Help: Shortwave Folk

Subject: Short Wave Folk
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 08:20 PM

I have an old (WWII ) shortwave radio from a Sheridan Tank of all places. The neat thing is that it works just grand. Is there a station in England, or anywhere, that carries folk music and what numbers, bands, kilocycles, should I dial up?

This box is old enough I hope to get "Sing The Fishing" from the BBC. :-)

Don

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Amos
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 08:44 PM

With a box that old, you should still be able to get the Andrews Sisters!!:>)

A

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Áine
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 08:58 PM

Hey Don -- How come you can get that old box to work and you can't get Hearme to work??

-- Áine (dontsitundertheappletreewithanyoneelsebutme)

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Marymac90
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 09:59 PM

Hey, Don, seems a box like that must be a prop left over from The Twilight Zone-no, wait, THAT box would play the FUTURE's news and sports casts, etc, I think. Maybe it was an episode waiting to be written... dada dada dada dada.....

Mary McCaffrey

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: DonMeixner
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 11:16 PM

Thats right Sherman! We just set the Way Back machine for 1942, the Place The Sahara Desert.

I was, actually semi serious here, and as usuall, some of you are no help at all.

Don

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: catspaw49
Date: 08 Feb 00 - 11:47 PM

I wanna' help Don, and I know a lot about short wave. As a matter of fact I'll give you short wave with one finger. ..!.,

Say, you don't own the rest of that tank do you?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: katlaughing
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 12:28 AM

Hey, Don, Rog, the broadcast engineer, says that you really have to just hunt all over the dial, as they change channels every few hours because of the propogation changes, i.e. the signals come down in different places at different times, because the sun changes the ionosphere.

He also says there are some websites that list stations and their program guides; probably you can find them by using the keyword, "swl" for "shortwave listening".

Hope that helps.

kat (BTW...do you ever check your email?**BG**)

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 08:15 AM

Try the BBC World Service page Don.. I am puting a blue clicky thing in here hope it works...Yours,Aye. Dave http://www.radiotimes.co.uk/servlet/controller?action=searchListings&media=radio&channeltype=radio&type=radio&startandenddate=20000209&startandendtime=00%3A00%2C24%3A00&cid=138&whatson.x=16&whatson.y=20

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 08:17 AM

Sassn Frassssn rassen Grrrrrrrrrrrr. Punt! nope this thing didnt float......

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 08:22 AM

If at first you dont succeed.... make a fool of yourself again...http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml Yours,Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Áine
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 09:19 AM

Here ya go, Dave:

BBC World Service

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 10:33 AM

Admiral Aine you are a sweetheart! as well as a smart lady. Thank you kindly Ma'am. Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: Áine
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 11:17 AM

Thank ye kindly, sir.

Everything I know about HTML, I learned on the Mudcat.

Ok, Max, where's my check??

-- Áine

Subject: RE: Help: Short Wave Folk
From: GUEST,Allan S.
Date: 09 Feb 00 - 03:18 PM

CHeck at Radio Shack for the following book The worldwide Shortwave listening guide It has listings for ALL shortwave programs all over the world times and freq. also there is a book called"Passport to world band raadio" offices IBS northamerica Box 300, Pens's park PA also www.passport.com

ISBN 0-914941-48-8

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 04 Feb 24 - 10:42 PM

I'm pulling up a really really old thread this evening instead of starting something new. I grew up listening to an old Halicrafter AM radio in my bedroom (after the parents got a new GE faux wood case AM/FM radio for the kitchen). It had several shortwave bands and I ran a long copper wire running around the perimeter of my bedroom to get reception. There were lots of interesting channels in the 1960s and 70s, and I can't say I've even thought about it since then.

My weather radio died a while ago, and while I can pull up an app on the phone with the NOAA broadcast, today I was looking for a small radio with AM/FM and weather bands and am finding quite a few of them still have shortwave bands. Does anyone listen to that any more? Is there anything out there to listen to? Are nation states so busy blocking the Internet that they forget to block radio frequencies? Are there still people in the world who only have access to radio?

A Google search along the lines of "is there still anything to hear on shortwave radio" brought this result. It is more about the hardware than the content, but scroll down and there is a lot to read on the subject.

Thoughts?

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 05 Feb 24 - 12:00 AM

Still banging my old Panasonic RF-2800 bought new in the 70s. If you like the Souther'n Baptist evangelical stuff, or speak Arabic, you're all set. Everything else takes some work. Caught half an episode of Voyage of the Scarlet Queen not long ago, but it faded before ID.

The wiki list gets shorter every year: List of Shortwave Radio Broadcasters

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: cnd
Date: 05 Feb 24 - 08:34 AM

Yes, I've found AM radio to be something of the Wild West. There are a few local stations I've caught simulcasts on AM for, but not many that broadcast AM only. One of the last stalwarts, 740 AM WPAQ, a bluegrass and old-time station from Mt. Airy, NC finally got an FM antenna in 2020 after over seven decades of AM-only broadcast.

Shortwave AM broadcast works particularly poorly in urban areas, as interference is caused by (but not limited to) tall buildings, bridges/overpasses, telephone wires, mountains/hills, etc. The impact of each of these structures has to do with the angle of interruption, the power of the transmittal source, and your distance away. (This was frustratingly experienced recently when, while on a road trip in a rural part of the state, the only channel I could catch a big college football game was an AM station directly perpendicular to the telephone wire which crossed the road every few blocks. "He drops back to pass, and he [-----] it! What a play! He really [----] that time! This changes the game!") This can be explained by the math of radio physics, but I will spare you the gritty details!

Additionally, most non-national AM stations will power down at night because radio waves do funny things according to the position of the moon (this phenomenon was responsible for Daytimers and Nighttimers on clear-channel frequencies, but I digress). In my area, the vast majority of the time, most bands will be taken over with regional Mexican music from South American stations that don't abide by the powering up/down rules; this is likely my version of the Arabic stations Phil refers to above. This often leads to "chatter" between stations that don't power down but are on the same frequency.

I have used https://radio-locator.com/ to search out local radio stations; they have both an FM and AM section, and you can get calculated theoretical coverage maps (all-day for FM, and day- and night-time coverage for AM) by visiting the info page of each station. They pull from the FCC records, so it's only as good as the records are, but it's a very valuable starting point.

As to your question, "Are there still people in the world who only have access to radio?" -- maybe, but probably not in the US. I've found that most remote places I visit have fewer and fewer radio stations. Even rural parts of my own state, which ranks among America's top-10 most populous, will have several vacant stations, and on trips to more isolated states (rural Alaska, Montana, and Arizona), I've found areas with only perhaps 5-6 total stations on both FM and AM. Where people are cut off from TV and internet broadcasts, the prospects for radio connection are growing increasingly bleak.

There is the opposite side of your question, is there anywhere in the US unreachable by radio, which ironically does have a definite answer: yes, the NRQZ

Quite likely significantly more than you bargained for and much ado about rather little, but it gives the engineering nerd in me a chance to pontificate

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: cnd
Date: 05 Feb 24 - 09:52 AM

A less dull remark I failed to include the first time around, several countries are phasing out their FM broadcasts in favor of digital radio, with Norway and Switzerland leading the charge -- the Swiss are planning to phase out all analog broadcasts by Christmas 2024, while Norway began the process in 2017 with plans to review in 2022 for independent and local stations which were granted exemptions. I can't find anything more recent, but assume that virtually all Norwegian radio is now digital.

Some more reading on the phasing-out process: https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/switching-off-fm-in-norway-and-soon-switzerland

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 05 Feb 24 - 11:31 AM

Points of order:

* Tall buildings and bridges don't increase interference per se: they cast shade of the desired signal, and can funnel interference towards the receiver. It just sounds as if the interference is greater, as automatic gain control winds the gain up as the signal goes down.

* The difference between day and night is caused by the way sunlight affects the F1 and F2 layers of the ionosphere. The net result is that signals go somewhat further at night, so your friendly local radio station isnae local nae mair, and neither is the one way over the horizon on the same frequency. (A Russian transmitter always used to interfere with the medium-wave Light Programme in the UK, but only at night.)

.... Admittedly this isn't folk music, unless the tune of the USSR's national anthem counts.

Revision note to self: find why the minimum reflected wavelength gets shorter at night.

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Feb 24 - 05:56 PM

I think a post got lost in the last Mudcat shut down so I'll try to recreate my thoughts.

When reading about the Norwegian radio change I realized that I have made that change to a degree also - I have satellite radio in the car to switch over to if I'm not listening to my usual NPR or classical broadcast station. DAB and satellite aren't the same, and this article goes into other ways to receive signals also - I can listen to radio stations from all over the place via the Internet. I can listen to Sirius on the Internet instead of the receiver. Lots of mix and match.

An aspect of terrestrial FM radio that I've encountered a few times, probably to do with weather, is the occurrence called "skip." When you're in Texas and your local station fades and a station three states away comes in over the same spot on the radio dial. I've heard the Phoenix and Denver stations that way a couple of times here in Texas.

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 10 Feb 24 - 11:59 PM

Something-something – Tall buildings, good for transmission, bad for reception. 480 miles Del Rio-to-Pampa, TX and the Guthrie clan. You could pick it up on your dental bridgework.

“(James O.) Weldon later liked to tell horrific stories of the power of those stations. He said that at about 9:00 p.m. on a summer evening, just before full dark, if you stood near the five towers of XERA in Ciudad Acuña you could see a bluish white light glimmering from the guywires leading to each tower. The eerie glow was a corona effect outlining the framework of the structures as the transmitters pulsed out that overpowering transmission.

"And," he said, "when we were going at full power, 750,000 watts, folks over in Del Rio would call us and complain that when they turned on their fluorescent lights, they couldn't turn them off.””
[Payne, Charles, F., Feedback: Echoes From My Life in Radio, (Irving: Ruby Moon Press, 2000, p.17)]

Continental Electronics, Dallas, TX. (Weldon's company.) When WWII broke out Weldon went into the U.S. Office of War Information. Some of his best work is still classified. Good hardware.

...or words to that effect.

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: cnd
Date: 11 Feb 24 - 12:18 AM

Yes, a post of mine succumbed to the ether as well...

Thanks MaJoC for the corrections. Your note to self is I believe related to the thin film formula (the ionosphere) stratified from the suns heat, breaking it into smaller layers to reflect, while at night the layers are larger. But wave media was my least favorite part of physics, do don't trust me too much, as evidenced by my misrememberings above ;)

Funny enough, a coworker of mine was talking just recently about a neighbor of his in the 70s who had a powerful CB transmitter station -- it was so strong you could see when he cut it on on your TV if you used an OTA antenna!

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 12 Feb 24 - 09:42 PM

As a kid ... our father brought home a "Trans-Oceanic" radio that could use 110v OR battery. (Model 7G605 'Trans-ocean Clipper')1940's era.

It had a small problem. We took it to a common, drug store test station and ran all the vacuum tubes through. One was bad. The cost of that single tube was twice the price paid for the used set.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Have fun ... we sure did as kids. The commercial stations were great fun as we tried to guess the country ...Denmark, German, Dutch?

Subject: RE: Help: Shortwave Folk
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 13 Feb 24 - 12:06 AM

Gargoyle, I remember getting stations from south America and out in the Pacific Ocean, as well as European stations. It largely depended on how willing you were to be up in the wee hours to try to get the signals.