What WAS SWL..

[Sandy G]

Back when I was a kid we had a cabin on the local lake. Well, sort of. The cabin belonged to my family's printing company, we'd have "Big-Shot" customers down there to spend a week or so. We, my family, & a couple other of the company owners, took turns cleaning up the place, mowing the lot, etc. There was a crabby-azz old man & his dying wife lived down at the corner of the property, in an "A" frame house. He & my dad had had "Words" a time or 2, so his place was technically "Off-Limits"... Well, I wandered down there one night, his garage door was open, & he was listening to a radio that sounded "Funny"..He beckoned me in, & I got my initiation on Short Wave...South Africa, Radio Nederland, CHU, bunch of other stuff. I was HOOKED..He & my dad even "Made Up".. I never knew what kind of SW set he had, but it had a BUNCH of tubes..I even got to go upstairs, & his wife played me some stuff on her organ-It MAY have been a Hammond B-3...I was BOWLED over, to say the least.. Then I got shipped off to Boarding school, & I kinda forgot about them. Wish now that I HADN'T..Mr Mowery was sort of a crabby old guy in a way, but if I'd come back to visit him, no telling WHAT goodies I might have scored..And what KNOWLEGE I could have gained from him..

[bob91343]

Precisely the way so many of us learned of the magic of short wave. I used to lust for a short wave set and, considering I was barely a teenager at the time, I did a good job adding short wave to the 5 tube radio I had built from a kit. It worked great and my favorite station became WWV.

Later I got my ham license and now sport a legal-limit station and have worked over 300 countries.

Sadly, the heyday of short wave broadcast is over, even though there are still some stations to be heard. It's dominated by religious stations with many in languages I don't understand.

I enjoy playing with electronics gear, and even my acquisition of a BSEE didn't dampen my enthusiasm for experimentation and knob twisting. For years I owned and operated an electronics repair shop and had a blast. My work benches looked like something from a science fiction movie, and at one point there were 8 of us working on customer units.

Now I relax with my toys, always interested in something new.

[Zenith26kc20]

Boy, this thread brings back memories! A friend and I used to go down to the water when his father took us to Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi and I would take my H500 Zenith Transoceanic (with the BIG battery) with me. We would listen to short wave until his father came to get us, usually late at night (and not too happy).
That radio went with me into the army and I still have it. It's a bit worse for the wear but it still works great! Still has the original 1L6 tube and it is still good!
Like I said, fun days!

[Reece]

I was hooked on SWL in the fifties and sixties. First was on a 1946 RCA table model that had BC and 6-18mc on it. Then when I had saved up enough I got a Heath AR-3 and put it together. I'd listen to ARkLATex teenaged hams in the afternoon after school and then SWL Europe (mostly the BBC) at night. It was magic then and it still is even though the great and popular voices have gone silent.

[NowhereMan 1966]

I first came upon shortwave when we visited my paternal grandmother. She had an old Realtone 2424 radio with AM/FM along with "Marine Band" (1600 - 4500 kc) and shortwave from 3800 to 12000 kc. She also had a Bearcat IV 8 channel crystal scanner too. I used to listen to them for hours.

[radio63]

Yes lots of good memories here...the magic of finding a new-to-you radio that had magical bands like MB and SW. Wondering what you would hear, maybe something really great that you had never heard before...

I listened to short wave a lot back in the mid to late 70s when I was a kid. I had a Zenith Royal 1000 that I got around 1978. I would sit at the kitchen table for hours slowly dialing and listening to each signal. Some became "good friends" such as Radio Canada, VOA, BBC, South Africa, even Cuba and USSR. And then there was the occasional new find, a station in a country I had never heard before. I recall tuning in Australia, Japan, and Austria for the first time!

What wonderful memories when radio was magical! But it still is, I have never lost that spirit of magic. This is one of the many reasons I love radio!

Gilbert

[Sandy G]

The ONLY thing that kinda makes me mad is that I spent the better part of a decade-15 yrs assembling a pretty decent collection of the BEST tube-based SW receivers designed by the hand/mind of Man....My Rohde & Schwarz EK-07, for example cost the West German gov't $6K a copy in the mid sixties-and there were only reportedly 1000 sets made.. There MAY be 3-4 dozen sets on this side of the pond... My R-389 LW-MW receiver, w/MAYBE 750 copies made 1954-55, cost Uncle Sugar about $5K in big, round 1955 dollars.. The English RACAL RA-17 was made from the late Fifties to the mid-Sixties, & was a "World-Class" receiver.. I spent a pretty good Chunka Change on these beasts, & now, there's really NOT much to pick up on 'em anymore...But I've always been a Gearhead/techhead, the ENGINEERING behind these things is almost as impressive as their ability to pick up obscure signals...Plus, they ALL include the MW/BCB band, it still is a kick picking up 1-lunger MW stations outta KY, VA, & TN..

[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by radio63

Yes lots of good memories here...the magic of finding a new-to-you radio that had magical bands like MB and SW. Wondering what you would hear, maybe something really great that you had never heard before...

I listened to short wave a lot back in the mid to late 70s when I was a kid. I had a Zenith Royal 1000 that I got around 1978. I would sit at the kitchen table for hours slowly dialing and listening to each signal. Some became "good friends" such as Radio Canada, VOA, BBC, South Africa, even Cuba and USSR. And then there was the occasional new find, a station in a country I had never heard before. I recall tuning in Australia, Japan, and Austria for the first time!

What wonderful memories when radio was magical! But it still is, I have never lost that spirit of magic. This is one of the many reasons I love radio!

Gilbert

I know. I fin ally got my own SW radio in 1978, a Sanyo RP-8700, I still use it to this day. The AM reception is very good, the ferrite antenna is very thick, it is on par to the GE Super Radio according to some. The only bigger ferrite I've seen is in my grandfather's 1953 5 tube Philco, it also gets "Marine Band" from 1600 to 3500 kc along with AM, I get WWV on 2500 kc at night without an external antenna. I did see a picture of my mother doing her homework while in high school as she listened to that same radio and now I use it to this day. Shortwave radio also calms me right now, been going through a lot with Mom battling breast cancer although she just has a mastectomy and they say they got it all although she will still need chemo/radiation once she heals as a precaution since it can be aggressive. Until I get to sleep, I like to listen around to broadcast, hams and even planes flying across the Atlantic. We lost power one night and I picked up the air traffic control in the Azores and Ireland on my Grundig G6. I've love to put in a BFO in the Sanyo, it is a great radio.

I've also picked up Iraq and North Korea on the Sanyo.

[NowhereMan 1966]

BTW, one thing I like about radios with "Marine Band," you can receive the extra part of the AM band from 1600 to 1700 kc.

[truetone36]

I was introduced to SW when I was about 7 yrs. old. My older brother gave me a Grundig Majestic combo. It really opened up the world to me. I have some nice SW gear still today, I just wish there was still as much worth listening to as there was when I was a kid.

[AUdubon5425]

My first shortwave set was a Lasonic boombox I bought when I was 12 or 13. So much more to discover on the air back then.

[catman]

G'day all, I was introduced to SWLing way back as a small child in the mid to late 1960's courtesy of my grandparents enormous wooden cabinet 5 valve radio that included the short wave or 'overseas' bands.

Wow, listening to all those wonderful strange noises and foreign languages really blew my mind. That my friends is where it all started for me! Regards, Felix (vk4fuq) aka catman.

[kramden66]

the station out of maine on 5110 plays some interesting stuff , they even play or used to play jean shepherd shows on Monday nights at 9pm est

mike

[Einar72]

My dad brought home a Philco 611 or similar in 1963; it quit shortly thereafter, but I had SW fever ever after. My dad kept me up late nights during the Alaska earthquake aftermath listening to hams on our next rig, a 3-band Zenith from 1937 or so. It had no BFO, so he thought all the hams were over-modulating. It wasn't until he bought me a (hot-chassis) Halli S-22R in the fall of '65 that I would be able to receive SSB!

[dtvmcdonald]

My main SW set is a Radio Shack (Sangean) portable, the one that
keeps the D cell suppliers happy. Its the only useful one since
I can carry it out 100 feet from the house where there is no noise.
It gets lots of stations on it ship antenna. I'm surprised that there
are so many SW broadcast stations left. The SW ham bands, on the
other hand, seem to have become complete dead wasteland.