Posted on 12/30/2013 3:57:33 PM PST by steelhead_trout
Anyone who is or was a shortwave listener, like I was, knows there isn't much left on the bands these days. Nothing like the Cold War days of the 70s and 80s when it seemed every nation from the biggest superpowers to the most forlorn Iron Curtain client state, had a booming shortwave network that broadcast in English, among dozens of other languages. The Cold War's end, lack of money, and the Internet did away with all that. But there's still Internet radio, and it can do wonders. There are thousands of stations, foreign and domestic, that broadcast in Engish, and tens of thousands in other languages. And, unlike with shortwave, they all come in crystal clear. All you need is WiFi. I have a great portable Internet radio (a Sangean WFR-28), whose only failing is that it cannot pick up stations which use the iheartradio streaming format (I've heard that Clear Channel does not want its stations picked up overseas). And you can listen to any format you wish. So if you miss the old days of shortwave, this can help.
Our club’s doing an exam session in a couple of weeks. 16 signups at last count - the norm is about a half dozen.
I think that is the one my late Brother had. I know it was a very old Zenith. It had an antennae which could be attached to a bus window with suction cups.
He said it only had something like 5, maybe 6 tubes. I can remember his playing it and my being amazed how good it sounded and how well it picked up.
I also remember listening to Radio Deutschland one night. They mentioned that when they first began broadcasting in the 1920s it only took 200 watts to send their signal worldwide. I think that was the power, if not it was something close to that.
I would not be surprised if in the next 20 years all the frequencies between 1.8mhz to 30mhz is just given over to ham and unlicensed use. It will be looked at as useless.
I was thinking about how cheaply you could create a low-bandwidth digital message system on hf a few weeks ago.
I built two small boards with a ATtiny84 and lm567 on each along with a few other simple parts...resistors, caps and a cheap 2-line LCD from ebay (China special 2.50 ea).
These were able to handle data reliably at about 60wpm using simple morse. You could easily program them to handle email traffic, remote device control and countless other duties. More speed as well as a couple of side channels could be added if I was inclined to play with them further.
Total cost was less than 10 dollars a board.
You could add a few more lm567 decoders(a quarter each) and handle traffic on several frequencies at the same time. You could use a better uC like an ARM Cortex and eliminate the lm567 decoders by using FFT code...but I like the old analog 567 decoders :-)
Anyways, this shows that the old noisy shortwave frequencies can still be put to good use in case TSHTF.
“One switch of Obama’s finger and the internet is down.”
Yep, and the only hope for freedom at that point is short wave radio. Which is apparently dead.
I’ve still got 2 SW radios hanging around. Whether the fertilzer hits the fan, or just a power failure, they’re ready just in case.
I remember the Hallicrafters receivers. I still have the Knights Ocean Hopper.
I’ve got both...:-)Plus some other fun stuff.
If you'd like to sell it, please drop me a Freepmail.
And in the mean time, they can easily keep track of exactly who is listening to what and when and where they are doing it.
Guessing you're a Ham from your post (I am.) I've been reading that there's been a resurgence in Amateur Radio the last few years and the number of licenses issued year over year for the past five years is trending up. No doubt because of the "morse code" requirement which has been dropped.
? As for me I'm studying for my Extra and am planning on upgrading by the end of January.
Are you a licensed ham? If so, why not build yourself a simple jpole and get on the air with it? The adapter to plug in a PL-259 to the antenna jack is about $6 at AES or any other Amateur Radio store. You'll get alot more action if you get on a local Repeater with it too.
Heck if a jpole is too complicated for you to build, find yourself 5 coathangers, a few sticks of wood and some coax and you can build a 2m Yagi in about 20 minutes.
In the early 1990s, just before the Internet started catching on, it was a way to get exposed to what was going on outside the United States. I used to listen to BBC and other news but sometimes I'd pick up some exotic music from some distant country - probably in the tropics somewhere.
Anybody serious about shortwave in those days had a dog-eared copy of the "bible" of shortwave - the annual "Passport to World Band Radio".
I don't have the biggest antenna's in the world, but I've managed to reach 135 countries, WAS on 40/75M and am active in several clubs and nets. It's a great hobby, I love it.
I got QSL cards from Radio Havana Cuba back in the day, and I’m sure the CIA took notice.
I can do that with my SignaLink USB which cost $85 with the cables. I get it that you can build it cheaper than I can buy it, however all the software for RTTY, PSK, SSTV and all the other digital modes like JT65 are out there free to download. I don't have to waste my time programming a board.
My eyes are drooling at that pic.
My first SW rig was an old Hallicrafters SX-110 that I received from my girlfriends father (now father in-law.) It needed tubes and some tlc but had it running in no time. Lived in a townhouse at the time so no outdoor antennas were allowed so I learned how to make a simple folded dipole for the attic.
I didn't know it then, but dang those were the good old days.
Yup, I am a ham. Got my license a few years ago. I made some steps toward getting my license years ago but the process plus the code requirement kept me away from it. Didn’t think much about it until a friend said that, besides being fun, it would be valuable whenever there’s an internet outage and would be really valuable if there was a large scale internet shut down. I do mostly digital modes.
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