For you short wave listners..

[RatsoW8]

A really good resource for stations still on the air. I loved listening to all the foreign broadcast abd strange noises when I was a kid and still do. Especially during a contect weekend

http://www.short-wave.info/index.php

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

I remember getting the yearly editions of The World Radio TV Handbook. It had a plethora of information about world wide SW broadcasters as well as local AM/FM/LW/TV stations. It was indispensable in the days before the internet.

 

[RatsoW8]

Agreed. I normally just like to tune around and see what I come up with. Not much English being spoken on the SW bands that is isn't religious in nature and coming from the southern US.

Whan I was 8 years old I would take our battey powered Lloyds sw band radio outside on Friday night and listen to WBZ in Boston until the wee hours. I loved the Larry Glick show.

 

[Captain Kilowatt]

I got started in SWL back in the late 70's with a Realistic DX-160 receiver which I upgraded to a Kenwood R-1000 in the early 80's which I still have. Since then I have used a couple different amateur radio transceivers with the best having been an Icom IC-735 which had a bullet proof frontend and great filters. Back then I had a 600 foot long wire antenna and could hear commercial AM stations from Europe and Central America sandwiched in between North American channel assignments. They use 9 KHz spacing whereas we use 10 KHz spacing. This means there are several spots in the band where there are stations right between North American stations like Norway on 1314 KHz and Iran on 765 KHz. The Iranian station ran 2 million watts BTW, Also logged lots of longwave stations from Europe and Africa as well as many 90m and 120m band local broadcasters in Africa. My location here on the east coast as well as the 600 foot antenna made for some really good catches like the 1 Kw AM broadcaster out of Guatemala or the many Caribbean broadcasters on the AM band. You need REALLY good filters for that and tuning in SSB mode is best. Man those were the good old days of SWL. Sadly they are long gone and will never be back.