Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

Australia is on 9580 before 6 AM and 21 something in the afternoons.

BBC is on 9740 mornings

New Zealand is on 17675 evenings

R. Netherlands use to have a West Coast feed.

International Shortwave Broadcasting to the USA is pretty much dead,
however. Only a few hobbyists still use the radios. Serious
listeners use the internet and/or satellites.

That radio works real well for listening to the many 50 kW AM stations
all over the West.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 06:31:11 -0600, w wrote:

Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

Hello "Hidden",
I live in the Seattle, Washington area, about 15 miles east. I had to move
recently, and am now in an apartment where I cannot have anything outside.
For the time being I am using a little CD magnet mount whip. It doesn't work
as well as the 200 plus feet of wire I had strung between trees where I was
before, but it works. As for reception here, there have been long stretches
of really miserable reception of late, but the west coast always has been
challenging. Whether they beam anything directly at us does not matter. Many
transmissions are beamed toward other areas and we can still get the signal.
The rest is up to mother nature.

What I am thinking of doing is mounting some push pins in the wall and
wrapping wire around that. It may give me better reception than the whip. My
problem here is that there is a great deal of computer generated RF and I
have no way of getting away from it or of filtering it out. I would not give
up on the hobby. It is simply a challenge that requires patience and
ingenuity s. Best Wishes, Maximus.

http://home.earthlink.net/~damienmj/index.htm

wrote in message
. 105.130...
Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

B.S.... serious listeners still use shortwave radios...no doubt, many of
the great stations are gone, and more will go, but, still, there is much to
listen to. On the west coast (where I am also) I have stations programmed
for every hour of the day, from 0000UTC to 2300 UTC. Korea, China, Japan,
Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Netherlands, Nigeria, Moscow, England,
Romania, etc...as well as Utility stations, aircraft, ship to shore, ship to
ship, and more. Long live shortwave



"David" wrote in message
...
Australia is on 9580 before 6 AM and 21 something in the afternoons.

BBC is on 9740 mornings

New Zealand is on 17675 evenings

R. Netherlands use to have a West Coast feed.

International Shortwave Broadcasting to the USA is pretty much dead,
however. Only a few hobbyists still use the radios. Serious
listeners use the internet and/or satellites.

That radio works real well for listening to the many 50 kW AM stations
all over the West.

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 06:31:11 -0600, w wrote:

Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

Maximus wrote:

Hello "Hidden",
I live in the Seattle, Washington area, about 15 miles east. I had to move
recently, and am now in an apartment where I cannot have anything outside.
For the time being I am using a little CD magnet mount whip. It doesn't work
as well as the 200 plus feet of wire I had strung between trees where I was
before, but it works. As for reception here, there have been long stretches
of really miserable reception of late, but the west coast always has been
challenging. Whether they beam anything directly at us does not matter. Many
transmissions are beamed toward other areas and we can still get the signal.
The rest is up to mother nature.

What I am thinking of doing is mounting some push pins in the wall and
wrapping wire around that. It may give me better reception than the whip. My
problem here is that there is a great deal of computer generated RF and I
have no way of getting away from it or of filtering it out. I would not give
up on the hobby. It is simply a challenge that requires patience and
ingenuity s. Best Wishes, Maximus.

I lived in a motel for a while (don't ask) and I found that I could get
decent reception with a 30' length of Radio Shack speaker wire duct
taped to the ceiling in a NW-SE pattern. The duct tape will stick if you
tape a piece across the wire and then a piece parallel to the wire on
either side, like so: |-| . I tried push pins but they came out of the
wall, since the walls were cardboard. This was in a heavily populated
area, but granted I didn't have all the computer RF that you do.

I've been playing around with my Degen 1102 and I found that the
supplied external antenna-just a piece of black wire with a jack on the
end-vastly outperforms the whip. The moral: ANY outside wire is better
than a whip.

As for what can be heard out west, Radio Australia's Pacific service can
still be heard on the west coast at various times and freqs-audibility
tends to vary day to day so get a list and just punch in freqs listed
for a particular time until you get a hit, which is what I do if I want
to listen to Oz. Other nations can be heard during their broadcasts to
the eastern US or to the Caribbean, like Spain and the Netherlands, but
these require external wire. VOA is prohibited by law from broadcasting
to the US, always has been, but west coasters can usually pick up their
English broadcasts from various Asian transmitters, like Thailand and
the Philippines, during the morning hours. As for BBC and Deutsche
Welle, those are two stations which indeed no longer broadcast to North
America, but the BBC can usually be heard with transmissions to other
areas.


http://home.earthlink.net/~damienmj/index.htm

wrote in message
. 105.130...
Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

send me your ADDY AND i'LL SEND MORE DETAILED INFO ON THE SLINKY
ANTENNA MARKETED COMMERCIALLY AS "CLIFFDWELLER" I sent to your LISTED
addy knowing it's likely a nonfunctionig addy

I am using a vertical slinky standing on a christmas tree stand on the patio

to make yodarATcfl.rr.com


w wrote:

Wow, I'm just getting back into listening to shortwave radio after being
out of it for quite a few years. I had a crap (and I do mean crap)
Magnavox "boom box" that had shortwave on it years ago (1988?) and I
remember the utter joy I held, living in the Midwest, listening to Radio
Australia (Boomerang!) and the BBC World Service.

1996 came and I moved down south just a little bit, and I got some great
reception near the Smoky Mountains with my DX-390. I was listening to
the BBC the night Diana was killed and that's how I got the announcement
before CNN did.

I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.
Only that satellite crap. Thank goodness Russia still seems to have
America targeted broadcasts. Hell, even VOA isn't broadcasting
domestically! What gives?

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire
antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living
room window faces north and directly across is another 2 story building.
I'm not very far from MCAS Miramar so there's some open sky around here
with low buildings, nothing too tall.

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

In article . 130,
w says...
I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.

Radio Australia usually comes in very clearly on 9580 starting at
midnight west coast time. (Probably 11pm this week since the rest of
the world seems to go to daylight savings time a week before the US.) I
can generally get Radio New Zealand on 9885 at about the same time,
though it's a bit tougher. BBC no longer points in this direction, but
they point at South and Central America often enough that you can
normally get a readable BBC signal pretty much around the clock. I'm not
sure it's always in English though. DW is also still receivable, though
for much less of the day than the others, at least in English. (Given
that they're from Germany, this seems somewhat reasonable.)

I'll be open and frank. I'm in San Diego. Is there anything to listen
to anymore in English that I can actually get out here? I have the wire

Get the new ILG database when it comes out (soon, I hope) and a viewer
program. The radio control program I use works with the ILG database and
lets me set up a whole bunch of custom filters. One of the first ones I
created was "English Now". I don't filter by intended broadcast region
because that would miss too many broadcasts intended for elsewhere but
still quite readable here.

antenna that came with the radio and I live in a first floor apartment
that was built in the 70s or 80s. I can't invest too much more in a new
antenna. Maybe $50 TOPS. And I can't mount anything outside... as I
live in an apartment. Bedroom window faces south and a street. Living

You could probably do something temporary (or very stealthy) outside,
but you should be able to set up something inside that will work pretty
well. I'd start by just tacking up wire around the perimeter of the
room at the ceiling. For about $15 in parts you can build an antenna
tuner to improve the reception from the perimeter antenna. Some people
have had good success with the "broomstick" antenna popularized by Arnie
Coro of Radio Havana. (Take a cylindrical form, like some PVC pipe, wrap
as much wire as possible around it, and hook one end up to the radio. If
you use a smaller gauge of magent wire you can get 1000 feet or more of
wire on a piece of PVC that stands in a corner of the room. Whether this
ends up overloading your 7600G or not is another story.)

Is this hopeless? I miss relaxing at night, listening to stuff from
around the world.

Just be patient. There may not be as many signals out there as there
used to be, but there are still plenty of broadcasts. You might also
want to try DXing the MW band. One fun activity is to see how many
loggings you can get of Coast to Coast AM on a single trip through the
MW frequencies. I can usually get at least 13 on even the worst of my
portable radios.

-- Jay

Does anyone know what happened to the BBC 6135kHz freq? It used to
BOOM in on the West Coast and they took it away! If anyone has come
across a replacement freq, please post!

AC Smith wrote:

Does anyone know what happened to the BBC 6135kHz freq? It used to
BOOM in on the West Coast and they took it away! If anyone has come
across a replacement freq, please post!

What time? I'll go a lookin.

Jay Heyl wrote in message ...
In article . 130,
w says...
I just got an ICF-7600GR and I'm disappointed. Not in the radio itself
which is a fine piece of craftsmanship (for the money) but because all
the stuff I used to listen to is just bloody well GONE. BBC, Radio
Australia, and Deutche Welle no longer broadcast SW to the Americas.

Radio Australia usually comes in very clearly on 9580 starting at
midnight west coast time. (Probably 11pm this week since the rest of
the world seems to go to daylight savings time a week before the US.) I
can generally get Radio New Zealand on 9885 at about the same time,
though it's a bit tougher.

As of 9 or 10 PM last evening PST, try 13630 for Radio Australia, or for
an hour or so both Radio Japan and Radio Australia at the same time ;-(
And if you can't get Radio New Zealand on 9615, hook your antenna up to
your dental work. It should come in that way.

BBC no longer points in this direction, but
they point at South and Central America often enough that you can
normally get a readable BBC signal pretty much around the clock. I'm not

11835, 9825, and 5975 from 5 to 10 PM, as of next week.
6005, aimed at Africa after that for an hour or so.

sure it's always in English though. DW is also still receivable, though
for much less of the day than the others, at least in English. (Given
that they're from Germany, this seems somewhat reasonable.)

DW in english for Africa was on last night on 7170, the first time
I've heard English for a year now.

Mark Zenier