Matt’s Rooftop Receiver Shootout: Round Two | Hacker News Reader

Matt’s Rooftop Receiver Shootout: Round Two

swling.com

33 pointswglb17 comments

I have often thought that we may regret abandoning the shortwave band for broadcasting in the future. Being able to transmit over the horizon without the requirement to launch something into space is quite the boon, and may suddenly become more useful than we think should spacefaring nations decide to declare war on each other.

There's still quite a bit on shortwave. BBC World Service is pretty much everywhere, and Radio Habana, Radio Romania, and a slew of other services are still kicking. For SHTF purposes, a good shortwave receiver and a longwire will run you maybe $100 - $150 USD and can be had for less if you buy used.

> BBC World Service is pretty much everywhere

That's really not true. They still broadcast shortwave only to Africa and some parts of Asia: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2x9tqt6mc05vB2S37j...

Everywhere else it has been replaced with the internet and satellite broadcasts.

I've been a shortwave listener since the 1980s and it's definitely slim pickings now. Internet radio, then podcasts, have killed shortwave.

Seems like the only ones left are localized first responders, and then it takes a running leap into doomsday preppers and conspiracy types. Maybe you might here the rare "CQ, this is W-9 GFO here. Come back? Copy, W-9 GFO. K-4 WLD here."

I can imagine aside from truckers nobody uses citizens band

On a lark, I watched Smokey and the Bandit for the first time in decades, and watching them on the CB was such an odd bit of nostalgia. The original group chat

It's funny how well that movie held up over time. I'm glad you brought it up, thanks. I miss the whip antennae and tennis balls on trucks for some reason. It made everything look like a toy truck to me.

You must have a lousy antenna, or live in a noisy location.

My little homebrew shortwave radio has 8 bands and they are usually full of stations. Mainly Chinese though.

To elaborate, on the east coast US, using portables such as the Sony SW-55 and the Sangean 909-X, listening in daytime and nighttime, in the past month or so I'd find at best one or two stations broadcasting in English. This was hardly the case 20+ years ago.

>Mainly Chinese though.

So... not BBC.

BBC is easy to hear, likewise Radio New Zealand and others.

Many western stations transmit programs intended for listeners overseas, and of course they speak in Chinese, Arabic, and other languages.

Why wouldn't the BBC transmit Chinese based programs?

Have you listened to shortwave recently? The bands are pretty much full. Mostly Chinese stations though.

Who abandoned it? I hear plenty.

radio waves (I mean the basic science of them) is something I regret not learning. I can sit there knowing there are thousands of waves passing through me from mobiles, wifi, etc and simply have no idea how to "view" them.

The basic science is the easy part; it's the black magic of things like antenna design and analog circuit design that intimidates me.

(Light, radio, gamma, etc are all electromagnetic waves at different wavelengths, with radio at the long (10m) end. Long wavelengths bounce off the ionosphere giving shortband radio its superpower of being transmittable over the horizon. FWIW all EM radiation emission occurs due to the acceleration of electrons, and reception is that process in reverse. Antennas are electrical conductors that produce a small current in the presence of EMR, which is amplified and put through a speaker for the human operator to hear. And in the exact same way, a microphone (which is just a speaker in reverse) is used to move electrons in the antenna such that they produce an outgoing radio wave. The theory is quite elegant. The practice...not so much.)

The science of radio is over a hundred years old now.

Pick up an Amateur Radio text book and have a read.

"The ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications", or the "RSGB radio communications handbook" are good places to start.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com