Bill in South Africa ZS6CCY is on 7.153 (set your radio to lower side band setting to hear him). I've spoken with Bill many times. He has a massive antenna farm and sounds like he is parked out in my driveway pretty often.
He retired from a broadcast career and bought a large game farm.... tons of pictures up at the above link.
All his pictures are not loading for me tonight. He had a close up picture of a cape buffalo just outside his truck. I asked if he and his truck were not in some danger from the beast. He said, "No not really, I've reached an understanding with this one..".
Bill in South Africa ZS6CCY is on 7.153 (set your radio to lower side band setting to hear him). I've spoken with Bill many times. He has a massive antenna farm and sounds like he is parked out in my driveway pretty often.
He retired from a broadcast career and bought a large game farm.... tons of pictures up at the above link.
All his pictures are not loading for me tonight. He had a close up picture of a cape buffalo just outside his truck. I asked if he and his truck were not in some danger from the beast. He said, "No not really, I've reached an understanding with this one..".
Cool! I'll have to try to receive that one. However, I'm just a shortwave listener (SWLer) and I have very basic equipment. I primarily use my Tecsun PL-880 with a simple 30 ft (physical length) wire antenna. About half of that length is outdoors running along my townhouse patio and the rest of the wire runs inside the house to my radio. FAR from ideal and very, very basic but I enjoy fooling around with it.
It's surprising what even a simple rig like mine can receive on occasion. I've received the BBC broadcasting from Talata, Madagascar on 9915 kHz several times over the past few years. That station is located about 10,000 miles from my house here in Houston. Of course, it is a 250,000 watt station!
As I'm in Houston, I can usually receive Radio Havana Cuba most evenings. Those transmitters (at a few, various locations) are only about 900 miles from my house. I'm listening to the English language broadcast of Radio Havana Cuba on 6165 kHz as I type this post. Their "take" on the news is certainly "interesting." Amazingly, they do have a weekly segment (in English) about shortwave radio called DXers Unlimited that's hosted by Arnie Coro.
Wow, I'm almost sure I just heard a religious broadcaster say "Bull [bleep]!" when talking about Biden's vaccination mandates.... 5950. This guy is on a roll.
Yep it's official, he is using the long play version of BS (now he is talking about Bill Gates... and iPhones which apparently are the gateway to Hell) .
Yeah, 5950 is primarily WRMI (Radio Miami International) located in Okeechobee, Florida. Lots of religious programming. https://www.wrmi.net/
I'm not going to stay up all night playing with my new radio..... I just turned it off so I need to fall asleep fast now before I change my mind
I found 2 stations with Coast To Coast tonight. One program was kind of a step by step instruction on how to contact ghosts the second was about big foot sightings. Both guests did a great job of sounding very sincere...
This review was just posted. I thought it did a great job of comparing low medium and higher priced SWL radios.
I could have saved a fair amount of money ordering my radio on ebay vs Amazon but given the uncertain nature of shipping at the moment I just hit the buy it now button with Amazon. The ebay seller does not accept returns but they do have 100% positive reviews.
Wow, I'm almost sure I just heard a religious broadcaster say "Bull [bleep]!" when talking about Biden's vaccination mandates.... 5950. This guy is on a roll.
Yep it's official, he is using the long play version of BS (now he is talking about Bill Gates... and iPhones which apparently are the gateway to Hell) .
Yeah, 5950 is primarily WRMI (Radio Miami International) located in Okeechobee, Florida. Lots of religious programming. https://www.wrmi.net/
Solar cycle 25 really is looking promising . A few years ago a friend that I had been speaking with on 40 Meters told me he had made some contacts on 10 Meters. I had just about stopped looking at 10 Meters just wasn't finding anything due to poor band conditions. I accused him of tying to send me on a snipe hunt but he swore it was true so I looked
He wasn't lying the openings were sporadic but there. These improving conditions are going to make shortwave listening a lot more fun. More bands open for longer periods of time.
I'd guess that a lot of us are old enough to remember long range skip AM broadcasting stations that would come in late night from thousands of miles away. The shortwave radio I picked up last week has very sensitive receive on the AM broadcast band. I'm using an outside dipole antenna that is set up for HF 160 Meters that is way up in the air.
I was working on scanning different bands into memories (which the instructions are not especially clear about) and noticed that after about 9:30 PM the AM band went from maybe a dozen stations to over 75. The propagation just turned on like a switch was thrown.
It's worth checking out. A car or truck radio would likely be more sensitive that a cheap hand held transistor radio. Driving up to some elevation is likely to help reception as well.
The programing is not as impressive as it was "back in the day" but it's kind of nice to know you can still pick up long range AM stations incase something disrupts more local sources.
For any fans of The Twilight Zone type of programing, Coast to Coast is still going strong. Vampires, ghosts big foot.... They sound so sincere when discussing topics along those lines.
The programing is not as impressive as it was "back in the day" but it's kind of nice to know you can still pick up long range AM stations incase something disrupts more local sources.
Yeah, I occasionally play around with AM (medium wave) reception. I'm not sure of your location but see if you can pick up Radio Rebelde in Havana, Cuba on 670 AM. The station is only about 900 miles from my location and I can occasionally receive it at night.
I'm on a ridgetop at about 2900 feet in the NC Blueridge Mountains.... I almost don't even have to turn a radio on to hear Cuba For such a poor Country they put a lot of power into English broadcast.
They put out a lot of jamming signals on portions of the 40 Meter band during the recent political unrest. It seems there were Cuban Americans transmitting "outside World" information back to family and friends who have been depending on inexpensive shortwave receivers to get non Government approved info for years.
I guess I understand why the Biden administration went to such extreme lengths to say no Cuban refugees would be allowed into the USA while leaving the boarder wild open from elsewhere.
A larger portion of Cubans have a basic education. They also have first hand knowledge of what a totalitarian regime will do to it's people in order to hold onto power.. The Biden regime can't have that kind of "misinformation" spreading just before the 2020 elections....
Given current events over the past 10 Months or so here I would argue that in addition to rice beans water purifier and toilet paper, an inexpensive shortwave receiver might make the must have list. There is a learning curve for sure. What time of day or night to listen on which frequencies. Experimenting with antennas. The hardest part for me has been learning to program the memories so I can find stations likely to be available at the time I'm listening.
I did briefly listen to a Cuban station last night Bob, I think it was the 670 AM frequency too. I also just watch a radio review yesterday that said the signal was so strong from Cuba it might have been able to damage the radio if attenuation was not set high enough.
If you never plan to get your ham license but want a state of the art wide band receiver.... maybe to take down in your bunker while you and yours are waiting out "the big one" this would be one to think about. Best to keep it stored in a faraday cage with antenna disconnected so an EMP doesn't fry it.
Looks like they sell for about 2300.00 if you just really want to step up your day to day SWL Bob
This guy makes his 8600 sing. It will be interesting to see if more shortwave broadcasters start getting back on the air as worries about Internet increase. There is a digital mode of shortwave broadcast now that equals FM fidelity. It never really took off because the market dropped off.
You are not wrong. It's about the antenna and how much electric noise your location has ... the most sensitive radio in the World can't compete with a 100.00 radio in a rural location that does not have a noisy powerline near buy. When my wife and I first joined a Ham club the best advice we got was "For every dollar you spend on your station put 0.75 toward the antenna system. "
