Shortwave radio

[AndreaGail]

I've been thinking of purchasing a medium-priced radio to listen to and possibly in the future get a license for broadcast

but i have no prior experience with them

any advice on brands or just any great info on the subject, i'm all ears :)

thanks

[Glass]

Ok do you want to listen to global news broadcasts on shortwave or are you thinking about HAM/Amateur radio?

[AndreaGail]

Ok do you want to listen to global news broadcasts on shortwave or are you thinking about HAM/Amateur radio?


i guess more of ham/amateur radio

[Dogman]

Most all of the big three, Icom, yaesu, and kenwood have the ham bands plus general coverage I am fond of kenwood and yaesu myself. It really depends on what you want to do. I like cruising the international broadcast bands, to hear the other perspectives that may not be said here.
One nice thing about a transceiver is they hold their value very well.

[Hillbilly]

I think a 10 Meter radio will be really good for emergency because a lot of truckers are running 10 meter rigs now. They really get out a long ways and lots of people have them and if the shtf truckers are usually right in the middle of it. You can get the General Lee 10 meter mobile rig and with just a few snips get it to run on the 11 meter cb band as well.

check it out

http://cbworldinformer.com/200110/general_lee_review.htm

[palani]

Suggest looking up 'HAMFEST CALENDAR" on google and spend the $6 they generally charge to see what is available.

I guarantee everyone you meet there will have an opinion.

[Glass]

There are 3 main brands of HAM radio. Kenwood, Icom and Yaesu (Vertex). There are a couple of others but the $$ can be very high.

I think I listed the brands in order of $ you can expect to pay as well.

You can get base station units or you can get mobile units. Mobile units sometime have small displays and what buttons it has can often do 3 or 4 things where as the base units have bigger displays and more buttons, often with one task per button. You can use a mobile unit on a desk as a base as well. I don't have a base unit, just a couple mobile radios.

To get global transmitting/receiving capabilites (subject to atmospheric conditions) you will need what is called either an all mode, all band or HF transceiver. All band tranceivers will probably do UHF, VHF, HF and maybe some others including military (can't think what that is called in the US).

HF (high frequency) is your long range global stuff. 10 Metres, 20 Metres 40 Metres, 80 Metres and maybe 160 Metres. 10 Metres is the wavelength of your signal. Old CB radio of the Smokey and the bandit days was 11Metres in Oz. Still is and doesn't need a license to use unlike HAM/amateur. As Hillbilly points out its part of the 10 Metre band range in the US. It has set channels for easy frequency selection unlike HAM radios although HAM radios have memory buttons so you can store a freq just like a channel or use software on a PC to store your settings and the software can rejig the radio settings to tune you into a stored setting.

If you want mobile, I'd look at Icom all banders like the IC-7000 budget permitting. Nice big display. All the bands.

I have a yaesu 857D which is cheaper to buy, does all the bands but has a small screen and few buttons so you need to click buttons a few times to get to the settings you want. All the ones you need often are easy to get at so don't be put off. It's only if you want to do something a bit different you have to dig around. The 897 is bigger, semi-mobile and portable if you want to bug out. Same guts as the 857d.

I'm probably making this more complicated than you want to get started.

If you want a cheap base to play around with look around for a kenwood. A 400 or 500 series would be heavy as they are older designs (12+ pounds) but you could pick one up for cheap. It would take a while to warm up ;).
http://www.oz2jht.dk/ts440s.jpg
Kenwood TS-440S (it does HF only. Not UHF or VHF)

You need to think about antennas because you need to have enough room to put one up. Ideally they should be 1/4, 1/2 or 1 wavelength in length.

To find out how big you can convert the frequency band into the wavelength by dividing the speed of light by the frequency. Or to simplify it 300 divided by the Mhz. So 300 divided by 27Mhz = 11 (metres).

So a 27mhz radio is 11 metres for 1 wavelength but a 1/2 wave antenna would be 5.5 metres. You can get shorter ones like a 5/8th.

40metres would be a 40 metre antenna for 1 wavelength or 20 metres at 1/2. 20 metres would be 20 metres long for 1 wave length but 10 metres for 1/2 wavelength. With a 10 Metre antenna you could run 10 metres @ 1 wavelength, 20 metres @ 1/2 wavelength and 40 metres @ 1/4 wavelength.

You can get lots antenna options and designs that work good even though they are no where near a wavelength in size but there are trade offs in performance. Cars for instance can't fit a 20 metre antenna but you can get antennas that do lots of the bands. They use some hocus pocus stuff called science to do this.

For a base you can get a long run of copper wire and connect to one end (long wire) or in the middle (dipole) and string it across a few trees. You need to connect it to the radio the right way but there's tons of how to's on the net. You can get verticals and all sorts of other clever antenna designs for space impeded situations.

Have a look at www.eham.net for reviews on radios and antennas, how to's and so on. dxportal is a search engine for hams.

Are we confused yet? I think I am.

[G2Rad]

one of the best radios is KA1103

Single side bants, dual conversion, wide/narrow AM filter , etc etc etc

look it up at Amazon


please don't buy it of ebay because you will be competing with me

I've been hunting for it for a year

[ArgenteumTelum]

Andrea,

Glass offered excellent information. Go to the American Radio Relay League website (ARRL.org). To get started obtaining a license to transmit buy yourself a copy of the entry level book, "The ARRL Ham Radio License Manual, Second Edition". Kids can easily pass this entry level exam. Testing sites and local radio club info can be found at the site. Amateur radio ops are a very helpful group of people and I'm sure you'll receive enough information to help you make some decisions. It's a great hobby and very useful skill set.
AT

[DMac]

Bump for discussion about SWR

[ArgenteumTelum]

Is that Short Wave Radio or Standing Wave Ratio?

AT

[Glass]

Is that Short Wave Radio or Standing Wave Ratio?

AT

Sounds like a radio nerd question ;D. It's a good'n though. I'll be doing a bit of SWR testing later today. I bought my Dad a travel shortwave seeing as he is often in places where news about what is going on can be hard to come by. Initially he said there wasn't much out there except evangelical broadcasts. I think he's found more useful things to listen to since then and he travels everywhere with it.

I got it because I thought it might cover some amateur bands or at least 28Mhz. I think a scanner might be the next thing to get.

See thats another thing. If you don't need or want to communicate but you want to know what's going on then a scanner might be a good option. A lot of LEO and some emergency are going digital with rolling scamblers so worth checking what your local LEO is doing but if they are still analogue a scanner will help you pick them up. Other emergency services may still be on analogue.

You'd also be able to hear other radio operators which might give you more info on what is happening around you.

[osoab]

Sounds like a radio nerd question ;D. It's a good'n though. I'll be doing a bit of SWR testing later today. I bought my Dad a travel shortwave seeing as he is often in places where news about what is going on can be hard to come by. Initially he said there wasn't much out there except evangelical broadcasts. I think he's found more useful things to listen to since then and he travels everywhere with it.

I got it because I thought it might cover some amateur bands or at least 28Mhz. I think a scanner might be the next thing to get.

See thats another thing. If you don't need or want to communicate but you want to know what's going on then a scanner might be a good option. A lot of LEO and some emergency are going digital with rolling scamblers so worth checking what your local LEO is doing but if they are still analogue a scanner will help you pick them up. Other emergency services may still be on analogue.

You'd also be able to hear other radio operators which might give you more info on what is happening around you.

When it comes to scanners anymore, you want a trunking scanner.

You can get the frequencies and groups from http://www.radioreference.com/ (http://www.%3Cb%3Eradio%3C/b%3E)
These have to be programmed into your scanner.

Here are a few other threads that some of this has been bounced around.
http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?43183-If-the-Internet-is-shut-down-here-like-in-Egypt-what-would-be-the-Plan-to-Com

http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?40763-If-quot-they-quot-closed-down-GSUS.....&highlight=ham+radio

http://gold-silver.us/forum/showthread.php?40687-If-the-internet-is-turned-off........be-ready.....video&highlight=ham+radio

[ArgenteumTelum]

Modern scanner can be quite confounding to newcomers. Beginners might want to investigate this: http://www.homepatrol.com/

AT