Hi, a while back I purchased a shortwave radio receiver at an estate sale. (Got vague assurances that they thought it worked.)
Lately I have been playing with it and am surprised and confused with the scarcity of radio signals.... almost none.
I have attached a new, outside antenna but can only get our local AM station.
Many years ago, with a different radio, I used to be able to receive a bunch of stations.
Have they all gone away or is my radio not up to par??
Opinions much appreciated!

I spent my early wayward teenage years ears glued to shortwave rock stations, mostly from England, because available options for that sort of programming in the Middle East were very thin. This was early-mid 60's, wheem-a-wacka, wheem-a-wacka, dee dum dum dooway.

Why no more? I could be wrong, but there came about this thing called the Internet that seems to have made long-distance entertainment broadcast radio wither away. Of course, there are any number of Internet radio stations with a tremendous variety of content. Either that, or maybe the lion woke up and mauled all the disc jockeys.

I fooled around with shortwave for a while. I found it to be very much antenna dependent. Better antenna, better reception and more stations.

Could be the time of day and where you're looking.

Here's some good info on shortwave.

https://www.hamuniverse.com/shortwavebands.html

My uncle was bent over, trying to see the dial on the shortwave radio. He put his hand on his back and said, "I think I'm getting lumbago."

My aunt said, "You know that you don't understand that, try a different station."

quote:

Originally posted by architect:
I spent my early wayward teenage years ears glued to shortwave rock stations, mostly from England, because available options for that sort of programming in the Middle East were very thin. This was early-mid 60's, wheem-a-wacka, wheem-a-wacka, dee dum dum dooway.

Why no more? I could be wrong, but there came about this thing called the Internet that seems to have made long-distance entertainment broadcast radio wither away. Of course, there are any number of Internet radio stations with a tremendous variety of content. Either that, or maybe the lion woke up and mauled all the disc jockeys.

I too was into SW listening back in the 1960s. BBC-World Service; Radio Nederland (re-transmitting from Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles—the ABC Islands); Radio Australia; Radio Canada International; Swiss Radio; Deutche Welle; Radio South Africa; etc. I even collected a few QSL Cards after confirming a program that I heard.

Yes, those were the “good old days” of SW listening. As has been stated, the Internet now is the mainstay for foreign/international broadcasting.

However, with the Ukrainians and Russians having a family squabble, the Russkies cut off the Internet BBC transmissions to Russia. I believe the BBC then dusted off some of their transmitters and started up again.

Should the Internet go down for whatever reasons, then I’d expect SW radio will come back into vogue, as will Amateur (ham) radio for communication purposes.

So, there are fewer broadcast stations booming out their entertainment/news/education/propaganda these days. Video-- actually, the web-- killed the radio star, Radio Moscow no longer needs to spread communism worldwide, etc.

Many of the superstations that are left use regional transmitter sites (you'll need a good antenna if you're not in the intended region) or highly directional arrays (you'll need a good antenna if you're not in the intended region) but you can usually get some good stuff at night with a basic setup. With pretty much any antenna, higher is better. A simple longwire setup in a tree fed my addiction until we moved last year. Check the broadcast schedules online, because you might have a perfectly usable setup but nothing to hear.

Long shot: Is the radio a Sony ICF-2010? It had a 20+ year production run (so there's a bunch of them out there) and is an excellent rig, but an ultra-common problem in the model is a blown Field Effect Transistor from static charge that "desenses" the set. That could definitely make you think you were living in a radio-free world

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
My uncle was bent over, trying to see the dial on the shortwave radio. He put his hand on his back and said, "I think I'm getting lumbago."

My aunt said, "You know that you don't understand that, try a different station."

That cracked me up. Thank you.

Check the antenna, add an external antenna, and listen at night.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
My uncle was bent over, trying to see the dial on the shortwave radio. He put his hand on his back and said, "I think I'm getting lumbago."

My aunt said, "You know that you don't understand that, try a different station."

Damn V-Tail. That struck me as laugh out loud funny. Comedy Gold!!!

Anyone remember the old Zenith Transworld radios. I was a teenager when they were popular. It was about the size of a small suitcase. I thought shortwave was a cool idea, so eventually I bought a radio of my own. I soon realized the fun was limited, unless you spoke French, German or Spanish. Later, while stationed in Korea, we listened to English broadcasts of Radio Peking. They were a bit boring, consisting of quotations of Chairman Mao and reports of which communist official had arrived from the airport that day.Where was Casey Kasem, when we needed him?

Depending on the age of the radio, you may have some bad capacitors in the front end.

As a kid I had a Hallicrafters S38E radio. Took it to West Germany in about 1970 and ran a long wire antenna fron the 5th floor windows of two buildings.

quote:

Originally posted by NK402:
<snip>
Later, while stationed in Korea, we listened to English broadcasts of Radio Peking. They were a bit boring, consisting of quotations of Chairman Mao and reports of which communist official had arrived from the airport that day.Where was Casey Kasem, when we needed him?

Yeah. When Nixon made his epochal trip to China the Chicoms didn’t know how it was going to work out. In the first evening of Nixon’s first day there the lead story of the English language radio Peking broadcast was about the shoe production record at some factory. Later on they were enthusiastic about it.

When I lived in Minnesota I did a lot of short wave listening. Being relatively far from the equator (and tropical lightning storms) there was low static. I had an excellent Drake SPR-4 receiver:

https://www.universal-radio.co...g/commrxvr/spr4.html

It was dual conversion with a Linear Master Oscillator (LMO). The 1st IF was 5 MHz for good image rejection. The 2nd IF was 50 KHz for sharp, narrow, audio band pass. And to enable its very sharp and narrow notch filter to reject any annoying squeal.

I also listened to Radio New York Worldwide in the 20 MHZ band during day time. It was eventually revealed to be CIA funded.

When I lived in Alaska, we listened to shortwave all the time.

Loved it.

This won't help you find any stations for your shortwave but this is a cool site that lets you listen to thousands of radio stations around the world via the internet. I think someone on Sigforum originally turned me onto it.
Radio Garden
They now have apps for Apple and Android also.

quote:

Originally posted by mike28w:
Hi, a while back I purchased a shortwave radio receiver at an estate sale. (Got vague assurances that they thought it worked.)
Lately I have been playing with it and am surprised and confused with the scarcity of radio signals.... almost none.
I have attached a new, outside antenna but can only get our local AM station.
Many years ago, with a different radio, I used to be able to receive a bunch of stations.
Have they all gone away or is my radio not up to par??
Opinions much appreciated!

If the radio covers these frequencies, try this:

Time signals (WWV / WWVH) exist on several freqs, but from ID, try 5 MHz or 10 MHz. You may or may not hear something on 2.5, 15 MHz, depending. The signals at 20 and 25 MHz might be a bit more difficult, or maybe not, again, depending on several factors including time of day, and believe it or not, solar conditions.

these signals are strong, on 24/7 and normally easy to hear on at least one of these freqs, again, if the radio covers these freqs.

Transmitters are in CO and HI. You may hear one or both, again, depending on several factors.

If you can't hear these signals, then I'd wonder about the health of your setup.

Agreed that most all stations have moved from the airwaves to the Internet. But I still have some equipment up and running. I did retire several UHF-VHF radios because they weren't able to handle all the new encryption protocols.

I've been a SWL since my pre-teen years starting with a Hallicrafters S53A and a Heathkit Q-Multiplier.
Frankly I miss spinning the dials and tweaking out far flung weak SW stations. These days it is mostly BCB-DX that I do although I will look for HAM friends I've befriended over the years or those few SW broadcast stations still on the air.

Thanks to everyone for their input!!

(I saved the Radio Garden link)

I have a Yaesu FT5DR, and before that a FT3DR. No shortwave stations were ever heard, using the official SW frequencies preprogrammed in to the radio by Yaesu. I’ll keep trying, but I don’t think I can pick them up in RIC.