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My First Post on this Board - Some Very Novice Questions

V

VALUERATIO

Guest
Question 1:
What is the difference, if any, between "HAM" radio and "Shortwave" radio?

Question 2:
I have been looking at some C Crane Co shortwave receivers. Is there a particular model/brand you would recommend?

Question 3:
Could you recommend me some sites that have EST schedules for shortwave broadcasts in English? Seeking broadcasts more in the vein of news/talk (including "the lunatic fringe" such as Chuck Harder or Irwin Schiff), rather than music. Is radio-locater a good site for this type of information? Any site that you recommend for streaming shortwave news/talk over the net?
 
VALUERATIO said:
Question 1:
What is the difference, if any, between "HAM" radio and "Shortwave" radio?

Question 2:
I have been looking at some C Crane Co shortwave receivers. Is there a particular model/brand you would recommend?

Question 3:
Could you recommend me some sites that have EST schedules for shortwave broadcasts in English? Seeking broadcasts more in the vein of news/talk (including "the lunatic fringe" such as Chuck Harder or Irwin Schiff), rather than music. Is radio-locater a good site for this type of information? Any site that you recommend for streaming shortwave news/talk over the net?
Click to expand...

Ham radio is a service that allows licensed operators to communicate between each other on various bands using various modes.....Ham radio is as old as radio itself.....a lot of experimental stations were ham stations with special authorization.
Shortwave is broadcast stations (One Way) like an AM or FM station you are used to...but meant to cover a BIGGER audience usually in another country (US Shortwave stations by law cannot target listeners in the US....dumb but true)...Get a SW receiver from Crane with SSB capability....and preferably digital tuning....SSB is what you will find in the ham bands and some other services as well...AM as we know it is headed out to pasture.....but some will still be around and you can use a SSB rcvr to listen to AM but not the other way around. Digital tuning means stability and ease of tuning to a specific channel or frequency......I would have to dig my Crane catalog out for specific numbers.
 
Hi,

Good to have you here.

Just a word though. Due to the sunspot conditions, SW listening the WORSE it is going to be for the next 11 years. It only gets better from here. Stay with it.

Generally the higher bands (15 MHz and up) work better in the daytime and the lower bands work better at night (15 MHz and down). The SW band at 15MHz (and amateur radio band at 14 MHz) are good most of the time.

And if you feel the need to want to talk on the radio and not just listen, go to qrz.com or ARRL.org and find out how to get licensed. It is not all the difficult. From the west coast I can usually work Hawaii, New Zealand and Japan on voice.

K6JHU
 
Heck! Here on the west coast, you can work into the Pacific on a wet piece of string. Alas, Europe is another problem altogether.
 
If your looking for schedules, usually the particular stations have schedules on their websites...e.g. Radio Netherlands,(my favorite) Radio Canada etc. A couple of publications are out there like Passport to World Band Radio and Monitoring Times magazine. Sometimes they may be a little inaccurate but their still pretty good. I've listened to shortwave since I was a teenager and it has a lot better news coverage than the networks. Just google a particular shortwave station and mostly you'll find it. Sometimes I have to hit the website for frequency changes. when using Google, type in :shortwave stations. Good luck,
-Tim, KD4RNC
 
etherjockey said:
Heck! Here on the west coast, you can work into the Pacific on a wet piece of string. Alas, Europe is another problem altogether.
Click to expand...

You raised some memories. Old navy radioman here. Atmospherics in South East Asia (home of the 7th Fleet of Vietnam era) were gastly at best. Frequently we could not reach nearby Philippines, Guam or Japan when only several hundred miles away but San Francisco came blasting in on 12966 hz. We used Collins (URC-32 if memory serves) gear for our longwave, usually SSB (1K smoking watts) and encrypted TTY.
 
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