his head whilst chatting...) read such staged propaganda about the USSR's huge wheat crops, their happy people driving their 2-cycle engined Trabants...
(cough, splutter... wheeze...) and so on. And how wonderful life was in Roosh-yah! Where you didn't have to agonize over exactly which brand of Wawd-kahh you would be standing in line to buy! Ahh... the glory days of our old republic, eh Comrades? Oh well, off topic....
That Sony's internal battery bracket broke once (OK, OK, I sorta dropped the radio..), but I dutifully epoxied it back together for another 18 years of faithful service. But last year it started to "fritz out" on occasion, and one evening the display went really bat-nutzo, and then it showed "error" and would no do anything.
I e-mailed a few supposed Sony repair stations but when they asked what it was doing (I think they hoped it would simply be a loose wire or a broken battery "cage", which was common, and they could charge me BigBux and do a simple repair) most of them deferred when it was obvious it was an electronic problem. They said it was beyond their abilities.
Sony themselves don't seem to do such repairs, esp. on such an older model. So who does make really best-quality receivers now, outside of buying, for example, a big Kenwood HAM receiver? $$$$$$$$
I've since looked at the various offerings from those people George Noory advertises (who is it again? Oh yeah: C. Crane) and they offer a variety of receivers that sorta look like my Sony 2010. But when I see Korean or Taiwan-made, I kind of shudder. As well, the little Grundig so-called SW unit that I'm using interim, when I tested it side by side with the Sony some years back, would not even retrieve a fuzzy signal. Literaly nada when the Sony was singing aaway. Truth in advertising, right?
Perhaps now the alternative is Internet radio? You can find literally thousands of stations, but the fact is, for many of us, the fun is in tuning, with your own long-wire strung outside [long ago when you were agile and had bones made of rubber., or at least mild steel, not pre-fractured balsa wood as you have now.....) to that nearby tree, that etherial signal.
You got that right.... Even when I was younger I got a little nervous going up 40 feet or so into the trees to attach the ends of a longwire (with springs, as the trees sway). Only one got hit by lightning, as I came home one day and it was gone, and the springs looked like pretzels . Or putting a long pole on the roof at the end of the house, to set up a dipole... even when at 17 years old, falling 30 feet would do a lot of damage.
Whenever there was a thunderstorm coming, we would take the coax off of the receivers. Once when there was a nearby strike, there was enough induction that I saw the center conductor arc a spark to the shield on RG-8.
But I digress too much... back to the regularly scheduled thread.
Carefully plucking it out of the night skies by manually tuning in some whispered signal, and then straining to hear the voice of some Nairobi evening announcer who is recounting the day's political events on the ground there. Internet is fine if you don't want ANY challenge and you enjoy crystal clear reception but you also know that it could all just "go down" if someone decides to do that!
Good DXing guys! Oh, and remember to learn your happy Chinese phrases!
Or Thai: คุณเป็นอย่างไรวันนี้?
Personally, I like the Icom, Drake and Sony receivers.
The price / quality class that the ICF-2010 was in does not seem to exist any more. (And it WAS an excellent radio! I bought one used from an E-Bay seller in 2002 and used it until it broke in 2006, for shortwave as well as DXing AM radio and beacons) For shortwave, you either can pick from a fair selection of sub-$100 radios or expensive ham transceivers or wideband communications receivers. There's really nothing in the middle, it seems. You'll have to peruse the used market, although Sangean recently released the ATS-909X, which apparently uses DSP (digital signal processing) to process the signal and improve reception. My Sony XDR-F1HD is a DSP AM/FM receiver, and it's absolutely fantastic. The Kenwood TS-2000 (a ham transceiver I used to own in my wealthier days) also used DSP.
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Cq cq cq de ve4aij....
. Or putting a long pole on the roof at the end of the house, to set up a dipole... even when at 17 years old, falling 30 feet would do a lot of damage.
