[mylife]

I heard about this article on the shortwave.

[Political Junkie Too]

Last year, I built this $40 active antenna kit for my scanner from Ramsey Electronics. It's advertised that it "Performs like a 60' Long Wire!" It covers 1MHz to 800MHz with up to 20 dB of gain at an input signal level up to -20dBm.

You need some basic soldering skills to build the kit in a few hours, and it worked great on my scanner. I couldn't pick up much on my portable short wave radios (Grundig YB400PE), mostly due to interference where I live.

I recently tinkered with the antenna and possibly shorted out a component, so I'll probably order another one from Ramsey (or maybe have them fix it for me).

They make some fun kits to build at home for radio transmitting and receiving.

-PJ

[mojitojoe]

Great post. Thank you. Bookmarked to read all of it later.

[SamAdams76]

I still use my Grundig Satellit 700 every day (I use it as my alarm clock). I've had it since 1994 and it still looks brand new. I use it mostly for FM listening but during the summer, I like to take it out to the backyard to the picnic table and see what I can find on the shortwave bands. Usually I only find people shouting in some foreign language but sometimes I pick up real tropical music from the Carribean someplace or other. Much more authentic than Jimmy Buffet!

This radio is a solid piece of engineering. 15 years of daily use and still going strong. The audio quality is very rich as well. I think I paid around $400 for it back in 1994 and that comes to 7.3 cents a day over the past 15 years!

Interesting story how I came about getting this radio. I used to listen to the Chuck Harder "For the People" radio show and he was always touting his "Made in America" shortwave radio. Well being the sucker I was, I bought one and it was one of the biggest pieces of junk imaginable. The Internet was just getting popular around that time so I went online and subscribed to a newsgroup about shortwave radios and that's how I learned that the Grundig 700 and Sony 2010 (pictured below) were the best ones on the market. I went to a shortwave dealer and decided to go with the Grundig after I heard the superior audio quality. It ended up being the best electronics purchase I ever made in terms of quality and longevity.

But there's lots of people pretty happy with their Sony 2010s as well.

[mojitojoe]

Bump

[Zionist Conspirator]

I used to listen to short wave back in the Seventies and Eighties. I have a sw radio, but don’t listen any more. I’d heard that the Internet companies were going to so blanket the country with wires that no one could pick it up again outside of a pasture in the middle of nowhere.