Welcome to the wonderful world of shortwave listening (SWL). Test your aural comprehension of foreign languages; listen in on news from abroad or on the variety of opinions and interests of ordinary people around the world; test your political IQ by evaluating your country through outsiders’ eyes, to cast a more discriminating eye on domestic and geopolitical situations. It’s always interesting to hear professional reportage about your country from abroad. Listen in on historical and cultural events as they occur in distant places twenty four hours a day without leaving the comfort of your bedside, in English and in foreign languages too.
There is nothing expensive about shortwave radios. In autumn of 2009, I bought a Coby paperback-novel-sized AM/FM/SW radio for only $16. Several years ago in the heart of downtown I was buying them at $8 and $10. Then, there are always the elegant and immortal Grundig world band radios, available in so many styles, sizes, functions, and price ranges, some costing not much more than $16. Grundig represents excellence of product and customer service. Their radios are the choice for travel, office, living room or bedroom. Coby products give a surprisingly fine performance at extremely low prices. I prefer to carry a miniature Coby AM/FM in my briefcase when I’m on the go and under pressure. I don’t mind damaging or losing one since they cost so little to replace.
Listen to direct broadcasts from Cuba, Germany, Canada, Japan, Spain. Hear a German orchestra in Vienna play Mozart or Beethoven live!
There is much excitement in scanning the airwaves to catch the diversity of ideas, subjects and interests presented in broadcasts. Be patient in finding a listenable broadcast under any atmospheric conditions. When reception is good even the least expensive model can bring in broadcast signals from remote places (this pursuit as a pastime is called “DXing”).
Reception is generally best at night, when the thought of broadcast waves travelling through night skies over mountain and sea adds an element of drama to SWL and the comfort of radio community. In SWL at night, I love the mysterious hollow echo in many transmissions, which sound as though they are coming to you through a tunnel. Perhaps this effect comes about because in their long and rugged journey through by no means empty space, wave packets that were transmitted in phase arrive at your receiver slightly out of phase, which means that you hear one sound coming from two different locations at once, hence the echo effect.
Radio Shack or any good electronics store will sell you a shortwave radio antenna, a six to ten foot long few strands of copper wire covered in sleeving, like common headphone conductor wire, but wound on a small flat spool. Hang the spool near or atop your window, attach the free end of the wire (expose the copper strands) to your radio’s telescopic antenna, and tune in to a broadcast. For only a few dollars the SWR antenna noticeably improves reception. The difference it makes is amazing. You can make your own simple “wire antenna” with a scrap wire from discarded headphones. Just hang one end on a tack over your window, expose about one inch of the copper strands at the other, and wrap those around the tip of your radio’s telescopic antenna. A butterfly clip or piece of tape can secure it if necessary. Realize, though, that whilst FM reception can depend on the telescopic antenna, it is radio placement that determines AM reception; extending the radio’s telescopic antenna if it has one won’t effect SWL. Sometimes I wrap a few thick rubber bands around my portable radios, too, to help insulate them against shock or breakage should they fall.
Listen to the effects on reception of the ionosphere, the vast layer of earth’s atmosphere that reaches from about 50 km (30 miles) from earth’s surface to about 500-800 km (400-600 miles). It’s on the nearby sub-layers that shortwave propagation depends.
Ponder the fact that radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation like light, and therefore travel at three hundred million meters per second (186,000 miles per second). Sound waves travel at different speeds through different materials: air, water, wood, steel. Broadly speaking, the denser the material, the faster they move through it. Ponder the fact that a radio wave is not a sound wave.
Create an oversimplified but very useful image by picturing short waves as sinusoidal (S-shaped) waves of energy undulating through space, possessing wavelengths from about 10 meters (10 yards or 30 feet) to 100 meters (100 yards or 300 feet). That’s quite long, actually. To be of use in radio, transmitted waves must have a comparatively high energy meaning a high frequency; frequency and wavelength are inversely proportionate to each other. Communication waves of very low frequencies like what are used for maritime or navigational purposes have astonishing wavelengths crest to crest, in the range of 1000 meters (1 km or three-fifths of a mile) to 10,000 meters (10 km or about 5 miles).
