Shortwave Broadcast Listening

Doing It Is Easy...Doing It Well is Another Story!

International shortwave broadcasts were one of the first facets of radio that I was exposed to way back when it was still possible to measure my age in single-digit numbers. We had one of the multi-band portable radios that were popular back in the 1960's and, having already logged a number of U.S. broadcasters on the AM band (see my page on AM broadcast band DX'ing), I decided one afternoon to spin the dial through the shortwave bands and see what, if anything, I might hear there.        Now, mind you, and this time I knew nothing about radio wave propagation. About all I knew was that when I turned the radio on and tuned around, I either heard stations or I didn't, depending on the mood of the radio gods at any particular time (or so it seemed back then). On the fateful day that I decided to take my first trip across the shortwave dial, apparently the radio gods were in good spirits. In fact, they must have been partying up a storm, because after about half a minute or so, I had managed to tune in a reasonably strong station. From my initial experiences DX'ing the AM band, I'd learned to somewhat guage the distance to a station based on its signal strength. Knowing nothing at the time about international shortwave, I guessed that the station I was hearing (somewhere  between 14-15 mHz, in the middle of a summer afternoon) was perhaps a few hundred miles away, for its signal strength was similar to what I heard at night from AM broadcasters such as WLS in Chicago or WBZ in Boston. The station was playing country music - familiar to me since my father listened to it a lot - but the songs weren't familiar to me even though I recognized it as country music. Hmmmm....perhaps a station from West Virginia, I remember thinking.        After fifteen minutes or so of listening, the station finally identified itself, and I received quite a shock upon discovering that I was listening to Radio Australia! Not a difficult catch - back then, anyway - but this experience taught me that it was possible to hear radio stations from literally the other side of the globe. The fact that I did it on sheer luck as an eight- or nine-year old shows that basically anyone can do it. The fact that I did it using a relatively inexpensive portable radio with its built-in telescoping whip and analog tuning dial shows that you don't necessarily need to shell out megabucks for equipment in order to dabble in this interesting facet of the hobby...although you can do so very easily if you want to!        I've also logged stations from such places as Britain, Germany, China, Russia, Israel, Ecuador, Cuba, Spain, just to name a few - a couple dozen different countries in all, without really making any serious effort - all I ever did was casual listening, and never even bothered to QSL the stations I've heard since I listen for enjoyment rather than to collect wallpaper. There is a lot to be learned about the world from listening to news broadcasts from other countries and cultural programs provided by peoples from all over the world. This, along with the challenge of tuning in stations from all over the world, is what causes me to tune through the SW broadcast bands every now and then.

Equipment For Shortwave Broadcast Listening

As pointed out above, even the most basic of shortwave receivers will yield some positgive results, even if all you do is tune through the bands until you find a signal strong enough to listen to for awhile. Even the small portable receivers available from Grundig, RadioShack, Sangean, and similar models will get you started listening to signals from all around the world. These radios generally lack the bells and whistles that appear on more expensive models - and that come in handy if you become a serious DX'er and go chasing after the really tough catches - but anything is better than nothing at all.        It is possible to hear many of the stronger powerhouse stations using the telescoping antennas that generally appear on these radios. For better results, the addition of a wire antenna (the longer the better) helps a lot. Ultimately, if you become a serious listener or DX'er, you'll want one of the better quality receivers from a company like Drake, JRD, Icom, etc. You'll also want the best antenna you can manage to put up. The antenna is just as important - perhaps even more important - than the radio. I'll include one caveat here: most of the small portable receivers, if used with a high quality antenna, will overload because the antenna brings in too much signal for the radio to handle properly. Anything more than 50-60 feet of wire is as much antenna as you'll want to connect to one of these radios. If you have a better, desktop receiver and are going to get serious about this part of the hobby, then you'll want as much antenna as you can afford and find room for in the space you have available.

Techniques For Doing It Well

Once you're equipped with a suitable radio and antenna, you can greatly increase your success in shortwave broadcast DX'ing by learning as much as you can about radio wave propagation - how signals travel from, say, the transmitter in Australia to the radio on the kitchen table in front of a nine-year old boy near Buffalo, NY. I got lucky tuning at 14-15 mHz in the middle of a summer afternoon. Had I tried that at 10:00 PM local time, I'd probably have been disappointed. Generally, signals are stronger at lower frequencies at night and at higher frequencies during the local daytime. Find out about things such as e-layer and f-layer skip and the MUF (maximum usable frequency), the A index, and geomagnetic conditions, and you'll have a good idea on selecting frequencies to tune the station(s) you want to hear.        While you're at it, a good reference source listing frequencies and broadcast times of international shortwave stations is a handy thing to keep around when you're listening. The magazine Monitoring Times publishes a good shortwave guide in each month's issue, which presents a good listing of popular stations organized by time of day and lists the frequencies the stations broadcast on. There's also some information on programming, so that if you're interested in hearing a news program you can try to tune in when the station is broadcasting news rather than, say, music or a quiz show (yes, there is a variety of programming - arts and cultural programming, quiz shows, news, music, documentaries, interviews with prominent personalities from science, medicine, etc. - again, scan a good reference source and you'll see that it's quite varied).        Check your local bookstore, too - there are some good books published every year on the subject - and of course if you're reading this, you have Internet access: there is more information on radio available on the Internet than you can possibly read in a lifetime. Just type the word Shortwave into your favorite search engine and try not to suffer too much from information overload while you are following the thousands of links that you'll get in your search results.        There are also e-mail discussion groups dealing with this and most other radio-related subjects that you might consider subscribing to. Often you'll find the big guns in the field lurking in these forums. You can learn a lot from these folks if you ask intelligent questions. Some groups have one or more FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions - documents, if so you should read these first before posting questions to the list. The FAQ might answer your question, and asking questions in the general forum that are answered in the FAQs is considered bad form...and usually will net you a reply suggesting that you read the FAQ.        Finally, while the best time to listen is usually within a few hours of local sunset wherever you live, you can find something to listen to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year...however, this is not recommended - try to take breaks once in awhile for things like eating, sleeping, and going to work (when your alarm clock goes off, and you haven't been to bed yet, it's a good sign that you've been overdoing it!).

Keeping A Log

One of your most valuable assets in shortwave listening is your own logbook, in which you make notes on what you heard, when you heard it, whered you heard it, and so forth. By keeping detailed records of your listening experiences, you give yourself something to refer back to later on, and the reference material in your own logbook is more relevant to YOUR listening activities than anything you're going to find in a magazine or in a book or online, because the information is the result of your own listening.        Some SWL's (shortwave listeners...that's you, if you're following the advice on this page) use the commercially available logbooks that can be purchased from ham radio dealers' stores, from radio shack, etc. I myself use one of these - ONLY for logging my ham radio contacts. For SWL work, my logbook is a simple spiral-bound notebook (I prefer college ruled, but feel free to use wide ruled if you prefer). I log the basics - date, time, frequency, station ID, received signal quality, programming content - that's a given. However, I'll also note extensive comments of my own - if I was getting interference from another station, I'll note that in my log. If I suspect my reception was getting a boost through greyline enhancement, my log will reflect that suspicion. If there was a lot of fading and static crashes, the abbreviations QSB/QRN will appear in my logbook. My point is that it's YOUR logbook...so you write whatever YOU want to in it. I'll use half a page in the notebook on a single logging if I have a lot of information I want to write down, whereas another logging might take up but a single line. That's why I use a spiral-bound notebook instead of the commercial logbooks - not only are they less expensive to purchase, but I seem to keep more detailed notes that way. The detailed notes are often a big help later on, so don't be afraid to write in your logbook. After all, that's what it's for!        I also keep notes in my logbook on equipment used - I have a couple of different radios, so I will note which one I used during a particular listening session. I also note when I make changes to my antennas or other accessories. More than one SWL has erected what he or she thought was a "better" antenna, only to look back over the logbook a month later and notice that the signal strengths noted on several stations were actually lower than what was noted with the old antenna...and thus discovered the new antenna wasn't as much of an upgrade as was originally believed!        If the station announces contact information, I'll try to add that to my logbook as well, even though I personally do not QSL the stations I listen to. This is because occasionally someone will want to QSL a station they heard and will ask on an online forum if anyone has a QSL address for Radio Whatever...and if I have one in my log, I'm happy to help out a fellow radio hobbyist by posting the QSL address. Besides, some day I might decide to go back and start a wallpaper collection, and those addresses might come in handy then.

Last But Not Least...

The bottom line in this or any other facet of the radio hobby is the following: the difference between the "experts" and the "beginners" is simply the amount of time spent twiddling the dials on the radio. If you have lots and lots of free time to sit in front of the radio and listen and take notes in your logbook, you can turn yourself into an expert in a remarkably short time. If you can only listen occasionally, it may take a little longer. Fortunately, you don't have to be an expert to enjoy listening. Literally, even a nine-year old with no specialized knowledge at all can still enjoy shortwave listening. So, get out your notebook, fire up that radio, and start tuning around the bands!

Pictures On This page:   Top - RadioShack DX-394 general coverage receiver (I have one). Bottom - Realistic DX-300 general coverage receiver (I have one of these too).