[snarkpup]

About 20 years ago, I was temporarily interested in shortwave listening. The problem I ran into was that there were no international rules governing frequency allocation. There were about half-a-dozen powerhouses that included Voice of America, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, the BBC, and an evangelist whose call letters (as I recall) began with a "W". These guys would simulcast on zillions of different frequencies at astronomical power levels. Every station I tried to tune into (Radio Greece, etc.) was being blown off the air by one of these half-dozen.

After ten days of this the receiver failed; and after three futile attempts by the factory to fix it, I returned it for a refund and sold my antenna to a friend who was still into this stuff.

Does anyone know if the situation has improved?

[mylife]

I pick up Greece and Turkey Along with Cypress very well, though not lately, but thats because the ionosphere is crappy right now due to no sunspots.

I like listening to the music on those stations

[seatrout]

—There were about half-a-dozen powerhouses that included Voice of America, Radio Moscow, Radio Havana, the BBC, and an evangelist whose call letters (as I recall) began with a “W”.—

The “evangelist” was probably WJCB, the Voice of the Andes, out of Quito, Ecuador. Pretty strong signal.

[Clinging Bitterly]

There have been, for the better part of a hundred years, international rules and treaties governing radio communication in general (of course they aren't always followed and that isn't something that's likely to ever change).

But if you were getting swamped by a few blowtorch stations it sounds like a bad receiver - and certainly there are some real crappy ones out there.

Years ago I had a Radio Shack DX160 and though it was a pretty "looking" old school style receiver, the one I had at least was lousy with images on strong signals and howling microphonics. Yuck.