For those who might be interested in shortwave (and frequencies above and below), I just bought an SDR receiver (Software Defined Radio) and it is fantastic! It brings a whole new listening experience - being able to see a significant slice of spectrum and pick out stations by clicking rather than spinning a knob. Thought I would wake this thread up again. Not sure what the market looks like these days, though. Swiss radio international shortwave portable#That all said, back when I was still listening to SW, Sangean and Sony were probably the most popular with the casual listeners and made some nice portable receivers. SW broadcasting these days seems most commonly targeted at underdeveloped countries where everyone does not have broadband internet or cable TV. The internet, satellite TV, and international cable news channels are killing SW broadcasting in most first world countries. Even twenty or thirty years ago there was a huge number of english language broadcasts from Europe, Asia and South America to chose from, now. So, SW might not fit with your morning listening schedule.Īnother thing to be aware of is that SW broadcasting in general, and particularly SW broadcasting aimed at the US, had been declining for years. Propagation (signal travel) is generally much better at night, so a lot of sources don't broadcast 24hrs a day. (But that's mostly listening to see what I can hear and identify, not for "content.")Ĭlick to expand.One thing to be aware of, is that SW reception is very dependent on the time of day. The receiver is pretty "hot," and by adding a tuned passive loop antenna I can pick up and identify AM stations all over the country. Oh, I should also mention that I'm having fun with my C Crane receiver doing a bit of BCBDXing - broadcast band DXing (distance listening). I'd suggest starting out by seeing what you can find online that might be of interest. But the big broadcasters that I used to enjoy: Radio Nederland, Deutche Welle, Swiss Radio International, HCJB (Equador) BBC, Radio Canada International - are online or gone. (But check out stations like 2GB in Sydney, NSW - obviously in English - fair dinkum, mate!)Īctually, there are still a lot of broadcasters on the air - check out. When you listen to domestic broadcasters around the world you're mostly going to find them in local languages. One advantage of shortwave was that all the big broadcasters had programming in English and many other languages. With it you can listen to thousands of stations all over the world, mostly FM and AM types. One app I've been checking out lately is Radio Garden. Now, instead of a shortwave receiver all you need is a phone, tablet, or computer. The good news is that a lot of broadcasters have moved to the Internet. I can sit out in the yard and get good reception, but in the house not much. how many little "wall-wart" switching power supplies do you have in your house? We're now surrounded by an array of devices that throw out broadband RF hash that fill the shortwave spectrum. (More on that in a bit.) The other thing that I discovered: I used to have great listening success sitting inside with a portable receiver using the built-in antenna. What I found was that most of the big international broadcasters are gone. Crane CC Skywave SSB, which is a very nice receiver. After being away from the hobby for quite a while I decided to dig out my old Sony ICFSW-7600 and see what was going on Well, those receivers (so I learned) are known for suffering capacitor failure after a few decades - the receiver was pretty much dead. Over the years I've had other, better receivers, both desktop and portable models. I started listening when I was in grade school on an old, used Hallicrafters receiver. I love shortwave, but I'm afraid it may be something whose time has passed.
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