Is it worth getting a short wave radio in this day and age?

Is it worth getting a short wave radio in this day and age?

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rtl-sdr.com/swscan-console-based-shortwave-broadcast-scanner-rtl-sdr/
owdjim.gen.nz:12600/content/DRMreception/201301271550.ogg
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If you dont know if you need one you probably dont need one

Just get an rtl-sdr dongle. There ain't much in the way of commercial sw anymore other than religious kooks and radio Havana.

i have that exact radio its fucken awesome for the price

Mine just came in yesterday, for $10 why not?

Don't RTL-SDR receivers only go down to ~24MHz or so?

Yes, I would rather listen to ambulance transmissions on 409 MHZ though. That is easy.

Some info here.

rtl-sdr.com/swscan-console-based-shortwave-broadcast-scanner-rtl-sdr/

If you live in the mainland US all you are going to pick up is religious programming, Alex Jones, and if you're lucky you'll get Radio Havana/Radio China from Cuba.

You don't need one these days thanks to websdr.org

I never got into it, but there have been some very noticeable increases in the prices of radios since I first looked them up 7-8 years ago. Sony models that used to be just over $100 are now ~$200. Also, if posters in this thread are right about how little you can pick up in the US, then you're going to want a model with with SSB so that you can at least listen to amateur radio broadcasts.

ahem

"Sky kang, sky kang, sky kang. Do not answer"

Won't there be a switch over to digital anytime soon?

Hopefully not

Never. I'm pretty sure most stations were already supposed to have already switched over to SSB by now, yet large amounts of shortwave radios don't even offer SSB.

I hope short wave has a future with pirate radio by people who don't want to deal with hams bringing the botnet to amateur radio but still want to have fun with something good for beyond line of sight uses unlike the more line of sight uses that 27 MHz CB and various VHF/UHF radio standards world wide limit one to.

HAMs are bootlickers. If you run a truly pirate radio, they will triangulate you and report you to the FCC.

I don't think they'd care much if you stayed off their bands and didn't interfere with anything they were using.

With direct sampling you can get down to AM range, but there's other issues with harmonics. Pretty fun to play around with and learn some stuff though.

are you a drug lord? if so then yes

There are HAMs that make it their purpose to track down and report pirate stations.

They take pleasure in it, even if the pirate stations are out of band.

Just got a used Sony ICF-SW7600 (original model) in the mail today. It’s nice.

Can't wait for the norks to emp the planet and bring back the post ww2 era shortwave boom.

Personally I'm rooting for a well aimed CME from el sol.

no but it is worth it to get into HAM RADIO and talk to people all over the world and learn interesting stuff about physics and electronics

SDR is heaps of fun.

>Want to start doing a shortwave broadcast radio station
>Realize nobody would listen to it except 86 year old cuban women
How much do one of those things run and how tough would it be to set it up? What kind of range could I get?

I was worried about this too, but I read a bit more about it and it won't happen unless there is some sort of law passed in congress and there isn't enough of a motivation to make the switch. The US is alot larger than Europe too so there's a much greater expense just to replace all the existing radio infrastructure

With a mixer you can get further down.

NHK world and voice of Korea is great. Radio Romania is also surprisingly good if you're in Europe and can get the signal

I knew this gif would come handy some day

It's a bit of a shame DRM radio never went anywhere.

This is a sample recording.
Stereo AAC+ @20kbit/s
Transmitted in France, Recieved in New Zealand (distance approx. 19000km)
owdjim.gen.nz:12600/content/DRMreception/201301271550.ogg

If you were doing mainly speech, you could lower the bitrate and increase modulation reliability even further.

DRM Radio features included:
>reliable digital reception even with multiple hf reception issues
>multicasting (although bitrate itensive)
>text transmission (journaline, for example provided a simple text based news service using few kbit/s)
>advanced multimedia including broadcast websites

I guess if it came out 15 years earlier than it did, it'd be a lot more prolific.
The few tests that exist are very impressive, but international radio is dead or at least dying. Nobody is going to invest enough to see this happen for real.

True that, HAMs are old stickler fucks. Usually over the age of 40 and can't stop sucking the lawmans dick.

Skyking, skyking, do not respond.