As a general comment, Radio Shack’s quality may have gone down but in general, I think that is so for many electronic products. Back in the day, I got a multiband radio, in retrospect probably a steal, I listened to Family Radio before Harold Camping got into all of his rapture forecasting and it was a good station, I listened to the BBC before they became more politically correct, I can still hear “This is London” in my head. A lot of entertainment, Radio Moscow though I never took much interest in them. VOA and I suppose Radio Free Europe. Though never a “DXer”, I did get a few penpals through shortwave. I guess I’ll try my Grundig again I got there a few years ago and never seemed to work too well.
You take me back. I used to listen to 'Radio Cuba' because of a jazz program they had. But their newscasters were often hilarious in their effort to blame USA imperialism for every thing that went wrong. Talk about conspiracy nuts...