Shortwave radio

I didn't expect this much input. I am looking at a grundig sattil 750 at a pawn shop. I wanted to have something to listen to with no other TV or radio signals around the kids might enjoy it. I stayed over at a friends house in the mid 80's and listened to one all night and have not forgotten about how interested I was with it.

Pool,

I have been a ham for many year but would rather listen than talk. So I bring a small portable shortwave receiver with me just for listening to various broadcast stations. While longer is better, a 12' wire antenna will do. If you want to know which radio I bring along, send me a PM as it is unlikely that I will come back to this thread unless prompted.

Happy listening,
Steve

CavemanCharlie wrote:
On Short Wave 2 which is listed as 7.0 - 22.0. I found 2 English speaking channels. 8 Spanish channels. 1 French Channel . 5 religion channel's. 2 Greenwich mean time channels. 1 loud opera channel (possibly Spanish speaking) 1 channel talking about something in New Orleans but, I think it was a religion channel. 2 Dot-Dot-Dash-Dash channel.

This radio calls what around here we would call AM as Medium Wave. And, on that setting I just get the normal AM radio stations.

Anyway, once every few years I get board and see what I can pick up on that old boom box. The answer is ;as usual; not much I want to listen too.

Wonderful old radio though. I'm still using it in my kitchen some 30 or more years later. No radio you buy today will still be working 30 years from now.

Don't forget night time AM DX'ing. Sometimes thats way more fun than the SW bands

Sorry for the confusing posts I hope if you read it a couple of times you will understand. It's near my bedtime and I don't want to take the effort to clean them up and make them more understandable. Ask if you have questions.

On Short Wave 2 which is listed as 7.0 - 22.0. I found 2 English speaking channels. 8 Spanish channels. 1 French Channel . 5 religion channel's. 2 Greenwich mean time channels. 1 loud opera channel (possibly Spanish speaking) 1 channel talking about something in New Orleans but, I think it was a religion channel. 2 Dot-Dot-Dash-Dash channel.

This radio calls what around here we would call AM as Medium Wave. And, on that setting I just get the normal AM radio stations.

Anyway, once every few years I get board and see what I can pick up on that old boom box. The answer is ;as usual; not much I want to listen too.

Wonderful old radio though. I'm still using it in my kitchen some 30 or more years later. No radio you buy today will still be working 30 years from now.

OK. you all got me interested in this so I did some looking. Back in the late 70's early 80's my mom bought a boom box. You know the type of radio with two big speakers that you used to take to the beach. It has 6 big D batteries in it and it weighs a ton. I still have it and it's my main radio in my house old kitchen for listening to the local radio station news at noon. It's a Sanyo Model M9965K.

It has 2 places to listen to short wave radio. The one Short wave frequency says megahertz 2.3 -7.0 on it. I put up it's 2 foot antenna today and I found 12 religion channels on that range. I also found 2 Chinese or Japanese channels. I fond the Greenwich Mean clock on 3 channels. I found Radio Havana Cuba on 2 channels. And I found 8 Spanish speaking channels. The only weird thing is that I found one channel that was Dot-Dot-Dash-Dash. Since I don't know Morris code I have no idea what that was.

More in the next post

For broadcast stations like BBC and not ham operators, I think some of the hand held radios do a better job. A ham transceiver is going to need a antenna that's tuned for the band (frequency) you want to listen to. Where as the hand held unit will have internal circuitry to optimize what ever frequency you have tuned.

Out of range? If your just wanting to listen to a radio station back home while traveling, you'll be disappointed. Station power, frequency and conditions limit the distance they can broadcast. Some "Clear channel stations" (AM band) increase power at night and cover great distances. These are about the only stations you can receive when several states away. As stated for a local station you'll need an internet application.

As with all things some of the radios are better than others. Better does not always correspond with price.

CavemanCharlie wrote:

I can't get any of that to work. Started out by telling me my Java was out of date so I go to all the trouble to get that up to date and then it blocks it because of some Java security settings. So, I go to security settings for Java and turn it off and it still blocks it. I give up. Stupid Computers. I always have hated that Java thing anyway. All it ever does is tell me it need to up date about 500 times a day.

I agree 100%, Java is a pain the a**

If you use Firefox or Chrome; this is the tuner I play with - it a different method to deliver audio and the spectrograph to your computer called HTML 5:

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

GordonThree wrote:
If you have the Internet, you might be happy with a free service called "WebSDR" or software defined radio. Dozens of websites out there re-broadcasting shortwave bands from all over the world, and you control the tuner.

http://websdr.org

I can't get any of that to work. Started out by telling me my Java was out of date so I go to all the trouble to get that up to date and then it blocks it because of some Java security settings. So, I go to security settings for Java and turn it off and it still blocks it. I give up. Stupid Computers. I always have hated that Java thing anyway. All it ever does is tell me it need to up date about 500 times a day.

Whatever receiver you get, make sure that it has a Beat Frequency Oscillator (BFO). This will allow you to listen intelligbly to Single Sideband (SSB) communications. Lots of interesting stuff there.

If you get a ham radio license, you may find that you want to start talking to people. It's not hard to learn, and with something like an Icom AH-2b mobile antenna and AH-4 tuner or a screwdriver antenna, you will have the world to talk to.