I was born in 1964, growing up in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. It was a time before the internet as we know it, and most of that was before cable TV was even widely available. Radios - and analog TVs with antennas outside the house - were the magic boxes that brought us news and entertainment. I loved listening to radios in particular. Sorry to use the word "magic" here again so quickly, but that is how it felt turning the dial on my little transistor pocket radio, or on my bedside clock radio, listening to the voices and the music. Somehow those signals were just out there in the air - no wires or fiber bringing them to the house, just signals in the ether.
I especially liked to tune around the AM band at night - what radio folks call the Medium Wave (MW) band, when my radio would come alive with signals from far away. Here in southeast Georgia, there were only one or two local stations, plus a few I could pick up from Brunswick, GA to the north or Jacksonville, FL to the south, that I could reliably hear during the day. But at night I'd get stations from Atlanta, Cincinnati, New Orleans and other places.
In the late 1980's - when I was in my mid 20's - I "discovered" shortwave radio. I bought a Realistic DX-440 from Radio Shack, a fairly nice radio at the time, and quickly became hooked on shortwave. The DX-440 was actually manufactured by Sangean and sold under their own brand name as the ATS-803A. A reasonably advanced and full-featured model, the DX-440 could tune the entire shortwave band continuously, featured digital tuning, single-sideband reception with an analog beat frequency oscillator (BFO) knob, had a huge telescoping whip for decent reception, and an external antenna jack. I spent many, many hours with that radio, often sitting outside at night listening to whatever I could pull in.
And what an incredible number of stations and types of programming one could hear in those days! Nearly every nation ran some kind of shortwave broadcasting station, many of them intentionally beaming signals towards North America and in English. Every year I bought the new edition of a book called Passport To World Band Radio, a book that listed nearly all the listenable stations along with a lot of information about specific programs. Each night I could tune in Deutsche Welle from Germany, Radio France Internationale, Radio Denmark, the Voice of America, and of course the gold-standard British Broadcasting Corporation. I could hear news from just about any corner of the globe - with different national and regional slants - as well as music, radio plays and dramas, sports, science and education programs, just about anything imaginable.
In the late 1990s I bought a new shortwave radio, a Sony ICF-SW77. This was a huge upgrade from my old Realistic DX-440, although I have to admit it didn't bring in a LOT more stations. I had yet to really learn - and understand - the importance of a proper external antenna, and the telescoping whips on portable shortwaves are a pretty serious compromise. In addition to their relatively short length, using such a radio on the whip indoors picks up all kinds of noise from household electronics. Still, I enjoyed using the SW77 and had a blast fiddling with its features.
For a time I drifted away from the hobby; life intervened, there were other things to do. It was around 2007 that my interest was rekindled, and I was rather disappointed to learn that shortwave listening simply wasn't what it used to be.
Radios were not the problem. Although some of the older, venerable manufacturers were exiting the market, others were staying in and making some fine equipment. There was also quite a market for used radios, and through EBay I have acquired a number of radios I had long coveted since my youth. There have even been exciting new models from several manufacturers just in the last 5 years!
The problem was that shortwave broadcasters themselves were largely abandoning the field. In some cases national governments just stopped broadcasting entirely, while others greatly curtailed their activities and in particular stopped broadcasting towards North America. The "why" was never a big mystery - there were just easier, cheaper, more effective ways to reach more listeners using other means. The internet is of course the biggest contributor here. Once the internet was built out to the point it could reliably carry audio streams, it was pretty much the death knell for shortwave. There were other factors - the advent of satellite radio from Sirius and XM brought another method for reaching our population.
Over the last two decades, things have grown steadily worse, with good news being pretty rare. There are at present only a dozen or so nations left broadcasting anything to North America on shortwave. There are some privately owned stations here in the US - about 90% of their content consisting of religious programming, and the remaining 10% being split between rather extreme, hard-right conspiracy talkers and a few music programs. On a really good night - if the capricious laws of physics allow - I can get some backspatter radiation from the BBC and faintly hear one of their few remaining broadcasts, usually intended for somewhere in Africa or Asia.
And I really struggled with all this. I don't think I knew I was struggling, not consciously - but I wanted to bring back the days when I could hear more. I continued to invest in radios, some new and some old. I purchased and installed a longwire antenna with a balun and coax feedline to get strong, clear signals into my radios (it really does wonders with what there is left on the airwaves). I bought books - not that many are still published, but each year I buy the World Radio Television Handbook, and when new editions are released The Wordwide Listening Guide, and the Pirate Radio Annual. I have paid for subscriptions to downloadable frequency lists.
As my ability to hear "more" on shortwave has reached its limit, I have branched out from listening to broadcasts, into listening to "utility" signals, like the air traffic control stations that work the planes out over the Atlantic ocean. And I've gone back to listening more to MW AM, checking around at night to see what distant stations I can hear.
Just this year I have bought two radios, several little connectors and wires for things, and today I found myself ordering the latest edition of the Worldwide Listening Guide, and I guess that is when it really struck me: shortwave broadcasting is dead. You can argue with me about how you heard Greece last night and it won't make a bit of difference. The many hours I spent tuning around the bands, pulling in dozens of stations every night, those times are lost now to the past and to fading memory.
My latest radio is the Tecsun PL-990x, a real gem. It tunes the shortwave broadcast bands as well as any radio I've owned in 30 years in the hobby, it's performance on single-sideband is remarkable. It has the ability to use an external antenna for MW AM, so my outdoor longwire can be used on that band and works a little of the old magic. The radio is a fine FM receiver. It also is a Bluetooth speaker so I can stream to it from my phone or tablet.
I also think it very likely that the PL-990x will be the last of my radio purchases. There is just no sense in continuing to spend money on radios for shortwave - we have hit the state of the art at a time when there is just not much worth hearing. I will continue to listen, to what little there is. I'll delve into the utility stuff when the mood strikes. I will try to rekindle my love of radio with MW AM. But no more new radios, antennas, or books - because none of them will bring the stations back on the air, and without them, the rest is just stuff.
