Yeah, but they don’t have the Interval Signals like they used to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFRYKDF2kxs
I have a Drake SW8 but have not listened to it in years. Was very interesting for years.
One switch of Obama’s finger and the internet is down.
And unlike shortwave, it's going to cost you money...
BTW, with a decent wire antenna and decent inexpensive receiver, shortwave signals come in great...And free.
I don’t have a shortwave, only a portable HAM Baofeng uvb5. That’s not as popular anymore either but it a necessity for emergency or during severe weather.
I just repaired my Zenith Transoceanic the other day but the SW side needs some adjustment, it’s still a treat listening.
I love going on websdr. One of my fave antennas to jump on is out of the Netherlands.
Last time I turned on my brother’s old Hallicrafters was New Years eve of Y2K. Found someone broadcasting an old Bob Hope Christmas special.
I don’t have wi-fi so I’m stuck with my Icom R71A. I still hear a lot.
online? foreigners are blocked from listening?
Do the internet stations confirm reception via QSL card?
The one I really wanted I never got (Diego Garcia). If I could go back in time and had a piece of property better suited for a longer beverage or three...
I would not be surprised if in the next 20 years all the frequencies between 1.8mhz to 30mhz is just given over to ham and unlicensed use. It will be looked at as useless.
I was thinking about how cheaply you could create a low-bandwidth digital message system on hf a few weeks ago.
I built two small boards with a ATtiny84 and lm567 on each along with a few other simple parts...resistors, caps and a cheap 2-line LCD from ebay (China special 2.50 ea).
These were able to handle data reliably at about 60wpm using simple morse. You could easily program them to handle email traffic, remote device control and countless other duties. More speed as well as a couple of side channels could be added if I was inclined to play with them further.
Total cost was less than 10 dollars a board.
You could add a few more lm567 decoders(a quarter each) and handle traffic on several frequencies at the same time. You could use a better uC like an ARM Cortex and eliminate the lm567 decoders by using FFT code...but I like the old analog 567 decoders :-)
Anyways, this shows that the old noisy shortwave frequencies can still be put to good use in case TSHTF.
In the early 1990s, just before the Internet started catching on, it was a way to get exposed to what was going on outside the United States. I used to listen to BBC and other news but sometimes I'd pick up some exotic music from some distant country - probably in the tropics somewhere.
Anybody serious about shortwave in those days had a dog-eared copy of the "bible" of shortwave - the annual "Passport to World Band Radio".
You don't have the experience of tuning the dial a little, hearing something completely different, and wondering what it is.
Rather, you get the address, go there, and pretty much know what you're going to get. No surprises -- or not as many.
I guess it's just as well that I never moved up to the more expensive receiver. What's going to happen to all that bandwidth, though?
Just received a satellite radio and was wondering how I find channels of particular interest. For example, emergency (local, regional, state) or other genre such as survival networks or cooking or gardening, etc
Had a scanner and could buy a book that listed scanner frequencies by location.
Just don’t know how to locate information so I can add channels I don’t know about.
I have not been active since I left the USSA. My passion was chasing DX. Before I quit, I made it to the DXCC “top of the honor roll”. There were no countries left to work. de W4EX.
I used to love my shortwave radio.
My favorite was listening to Radio Pyongyang’s English broadcast at 6:00 AM local time. It was like a parody.