Surfing The Shortwaves

As a child I had a keen ear for the crisp, stentorian tones of the the BBC continuity announcers across the crackling shortwave ether. Their plumminess was tinged with an old-Empire dignity as they intoned, "This Is London", followed by the sprightly, yet slightly martial tones of the 'Lillibulero'. To get a feel for what I mean, here's a .wav (232Kb) of the BBC's World Service interval signal.

Later, I used to hang out at an old Army surplus place - racks and racks of radios, their multitudinous meters, eyes and firebottles all glowing softly in the hot-dust steely smell of the place. I was fascinated by the Babani shortwave transmitter listings - page after page after page of frequencies listed simply as 'VOA Relay'. However, at 13 I was unable to see how I might gather what seemed to be enormous sums for such equipment and I contented myself with the limited sensitivity of a single-shortwave band Murphy console set - experimenting with antennae and being astounded at receiving 'The Voice Of Vietnam' all the way from (were they sure? Where's that atlas?) Ho-Chi Minh City.

Undoubtedly, as I later understood, shortwave radio broadcasting across the world in the name of this or that country was little more than government propaganda. I made this connection after comparing the BBC new reports with those from Radio Moscow and could see that one side was being 'economical with the truth'.

Books, Tools, Software

Despite that, and having revived my interest in shortwave radio as an adult, band-cruising can be entertaining. But just as a good map can help you to better enjoy a road trip or sunday drive then a good 'map' of the shortwave bands can also make the surfing experience much more rewarding. By far and away the best 'map' is the Passport To World Band Radio which is published annually. This is a great book that contains a wealth of information on equipment and procedures as well as the broadcaster's frequency listings showing who is on the air at what time. It also gives contact details for the broadcasters - a boon for those who extend their hobby to collecting QSL cards.

QSL cards are, perhaps, the most visible aspect of this hobby. They come from the days of the radio ham - who would send a 'confirmation of reception' (or 'QSL' in the ham's Q-code) to a listener who had proof of reception time, date and frequency as well as information on the quality of the signal received. These days, the commercial broadcaster is apt to be more interested in the listener's opinions on how they did or did not like what they heard! Nevertheless, a QSL card serves as a keepsake and proof that a shortwave radio station was heard.

Here is a link to an excellent freeware application by Tom Lackamp for logging DX-ing activity - it's called B-Log and it is wonderfully simple tool for managing one's DX contacts.

Links And The Rest

Where you are, it is now:

As with any other hobby, there is a world of Internet-based resources out there just waiting to be discovered via Google or any of the other major search engines - The 'Open Directory Project' at www.dmoz.org is another excellent source. Here are a few more...

Universal Radio of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, USA maintains an excellent site for the radio amateur (of either the Ham or casual SWL variety).

A useful resource for identifying station interval signals at http://www.intervalsignals.net/

In case you don't yet have a copy of 'Passport..' then take a look at http://www.anarc.org/naswa/swlguide/