It is not only the news, of course, that shortwave-radio owners can tune to. Modern technology has made it possible for shortwave radios to be small enough to be carried in a pocket, allowing globe-trotters to keep up on the latest news back home with just a flick of the dial. The total number of listeners runs to many times that figure.įor travelers, the benefits have never been greater. Some 350 million people own shortwave receivers, according to the International Shortwave Club. They live in nearly every country on earth. Today, the multicolored, intricate, and growing world of shortwave radio has millions of listeners. It conducts its meetings in hundreds of languages. Its members may be on expeditions in the Himalayas, nomads in Outer Mongolia, city dwellers in Australia, or villagers in Papua-New Guinea. Some Radio stations encouraged listeners to send questions and requests.It's the United Nations without the voting. I seem to think that Radio Sweden was happy with personal cheques. Payment was normally by 'IRC' - International Reply Coupons, which could be obtained from the Post Office. Radio Sweden offered records and cassettes. Apart from QSL cards, there were posters and 'T' shirts on offer. The Chinese have started using 5 sites for it's new domestic SW DRM service.Īnyone istening to overseas broadcasts could - if they so wished - collect all kinds of items from the various radio stations. To use other commercial sites to boost DRM reception would have added to cost. The Luxembourg tests didn't go to those lengths.įrom memory RTL used the unused SW masts at it's Junglinster sites for the DRM tests?. That's difficult to arrange using sky-wave: it would involve frequency shifting and quite likely multiple transmission sites (in fact, very similar to what the major broadcasters had to do to get a reasonably consistent AM signal into their target areas). If you have content that you want people to hear, what does DRM do that can't be achieved by one or more of internet distribution, satellite distribution or DAB? I don't see the commercial point, though (at least, not in markets like Europe). The Luxembourg tests didn't go to those lengths. Undoubtedly it's capable of sounding much better than AM, but only if the field strength is sufficient, sufficiently consistent, and overcomes noise and CCI (as Les mentions). I live close enough to Wooferton to hear the BBC tests by ground wave, and DRM is very good: I was lucky enough to be in India recently and sampled the tests there. The Indian DRM system uses MW groundwave, which should be more reliable, but more costly to transmit. The downside of SW is it is dependant on atmospheric reflections, so will never be 100% reliable, and as you say would now be unaceptable to listeners used to FM. Also would have allowed auto switching to the best frequency for best reception. I think the advantage of DRM on SW was it was cheap to cover the UK with existing Luxemburg or German unused SW masts at 50kw. Thanks I only heard a short part of the RTL DRM test and it sounded OK (stereo near FM quality) with no dropout. More including the cassette tape they released There are some Saturday Shows on MixcloudĮxcerpts on a Radio Sweden 2005 article on the programme Then HCJB - the 'voice of the Andes' Radio Sweden's 'Saturday show' playing Swedish rock music and making disparaging remarks about Abba! This was our connectivity! Radio Turkey had 'Oldies but goodies' News programmes from All-India Radio and Radio Japan. In the afternoon there was Radio Nederland and 'What's New'. Also a topical programme about the Swiss music scene. On a Saturday I started off with 'Voice of America', and then went to Swiss Radio International. SW listening was the only affordble 'window on the world' in the 1970s.
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