Radio Listening Part 2: Shortwave Radio

Around the late 1960s my brother was given a multi-band transistor radio. He wanted to listen to the police band (he still does, although today he has a modern scanner). I discovered, however, that it also had several shortwave bands on it, and I got quite curious. So I occasionally stole the radio to tune to shortwave.

Now, kiddies, some of you younger folk (and maybe some older folk too) may not know what shortwave broadcasting is. Here's the short explanation. In the early part of the last century experimental broadcasters discovered that certain broadcasts were heard many thousands of miles away from their sites. These broadcasts generally had frequency ranges from around 2500 kHz to around 25000 kHz. kHz, or kiloHertz, means "1000 cycles per second", and refers to the number of oscillations the signal undergoes. Another way of expressing this is the length of the wave produced at that frequency. 2500-25000 kHz equates to 120 meters to 12 meters. As these wavelengths are relatively short compared to the normal US AM band frequencies of 545 meters (550 kHz) and up, and long wave from around 198 kHz, or around 1500 meters.

Experimenters found that frequencies in the shortwave band bounced off the ionospheric layer in Earth's atmosphere, thus giving them at certain times of day and year a longer range than a local medium wave or FM station. So before the Second World War countries began to broadcast programs on those frequencies, adjusting them as the year progressed so that their target audiences could have the best reception.

Pre-Internet, there was no streaming radio over your computer. In fact, if you had a computer you would need a separate building just to hold it. To someone who was interested in listening to programs from overseas, shortwave radio was the only way to go. And the listeners had to put up with fading in and out (as the conditions of the ionosphere changed), natural noise (like that produced by a thunderstorm), human-produced noise (like Aunt Agatha's light dimmer in her next-door flat), interference (usually from another radio station broadcasting too close to the frequency to which you were trying to listen), and power (some countries couldn't afford the huge cost of electricity that was required to broadcast a reliable signal). So the BBC broadcast regular programs all over the world, and chances are you could hear the World Service reliably wherever and whenever you pleased. Other countries, such as, say, Japan, were more difficult to hear in Eastern North America. Australia could only be reliably heard in Eastern North America early in the Eastern Time Zone of NA.

When I first listened to shortwave, the bands were full. BBC World Service (Lilliburlero heralded the news on the hour), Radio Moscow (Midnight in Moscow), Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, Radio Canada International (As It Happens, the national radio program), Voice of America (not aimed at Americans, but we could hear it anyway), Deutsche Welle from West Germany as was, Radio Beijing, and Radio Australia.

What a delight! I had never thought that I could hear programs from all over the world in my own bedroom. Sometimes the reception was poor, but that really didn't matter. Shortwave listeners were out to listen to countries, the more the merrier. I regularly listened to the BBC, Radio Nederland, RCI, and Australia.

Most of these countries now broadcast over the Internet, with streaming media. Some, like the BBC and VOA as well as Moscow, still broadcast on shortwave. In many parts of the world internet service is slow to non-existent. To reach those areas, shortwave is still the next best option to renting time on the country's radio stations. That's not always possible for political reasons.

So, I discovered shortwave listener clubs at about the same time. There were actually people (mostly men) who got together via magazines to share what they'd heard. In 1970 there were quite a few of these clubs, and I joined the one that I heard about first, the American Short Wave Listener Club. It was HQed in Huntington Beach, California, and headed by a man named Stewart MacKenzie. We had an interesting postal relationship, and I eventually contributed part of the newsletter. I think he's still on this side of the sod.

I also joined several other clubs, SPEEDX (which had broken away from ASWLC for various reasons) and NASWA (North American Shortwave Association), as well as some clubs devoted to listening to medium-wave band stations from far away. I eventually contributed to all three club magazines, and for many years I kept the magazines, binding them into yearly volumes. I trashed them all when I moved to Chicago in 1991, sadly. I won't go into the fissiparous nature of the SW clubs. People were always getting insulted in some way or another and leaving a club or starting another because they didn't like their previous one. Somewhat like Twitter, in a way.

I heard lots of fairly far-away stations, some in Asia (All-India Radio, Radio Sri Lanka), some in Europe (Radio Luxembourg, Radio Berlin International, Shannon Airadio [aviation weather forecasts from Ireland]), some in South America, and a few in Africa. It was really interesting stuff.

The shortwave clubs have mostly faded away now: I believe that one of the medium-wave clubs is still in active existence, but the North American shortwave clubs seem to all be gone. I did continue my shortwave listening until around the mid-1980's. After that, while I dragged my radios around to Chicago and San Francisco, I didn't bring any to London except for a small Sony radio, which has now conked out. Now, when I want to listen to international radio I listen to it over the Internet. The reception's much better.

Next installment: New York City radio stations.