Shortwave listening

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world band receiver

Shortwave listening, or SWLing, is the

QSL cards) that document their reception of remote broadcasts (DXing). In some developing countries, shortwave listening enables remote communities to obtain regional programming traditionally provided by local medium wave AM broadcasters. In 2002, the number of households that were capable of shortwave listening was estimated to be in the hundreds of millions.[2]

The practice of long-distance radio listening began in the 1920s when shortwave broadcasters were first established in the US and Europe. Audiences discovered that international programming was available on the shortwave bands of many consumer radio receivers, and a number of magazines and listener clubs catering to the practice arose as a result. Shortwave listening was especially popular during times of international conflict such as

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[3]

Listeners use inexpensive portable

world band receivers to access the shortwave bands, and some advanced hobbyists employ specialized shortwave communications receivers featuring digital technology as well as Digital signal processing designed for optimum reception of shortwave signals, along with outdoor antennas to enhance performance. Many hobbyists also choose to use Software-defined radio
receivers for their benefits over traditional radios.

With the advent of the Internet, many international broadcasters have scaled back or terminated their shortwave transmissions in favor of web-based program distribution, while others are moving from traditional analog to digital broadcasting modes in order to allow more efficient delivery of shortwave programming. The number of organized shortwave listening clubs has diminished along with printed magazines devoted to the hobby; however, many enthusiasts continue to exchange information and news on the web.

History

The practice of listening to distant stations in the medium wave AM broadcast band was carried over to the shortwave bands. Frank Conrad, an early pioneer of medium wave broadcasting with KDKA in Pittsburgh, instituted some of the first shortwave broadcasts around 1921. Stations affiliated with General Electric and Crosley followed shortly after.

"The Voice of China" broadcast in 1942

QSL cards
for DXers who send reception reports.

In

U.S. entry into World War II using the Yankee Doodle
musical theme.

While technically minded shortwave listening hobbyists dwindled during the war years due in part to the demands of military service, casual listeners seeking war news from foreign broadcasters increased. Shortwave receiver manufacturers contributed to war production. Zenith launched the multi-band Trans-Oceanic series of radios in 1942. In some other countries, during the war, listening to foreign stations was a criminal offense. Established in 1939, the Chinese 35 kilowatt shortwave station XGOY broadcast programming aimed at listening-restricted Japan. The station was often bombed by the Japanese.[5][6]

In 1930,

Far North. This service became a vital means of communication between residents in remote, isolated communities and their friends and relatives in other northern communities and the south and would continue on CBC Radio (including its shortwave repeaters) into the 1970s.[7][8]

CBS shortwave listening post (May 1941)

CBS began a shortwave listening program in September 1939, on an experimental basis, at the National Lawn Tennis Championships at West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York. Engineers installed equipment at the CBS booth when the location was found to have good reception, and monitors relayed European shortwave news to CBS headquarters in New York between tennis matches.[9] Throughout World War II, CBS captured Allied and enemy shortwave communications from more than 60 international stations via secretly located receivers. Translations of intercepted broadcasts were teletyped to all New York newspapers, Associated Press, United Press International, and International News Service, and in turn disseminated to newspapers and radio stations throughout the United States. Major headline news frequently resulted, since big stories often broke first on radio.[10]

Shortwave listeners notified families of

prisoners of war when studio announcers at stations in Axis powers countries, such as Germany and Japan, read prisoner-written messages. Allied monitors notified families, but many shortwave listeners were often first to report the broadcasts. Listeners in other countries also monitored POW messages.[11] Americans were actively discouraged from listening to these reports, however, since broadcasting the names of a few American prisoners was regarded as a propaganda trick to build up the listening audience for Axis radio programs. In May 1943 the director of the CBS listening post, Jack Gerber, told journalist W.L. Shirer that the International Red Cross
was the only reliable source of information on prisoners, and expressed concern at receiving six or seven letters a week requesting transcripts of German broadcasts in which service members may have been mentioned:

The only reason the Nazis put on prisoner broadcasts is to get people, justifiably anxious about relatives reported missing at the front, to listen to their propaganda. Although many of the messages undoubtedly are true, they represent but a small fraction of our prisoners and we have no assurance that many of them are not faked from papers picked up on the battlefield.
What concerns some of us is the consequences of listening to Nazi broadcasts; unless you are a well-trained listener (and often, even if you are). Nazi arguments often sound plausible. A person may listen to them with all the skepticism in the world, knowing that every word is a lie. But if the content is sufficiently sensational (and it often is) the source may be forgotten in time, and out pops the Nazi lie, all unsuspecting.[12]

Radio Peking during the Korean War.[11]

WPE shortwave monitor registration certificate c. 1963

In the 1950s and 1960s, shortwave DX columns in US magazines such as

callsign-like identifiers to hobbyists. A number of specialty radio clubs such as the Newark News Radio Club also arose during these decades and provided hobbyists with an exchange of DX news and information. When Popular Electronics and similar magazines expanded coverage of new electronics topics in the 1970s, this led to the cancellation of several long-time shortwave listening columns.[13]

Beginning with

Swiss Radio International
.

An example of notable shortwave programming was the

Radio Netherlands broadcast the show from 1946 until it terminated in 1995. Producer and presenter Keith Perron revived Happy Station on March 12, 2009. Although no longer associated with Radio Netherlands, the new effort proclaims itself as “transmitted globally via shortwave, podcasting and Internet streaming radio”.[15]

During the Persian Gulf War in the 1990s, many Americans tuned into foreign news broadcasts on shortwave. Some electronics retailers even reported a "run" on portable shortwave receivers due to the increased interest at the time.[16]

Practices

Listening to shortwave broadcast stations for

intelligence signals (numbers stations), or tuning in amateur radio stations.[1]

A Radio Moscow QSL card from 1969

Listeners often obtain

E-mails or provide reception report forms on their Web sites. Reception reports give valuable information about propagation and interference to a station's engineers.[1]

There have been several publications dedicated to providing information to shortwave listeners, including the magazines Popular Communications (now a "digital supplement" to CQ Amateur Radio magazine), Monitoring Times (now defunct), and The Spectrum Monitor, a digital-only publication, in the United States, and the annual publications Passport to World Band Radio (now defunct) and the World Radio TV Handbook (WRTH). In addition, stations can provide broadcast schedules through the mail or E-mail. There are also shortwave radio programs dedicated to shortwave listening and DXing, such as the U.S.-based World of Radio and DXing With Cumbre, but recently these programs have been curtailed or dropped by many international broadcasters. As of 2007,

Radio Habana Cuba
still hosts a program called DXers Unlimited.

There are estimated to be millions of shortwave listeners. In 2002, according to the National Association Of Shortwave Broadcasters, for estimated numbers of households with at least one shortwave set in working order, Asia led with a large majority, followed by Europe, Sub Saharan Africa, and the former Soviet Union, respectively. The total estimated number of households worldwide with at least one shortwave set in working order was said to be 600 million.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).[1]

Some developing countries use shortwave as a means of receiving local and regional programming. China and Russia retransmit some domestic channels on shortwave that target listeners in far off provinces. Shortwave listening is also used as an educational tool in classrooms.[17] Poor sound reproduction, unreliable signal quality, and inflexibility of access are seen as disadvantages.[18]

Some humanitarian organizations like Ears to Our World distribute portable, self-powered shortwave radios to less developed parts of the globe, enabling people in remote, impoverished parts of the world to get educational programming, local and international news, emergency information and music. Recently, the group was involved in sending radios to Haiti so victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake could stay abreast of local disaster recovery efforts.[15]

Equipment

Main article: Shortwave radio receiver

Radios for shortwave reception generally have higher performance than those intended for the local

frequency stability. Modern shortwave radio receivers are relatively inexpensive and easily accessible, and many hobbyists use portable "world band" receivers and built-in telescopic antennas
.

Serious hobbyists may use expensive (shortwave) communications receivers and outdoor antenna located away from electrical noise sources, such as a dipole made from wire and insulators.

Future of shortwave listening

The rise of the

Radio Netherlands, Rai Italia Radio, and Radio Australia among those that have ceased broadcasting on shortwave.[21][22] Although most of the major broadcasters continue to scale back their analog shortwave transmissions or completely terminate them, shortwave is still active in developing regions such as parts of Africa, South Asia and Latin America.[19]

Some international broadcasters have turned to a digital mode of broadcasting called Digital Radio Mondiale for their shortwave outlets. One reason is that digital shortwave broadcasts using DRM can cover the same geographic region with much less transmitter power — roughly one-fifth — than traditional AM mode broadcasts, significantly reducing the electricity cost of operating a station. A traditional AM (analog) international shortwave station can have a power rating of 50 kilowatts to as much as 1000 kilowatts per transmitter, with typical power levels in the 50–500 kilowatt range. Endorsed by the ITU, it has been approved as an international standard for digital broadcasts on the HF (shortwave) bands. A DRM broadcast rivals FM mono quality and can also send graphic images and web pages via a separate information channel.[23]

Shortwave listening also remains popular with some

expatriates who tune in shortwave transmissions from their homeland. Additionally, a number of remotely controlled shortwave receivers located around the world are available to users on the web.[24] While radio hobbyists report that the number of shortwave listening clubs has diminished and printed magazines devoted to the hobby are few, enthusiasts such as Glenn Hauser and others continue to populate web sites, and originate podcasts dedicated to the pursuit.[25]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Introduction to shortwave listening". DXing.com. Universal Radio Research. Retrieved 21 November 2007.
  2. ^ a b NASB Newsletter. National Association of Shortwave Broadcasters, Inc. October 2002. Archived from the original on 22 February 2020. Retrieved 29 December 2020.
  3. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 17 March 2022 – via nytimes.com.
  4. ^ Repa, Jan (25 October 2005). "BBC's voice in Europe". News analysis. BBC News (online ed.).
  5. ^ "China speaks Japanese". Time. 28 December 1942. Archived from the original on 2 November 2012 – via time.com.
  6. ISBN 978-0-7864-3029-1
    . Retrieved 30 September 2013 – via Google books.
  7. ^ "VE9GW transmissions" (PDF). Short-wave section - the DX corner. Radio News and the Short-Wave. Vol. XV, no. 5. New York, NY. November 1933. p. 284 – via World Radio History (worldradiohistory.com).
  8. ISBN 978-0786474110
    . Retrieved 18 September 2020 – via Google books.
  9. ^ "Radio: Propaganda pigeons". Time. 7 September 1942. pp. 65–66. Archived from the original on 14 October 2010 – via time.com.
  10. ^ "24,000,000 'stolen' words go to Library of Congress". The Christian Science Monitor. 4 September 1945.
  11. ^
    ISBN 9780786451999
    – via Google books.
  12. ^ Shirer, W.L. (4 May 1943). "The propaganda front". The Montana Standard.
  13. ^ "The "WPE" monitor registration program". On the Shortwaves (ontheshortwaves.com).
  14. ^ "About Sweden calling DXers – MediaScan / Sweden calling DXers". Sveriges Radio. Sverigesradio.se. 17 July 2001. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  15. ^ a b Osterman, Fred. "Newsroom." DXing Newsroom. 2004. Universal Radio Research. 6 April 2010.
  16. ^ Tuning Into The World Via Shortwave, New York Times, June 3, 1992.
  17. S2CID 62214304
    .
  18. ^ Wipf, Joseph A. "Shortwave Radio and the Second Language Class." The Modern Language Journal. 68.1 (Spring 1984): 7–8. JSTOR. 3 March 2010.
  19. ^ a b Careless, James. "Whatever Happened to Shortwave Radio?". radioworld.com. Radio World. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  20. ^ "Save the BBC World Service". Archived from the original on 28 September 2015. Retrieved 18 May 2006.
  21. ^ "World Radio TV Handbook". wrth.com. WRTH Publications Ltd. Radio Data Center GmbH. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  22. ^ "Short Wave Info". short-wave.info. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  23. ^ Digital Radio Mondiale
  24. ISBN 978-0-07-148929-4
    .
  25. ^ van de Groenendaal, Hans (7 January 2009). "Is there a future for shortwave listening as a hobby?". EE Publishers. Archived from the original on 8 January 2017. Retrieved 7 January 2017.

Further reading

  • Magne, Lawrence, ed. (1983–2008) [1st ed. c. 1983]. Passport to World Band Radio (annual). Penn's Park, PA: International Broadcasting Services; (ceased publication 2008 with edition titled '2009')
ISBN 978-0-914941-63-7
 		 (pub 2006, titled 2007 ed.)
ISBN 978-0-914941-66-8
 		 (pub 2007, titled 2008 ed.)
ISBN 978-0-914941-80-4
 		 (pub 2008, titled 2009, 25th / last ed.)
"Archived copies of old editions". Internet Archive (archive.org).
  • Berg, Jerome S. (2008). Listening on the short waves, 1945 to today. McFarland.
    ISBN 978-0-7864-3996-6
    .
  • "Monitoring Times". monitoringtimes.com (website of former magazine). Brasstown, NC: Grove Enterprises. — Monthly publication has ceased, but Grove Enterprises, in Brasstown maintains some features at its website.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Shortwave listening.
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