The Shortwave Radio Thread.

[MissMittens]

Fooling around with the Philco tonight in the area of the 41 meter band, I was astonished to hear the familiar sound of the BBC World Service booming in at 7300 kc. Not having heard Auntie direct since she closed down her North American transmissions nearly twenty years ago, I figured this was some kind of leased-time deal with one of the American dollar-a-holler SW stations -- but no, it's a for-real transmission from Wooferton in the UK at 250 kw. It's supposedly directed to Asia, but whether due to atmospherics or accident, it's coming in fine here in the Great Northeast.

They just shut down, without a closedown announcement, at 9PM EDT, and Radio Vatican's Portuguese-language service immediately took over the frequency. Brings back fond memories of the busy international bands of decades past -- hopefully it'll be a regular thing.

There's been a whole slew of interesting stations between 5300-7300 kc lately. Pretty sure Radio Cassablanca made a comeback on 6940 but didn't catch the station ID to be sure. There's also Radio Free East Coast (confirmed) at 6935 which seems to have made a resurgence. It's rare to catch BBC nowadays, but once in a while you do get long path from Wooferton when conditions allow.

 

[MissMittens]

For those interested, nighttime reception in the AM broadcast band and up through 10 Mc has been, and is expected to be rather good for the next few days

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. WGN, Chicago coming in like a local here last night.

 

[MissMittens]

Yep. WGN, Chicago coming in like a local here last night.

WGN has been strong here out in Philadelphia for about about two weeks now. Also receiving local AM stations from Quebec, and some Spanish ones from I'm assuming south of the border, since the FCC database didn't have entries for them