Shortwave radio

Furryanimal

Furryanimal

Y gath o Gymru
Location
Wales
I was an avid SW listener and still have an SW radio where stations still broadcast.Amazingly.
And I came across this.....


......thanks to Radio Mi Amigo I discovered this...it’s SW on your device

Wide-band WebSDR
On this page you can listen to and control a short-wave receiver located at the amateur radio club ETGD at the University of Twente. In contrast to other web-controlled receivers, this receiver can be tuned by multiple users simultaneously, thanks to the use of Software-Defined Radio.

This site, which in 2008 was the very first WebSDR site ever, was finally reactivated in July 2012 after an interruption of more than 1.5 years; .Use the link below(copy and paste).

websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6085am

Using this this morning I have listened to Voice of America and the Voice of Turkey.Fascinating.Use the +++ or —-buttons to move the cursor.Or manually enter a frequency.Use AM lock once listening to a station.

websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6085am
 

My baby brother was a shortwave radio listener, and I remember tuning into far away stations from countries around the world late into the night.

He didn't have a fancy radio, just an old cassette/radio player, but it was enough to provide him with hours of enjoyment.

I can hear it now, the tuning into each station, sounded creepy... almost haunting, the squelching and squealing with every turn of the dial, catching voices and things from around the world.
 

Furryanimal said:
I was an avid SW listener and still have an SW radio where stations still broadcast.Amazingly.
And I came across this.....


......thanks to Radio Mi Amigo I discovered this...it’s SW on your device

Wide-band WebSDR
On this page you can listen to and control a short-wave receiver located at the amateur radio club ETGD at the University of Twente. In contrast to other web-controlled receivers, this receiver can be tuned by multiple users simultaneously, thanks to the use of Software-Defined Radio.

This site, which in 2008 was the very first WebSDR site ever, was finally reactivated in July 2012 after an interruption of more than 1.5 years; .Use the link below(copy and paste).

websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6085am

Using this this morning I have listened to Voice of America and the Voice of Turkey.Fascinating.Use the +++ or —-buttons to move the cursor.Or manually enter a frequency.Use AM lock once listening to a station.

websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/?tune=6085am
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Aunt Marg said:
My baby brother was a shortwave radio listener, and I remember tuning into far away stations from countries around the world late into the night.

He didn't have a fancy radio, just an old cassette/radio player, but it was enough to provide him with hours of enjoyment.

I can hear it now, the tuning into each station, sounded creepy... almost haunting, the squelching and squealing with every turn of the dial, catching voices and things from around the world.
Click to expand...

Me too. I could talk about this subject for a week.

Best-Shortwave-Radios.jpg

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Radio-Listeners-Guide-2021-shadow-640px-1.jpg
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www.dxing.com/swllink.htm

www.curlie.org/Recreation/Radio/Shortwave_and_DX_Listening

www.swling.com

www.numbers-stations.com

www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/what-is-replacing-shortwave

www.shortwavearchive.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_DX

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_radio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortwave_bands



 
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My receiver is a Korean War era military unit with vacuum tubes tuning 5 to 18 Mhz in 4 bands. I got it as Army surplus in the '70s with no power supply, but I got the manual and built one. It seems there used to be a lot more stations before but my antenna isn't what I once had when I moved. I guess the world wide web has taken the place of communicating with far away places. Is it worth buying a modern receiver I'm wondering.
 
I still have my old HF receiver, but it hasn't been turned on for at least 10 years. It is still connected to an antenna in my attic via an impedance matching device. I used to listen to English News broadcasts from Europe. They saw things a lot different than we did, and they still do.

Back in the 1960's when I took the radio to sea with me, I listened to BBC and enjoyed their entertainment. There was something quite charming about a cowboy story being told by someone with a strong British accent. This was all back in the days before satellites and the internet. Sailors today have it easy, but they will never know what it is like to understand long haul HF transmission with all its various interesting skywave issues.
 
My shortwave receivers are:

1. Sony ICF-2010 with the add-on external powered antenna. This still a highly regarded portable receiver. I upgraded the filters with a kit that was available from a third party vendor back in the 1980s. This involved taking the receiver apart, unsoldering the original filters, and installing the new ones that were sharper for better adjacent frequency rejection and a CW filter.

2. Icom IRC-20 handheld SW receiver. The Icom is a decent handheld, but no match for the Sony.

Back when I was growing up, I was a registered SWL with Popular Electronics and had a QSL card that I would send to stations I heard so they would send me their card in return. I had a wall full of SW QSL cards from all over the world.

Tony
 
Pecos said:
I still have my old HF receiver, but it hasn't been turned on for at least 10 years. It is still connected to an antenna in my attic via an impedance matching device. I used to listen to English News broadcasts from Europe. They saw things a lot different than we did, and they still do.

Back in the 1960's when I took the radio to sea with me, I listened to BBC and enjoyed their entertainment. There was something quite charming about a cowboy story being told by someone with a strong British accent. This was all back in the days before satellites and the internet. Sailors today have it easy, but they will never know what it is like to understand long haul HF transmission with all its various interesting skywave issues.
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The BBC was very highly regarded for their even-handed news reporting. I used to listen to the BBC a lot back when.

Tony
 
Chet said:
My receiver is a Korean War era military unit with vacuum tubes tuning 5 to 18 Mhz in 4 bands. I got it as Army surplus in the '70s with no power supply, but I got the manual and built one. It seems there used to be a lot more stations before but my antenna isn't what I once had when I moved. I guess the world wide web has taken the place of communicating with far away places. Is it worth buying a modern receiver I'm wondering.
Click to expand...

Pecos said:
I still have my old HF receiver, but it hasn't been turned on for at least 10 years. It is still connected to an antenna in my attic via an impedance matching device. I used to listen to English News broadcasts from Europe. They saw things a lot different than we did, and they still do.

Back in the 1960's when I took the radio to sea with me, I listened to BBC and enjoyed their entertainment. There was something quite charming about a cowboy story being told by someone with a strong British accent. This was all back in the days before satellites and the internet. Sailors today have it easy, but they will never know what it is like to understand long haul HF transmission with all its various interesting skywave issues.
Click to expand...

tbeltrans said:
My shortwave receivers are:

1. Sony ICF-2010 with the add-on external powered antenna. This still a highly regarded portable receiver. I upgraded the filters with a kit that was available from a third party vendor back in the 1980s. This involved taking the receiver apart, unsoldering the original filters, and installing the new ones that were sharper for better adjacent frequency rejection and a CW filter.

2. Icom IRC-20 handheld SW receiver. The Icom is a decent handheld, but no match for the Sony.

Back when I was growing up, I was a registered SWL with Popular Electronics and had a QSL card that I would send to stations I heard so they would send me their card in return. I had a wall full of SW QSL cards from all over the world.

Tony
Click to expand...

WOW!!!!! And here I thought my favorite hobby was niche. Thanks guys you Radioheads made me feel normal again. I have more stuff to post. My very first receiver was a low band Harran Labs receiver in a brown bakelite case. Next were Lafayette receivers and Radio shack stuff. Tony you know your stuff. After spending enough cash to buy two houses over the span of 5 decades my best purchases as of late are the highly affordable SDR's.
 
Chet said:
My receiver is a Korean War era military unit with vacuum tubes tuning 5 to 18 Mhz in 4 bands. I got it as Army surplus in the '70s with no power supply, but I got the manual and built one. It seems there used to be a lot more stations before but my antenna isn't what I once had when I moved. I guess the world wide web has taken the place of communicating with far away places. Is it worth buying a modern receiver I'm wondering.
Click to expand...

Chet it is well worth it. SDR has breathed new life into all aspects of the hobby. If you don't want to go SDR the latest box radios have drastically dropped in price while the vintage stuff is becoming quite expensive especially on Fleabay. I am working on my own personal project to upgrade my RTL and Nooelect dongles to Airspy and SDRPlay with some HP all in one desktops and monitor MW to 600 MHz. What are you looking to monitor? Since we have all come out of the closet we can help each other. I'd be great to start a subforum.
 
FastTrax said:
WOW!!!!! And here I thought my favorite hobby was niche. Thanks guys you Radioheads made me feel normal again. I have more stuff to post. My very first receiver was a low band Harran Labs receiver in a brown bakelite case. Next were Lafayette receivers and Radio shack stuff. Tony you know your stuff. After spending enough cash to buy two houses over the span of 5 decades my best purchases as of late are the highly affordable SDR's.
Click to expand...
Technology advances will do that. Back around 1980-1, I went to a 16 month evening votech class in computer programming. This was mainframe stuff with Hollerith cards. Fortunately, I realized before it was too late that I needed a degree and spent several years again in night school correcting that problem.

While in the votech school, I worked as an electronic tech during the day. When I went through electronics school in the mid-1970s, it was all analog, in fact just moving over to solid state. I wanted to learn about digital electronics so I built my own Z-80 based computer from scratch (i.e. made my own PC board, soldered on the components after laying out the data and address lines, etc.

I took that computer to school one night and the instructor spent the first 20 minutes or so of class time telling the class how stupid I was for wasting my time with microprocessors because there would never be a future in it. Good thing he was wrong, because I got into the right stuff at the right time and had a great career in engineering. Also good thing he was wrong because we have all this cool microprocessor-based technology today.

Tony
 
FastTrax said:
Chet it is well worth it. SDR has breathed new life into all aspects of the hobby. If you don't want to go SDR the latest box radios have drastically dropped in price while the vintage stuff is becoming quite expensive especially on Fleabay. I am working on my own personal project to upgrade my RTL and Nooelect dongles to Airspy and SDRPlay with some HP all in one desktops and monitor MW to 600 MHz. What are you looking to monitor? Since we have all come out of the closet we can help each other. I'd be great to start a subforum.
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FastTrax, it seems you are really on top of the current technology. I am not really involved in SWL anymore and I let my ham license lapse years ago. In retirement, my interests are in my music interests - fingerstyle guitar and piano. I would be interested in reading such a sub-forum and occasionally posting if I can help out here and there.

My last (most recent) involvement in electronics outside of work was designing and building guitar pedals, and modifying existing pedals for better performance. My eyes are not good enough to do that kind of detail work anymore so I gave that up, sold my scope and switched to other interests.

Tony
 
Mine is a British Made Lowe HF-150 that I picked up in the late 1980's when my other one died from being Ancient.
It is nice and compact, easy to tune and quite stable. It would have been nice to have had it back in the 1960's.

I was often amazed that the BBC Signals could be picked up in the South Atlantic and along the East Coast of South Africa. They must have had some highly directional transmitting antennas. I always thought that the British knew a bit more about propagation and electronics than we did. Their proficiency during the Battle of Britain during WWII pretty much proves that.

So how did the United States wind up building and maintaining the WWV Time Code System that we all relied on so much?
 
Pecos said:
Mine is a British Made Lowe HF-150 that I picked up in the late 1980's when my other one died from being Ancient.
It is nice and compact, easy to tune and quite stable. It would have been nice to have had it back in the 1960's.

I was often amazed that the BBC Signals could be picked up in the South Atlantic and along the East Coast of South Africa. They must have had some highly directional transmitting antennas. I always thought that the British knew a bit more about propagation and electronics than we did. Their proficiency during the Battle of Britain during WWII pretty much proves that.

So how did the United States wind up building and maintaining the WWV Time Code System that we all relied on so much?
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Yes! Ft. Collins Colorado and Hilo Hawaii. :)

By the way, that Lowe HF-150 is a very desirable receiver.

Tony
 
Aunt Marg said:
We, or I should say, I, listen to BBC on a regular basis through CBC Radio.

BBC programs come on after midnight, and on those nights where I may be up and around, there's BBC to keep me company.
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I listen to CBC radio when I can get it. I have not listened to the BBC in some years now, but do catch their program on public television if I am up and around at that time.

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
FastTrax, it seems you are really on top of the current technology. I am not really involved in SWL anymore and I let my ham license lapse years ago. In retirement, my interests are in my music interests - fingerstyle guitar and piano. I would be interested in reading such a sub-forum and occasionally posting if I can help out here and there.

My last (most recent) involvement in electronics outside of work was designing and building guitar pedals, and modifying existing pedals for better performance. My eyes are not good enough to do that kind of detail work anymore so I gave that up, sold my scope and switched to other interests.

Tony
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You have an excellent resume tbeltrans. Like many Ventures wannabees I wanted to play a red Fender Strat with the required wannabee tremolo bar "or no sale" running a Fender piggyback amp with the longest white coiled cord in the history of music in the worst way. Sometimes more then chicks, muscle cars and beer. So what does mom do? She buys me some kind of acoustic guitar with no tremolo bar, no pickups oh lets just say it had zero electronics and to make matters even more embarrassing she got a small 24" by 24" amplifier for a guitar that had zero electronics. I tried to make a tremolo bar but that was a dismal failure and only because all of my guitar stumbling electric guitar wannabee friends are either pushing up daisies, esteemed guest of the state or are in Witsec so I'm good to go with my failed DIY tremolo failure. All of my guitar stumbling wannabee friends never figured out why I never invited them over to my house anymore. I finally convinced my dad to buy me a Hagstrom guitar because it had all of those cool looking switches on it. I bought the Heathkit piggyback amp (If anybody remembers that) and just acted like I was playing. When I used to go to concerts and watch in awe how Santana, Hendrix, Gilmour, Townshend, Knopfler and Malmsteen played I wanted to get a hand transplant. You all can wake up now, I'm finished. lol.
 
Pecos said:
Mine is a British Made Lowe HF-150 that I picked up in the late 1980's when my other one died from being Ancient.
It is nice and compact, easy to tune and quite stable. It would have been nice to have had it back in the 1960's.

I was often amazed that the BBC Signals could be picked up in the South Atlantic and along the East Coast of South Africa. They must have had some highly directional transmitting antennas. I always thought that the British knew a bit more about propagation and electronics than we did. Their proficiency during the Battle of Britain during WWII pretty much proves that.

So how did the United States wind up building and maintaining the WWV Time Code System that we all relied on so much?
Click to expand...

It's been rumored that NIST is contemplating on phasing it out because of the success of GPS. WWV is one of the best indicators for propagation for me for hf, I use Snotel for VHF low band. I remember Radio Shack made a Timecube radio that picked up all the 5 frequencies. It hade a white panel thingy that you pushed down and you could actually hear the audio.
 
jujube said:
We had a short-wave radio when we lived in Turkey. I really enjoyed listening to the English-language broadcasts from all over the world and especially to the "pirate stations" that played all the newest music.
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There was a movie based on a true story about a famous Pirate Radio station. Have you ever visited Radio Marti in marathon?

 
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FastTrax said:
It's been rumored that NIST is contemplating on phasing it out because of the success of GPS. WWV is one of the best indicators for propagation for me for hf, I use Snotel for VHF low band. I remember Radio Shack made a Timecube radio that picked up all the 5 frequencies. It hade a white panel thingy that you pushed down and you could actually hear the audio.
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I am very leery of the rush to completely abandon the old systems and techniques every time a new technology arrives. Satellite communications are vulnerable to jamming. 10,000 ham radio operators are not. I will grant that modern modulation modes have a lot of processing gain and can be very resistant to intrusion. But count me among those who want to keep proven backup systems.
 

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