Is there anyone else who likes to listen to shortwave radio? Either listening to regular old shortwave programs or listening to oddities like beacons, weather & time signals, over the horizon radars, data transmissions, of course the famous number stations and so on?I've loved this hobby for many years and have owned a lot of radios, but just casual interest which meant I would usually sell the radios eventually.

I recently bought a little handheld (Tecsun PL-680) and plan to build a good longwire antenna outside, buy a few more little portables (like pocket sized) and buy a SDR at some point since having access to waveforms and waterfalls on the software would be nice, though I still prefer actual radios. Unfortunately I live in a city with millions of people and have some high voltage powerlines right outside my flat so that fucks reception, but I still plan to build a new antenna.

This week I was not listening much, but I did manage to pull in a Korean radio station (which is impressive, since there is a lot of jamming there), something from India and a Chinese station, but I don't know which one. Of course there is always Brother Stair and other batshit insane religious folks and a lot of right-wing preppers/MAGA/retards that pollute the radiowaves. The other night I listened to some woman who sounded like she had been smoking since she was 10 years old, talking about how Joe Biden was a pedophile and the usual crazy nonsense that crowed of people is obsessed with. That stuff is not interesting at all but unfortunately the signals for that are strongest in North America. Ever since stations like Voice of America and Radio Canada International stopped broadcasting on shortwave...most of what you hear is that sort of garbage.

I've been listening a lot lately since I have a flu or something, so I've heard a lot of fun stuff. I had some morse code station one night. I didn't bother to translate it, but I'm sure it would just be gibberish to me anyway. I also heard HM01, the number station run by G2, better known as Dirección de Inteligencia which is Cuba's foreign intelligence agency. Tonight I've had WRMI on in the background while I play an MMO. They had some music at times, then some weird pro-vegan sermon from this well known Vietnamese cult leader Ching Hai. After a new program came on which was just some retard paranoid right wing prepper American guy who started rambling on about World War 3 and shit hitting the fan soon so I turned it off. Tuned into 9330 and I think it's some Portuguese show. I can't understand it.

>>2

Also I've listened to Radio Nikkei a lot. This is actually a great way to practice Japanese if you have been trying to learn it. They have a lot of talk radio programs so it's nice to listen in if you can manage to tune in such a distant station. The talk radio is good for vocabulary practice and shit. I think they also have a program for Japanese people to learn English. I've never caught that one but it's probably entertaining to listen to if you do.

This sounds like a fun hobby I might try it. I haven't used radio in nearly a decade.

>>4

You could get a nice introduction buying a cheap handheld receiver for very little money and scan the shortwave bands that way. Reception depends on your antenna, but the built in one is sufficient to get started. There are other ones you can build for cheap, such as what we call a longwire antenna. It is as the name implies: a real long wire you connect to it. Well, there's more to it but you can really just attach a bit of speaker wire to one and you'll hear a lot more.

Or what a lot of people do now is just use WebSDR aka Software Defined Radio. This works using a little digital receiver that basically has its "ears" open to a shit ton of frequencies, from a few MHz to GHz. A device like this can be bought for as little as 30-40 USD and is super cool, but requires its own antenna. However there are a lot of WebSDR websites available. Here's one located in Georgia, USA which is I guess run by a high school radio club. Try it out, click around and see what you can tune in. It will let you hear everything from FM radio, shortwave, amateur/ham radio to I think even things like satellites.

http://websdr.lumpkinschools.com/

Listening to some cool oldies radio program on WBCQ out of Maine, USA. Normally this station only plays boring Christian bullshit since a lot of them lease airtime out in order to keep the transmitters on (it's expensive to broadcast on shortwave), every so often they play regular stuff. Distance just under 1000 kilometres. Listening on an RTL-SDR v4 since I'm outside. My Tecsun PL-680 was barely picking it up, which is odd. Using roughly a 16 metre longwire antenna. That's just under 600 miles and 60 feet for the Amerifats.

Right now it's "Pirate Joe Extravaganzo" on 7490 kHz. SINPO is probably a 4/1/3/2/3 meaning there is a lot of noise and fading. This is likely due to the time of day (16:50 Eastern) because propagation blows during sunlight hours. The fading has gone down compared to 20 minutes ago, but there is still a lot of noise. It's still listenable, though.

Here's how it sounds to me: https://vocaroo.com/1fOgdgfC8Gai

>>7

I gather you're not from North America, but over here CB is still moderately used. There is a famous guy on Channel 19 that goes by the name Mud Duck, Mud Duck in the Desert or Fine Tune CB. He is known for broadcasting seemingly 24 hours a day on a 500 gazillion trillion billion watt transceiver meaning you can hear the retard across the entire continent whether you're in southern US, central Canada, the deserts and mountains in the west. He doesn't really talk to anyone in particular, he's just always there on Channel 19 talking and talking and talking. Most people hate him. He can be fun to chat with sometimes, other times he just gets aggressive. Total idiot.

>>7
>>8

Anyway for shortwave, the best way to get into it these days is an SDR/software defined radio. They offer a really good way to get into shortwave radio without spending 150-200 dollars or Euros on an actual shortwave radio. The nice thing is they aren't only for shortwave. For example, the RTL-SDR v4 is a cheap USB dongle you can get that can receive anything between 500 kHz to 1.7 GHz meaning you can do a lot of shit on it. Here are some examples of what you can do with an RTL-SDR:

• Use as a police radio scanner.
• Listening to EMS/Ambulance/Fire communications.
• Listening to aircraft traffic control conversations.
• Tracking aircraft positions like a radar with ADSB decoding.
• Decoding aircraft ACARS short messages.
• Scanning trunking radio conversations.
• Decoding unencrypted digital voice transmissions such as P25/DMR/D-STAR.
• Tracking maritime boat positions like a radar with AIS decoding.
• Decoding POCSAG/FLEX pager traffic.
• Scanning for cordless phones and baby monitors.
• Tracking and receiving meteorological agency launched weather balloon data.
• Tracking your own self launched high altitude balloon for payload recovery.
• Receiving wireless temperature sensors and wireless power meter sensors.
• Listening to VHF amateur radio.
• Decoding ham radio APRS packets.
• Watching analogue broadcast TV.
• Sniffing GSM signals.
• Using rtl-sdr on your Android device as a portable radio scanner.
• Receiving GPS signals and decoding them.
• Using rtl-sdr as a spectrum analyzer.
• Receiving NOAA weather satellite images.
• Listening to satellites and the ISS.
• Radio astronomy and Galactic Hydrogen line measurements.
• Monitoring meteor scatter.
• Listening to FM radio, and decoding RDS information.
• Listening to DAB broadcast radio.
• Listening to and decoding HD-Radio (NRSC5).
• Use rtl-sdr as a panadapter for your traditional hardware radio.
• Decoding taxi mobile data terminal signals.
• Use RTL-SDR as a high quality entropy source for random number generation.
• Use RTL-SDR as a noise figure indicator.
• Reverse engineering unknown protocols.
• Triangulating the source of a signal.
• Searching for RF noise sources.
• Characterizing RF filters and measuring antenna SWR.
• Decoding Inmarsat STD-C EGC geosynchronous satellites.
• Listening to the ISS (International Space Station).
• Receiving images from Geostationary weather satellites.

My favourite things to do with mine - apart from listening to really distant shortwave broadcasts and amateur (ham) radio nerds - is downloading images from weather satellites in orbit around the planet, radio astronomy and listening to things like cordless phones. Here's a link to Amazon that has the RTL-SDR v4 (you want v4, not the v3 or older) that includes an antenna kit, though you can easily make your own. I assume you're not Canadian so you will probably want to look it up on the Amazon website in your country if you're interested: https://www.amazon.ca/RTL-SDR-Blog-RTL2832U-Software-Defined/dp/B0CD7558GT/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2DMUIDYKI5XWK&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sfbFJPG624K7g9NEHFje-WjbfTzVugNXu3v85Zg0q2YEWPUqaln_yMNWM6x-K-mbsHm6grlKQQ8XN0DT_iPERKbCiFMtSmgZs7V4Za-RuZ4DV0-58Ov0HTcrNwbN0oqx4r8WJJ5paoH9qs-yghulOt_Sh9L390TNAVmRWSMhOiowMQkVfUPOCs9qsmWhsuyKLkF_TcusJyLQFa0hCNc0ZUFCDTLpuL-p8MLx0jBTV47u_qxOE5-yLRlJuhe512ZU6NrLfkApR1e3r3mGmPf0VBHjFNhvoAw1oEmmkxO6dtE.cFdjXlwt6cfiWiXTWoS5Ty-g5WX1dnlPeY3FlNBHRVo&dib_tag=se&keywords=rtl-sdr+v4&qid=1714683499&sprefix=rtl-sd%2Caps%2C209&sr=8-4

I use a Tecsun Pl-880 I got used with an AN-80 antenna I hang in my room.

I've managed to get QSL cards from NHK-World on 6105, WWV on 1500, CHU on 7850, WINB on 9265, and Pop Shop Radio on 5950 (WRMI)

Sent reports to WWCR, WRMI, and Radio Havana Cuba

Also, I learned that Radio Romania and New Zealand no longer QSL.

I'm gonna QSL China, Exterior de Espana, Turkey, WTWW, Radio Rebelde, and World Christian Broadcasting

I recommend listening WRMI, since it has a diverse range of music, such as Cruisin' the Decades (UTC 2-3 Sun), The Mighty KBC, Encore/Radio Tumbril, Pop Shop Radio (UTC 1-2 Mon), Alt Universe Top 40, Imaginary Stations (when that comes on - seems kinda random to me idk), and DEFINITRLY Radio Catface (UTC 3 Mon), because it's the only indie-type music on shortwave that I can find so it's a really unique listen.

Also, the NHK-World (6105) Has a singing contest called "Nodo Jiman" late on night and some music.

I also listen to a lot of news reports, and if your trying to learn Japanese, most of their foreign language services have brief lessons at the end (the 6105 freq doesn't have this though from what I can tell)

Anyway, that's my overly long post. Have fun, glad your into this hobby. I've been doing for a few months and the world seems so much smaller and cooler now :)