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Cool beans. Picked up at amazon a neat little AM FM SW radio for 25 bucks. Not a bad little rig. Picking up alot of foreign short wave stations. Pretty cool, not the best out there but its got character....check out a youtube thing a guy put out on this product.......... Quantum FX J114U MP3 AM FM Shortwave mini boombox - YouTube
Radio Habana Cuba coming in strong on SHORTWAVE. Also picking up Vatican radio. Haven't tried outside the morning hours yet, but probably gets real good on a clear night. I like this little rig. Very compact, heavy, still have yet to explore using the SD card slot and USB slot for music. FM and AM sound great! Very neat receiver, would make a nice gift for anyone. I also like the electronic odor it gives out. It feels and smells like Christmas time. Like I said. I'm in it mostly for the Shortwave dxing, but also very cool on the FM to listen to tunes. As compact as it is, it won't JUST be a garage radio, but rather, a very MOBILE radio.
Just curious, do you have an Amazon link? I may have to look into these sometime.
Hello Spongebue and thanks for the interest. I have no stock in these radios so lets get this straight right now, but its a cool little rig and I know it would make a very good present because, nobody thinks of getting one of these. I've always liked good radios with Shortwave capabilities. Going back to 70's. It's bailed me out of alot of boredom and expanded my horizons and interest. Hours and hours of enjoyment, and even years of owning them. My last one lasted over 20 years, through sea salt and movements. I have sent away for QSL postcards in the past, very nice thing to get. This little rig can do it. Again, not the best gadget in the world, and personally, would like a bigger rig but I'm satisfied for now. If I had to mention the CON'S about the radio would be mostly like the band selector you have to concentrate by counting clicks because it doesn't have markings to tell you which band you are on, but its figureable. Another less favorable con about it is the dial for station is right behind the antennae so you have to move the antenna somewhat to move the dial, but this is minoot issue really. I'd say that for the price, its affordable and since its never thought of as a present, it would make a great one. Here is a link on Amazon. I have seen them cheaper in other web sites. Like as low as 16 dollars, but be aware of the shipping charges. I got mine in Amazon for 25 bucks with the shipping included, but I see now they got it for 18.74 with 6.95 shipping. I'm going to post you the amazon link to this now, and I'll show you a cheaper one on another site so stand by. Here is the Amazon link.
Amazon.com: Quantum FX AM FM SW 1-9 World Receiver With USB SD Slot MP3 Player - Quantum FX J114U: Electronics
Here is one that looks cheaper, same product, but don't know if there are any catches. Looks like shipping is supposedly free. If you can get it at the said price, you did better than me.......
Quantum FX J-114U AM/FM/SW1-SW9 Radio USB/SD Player
Cool, thanks! That sounds like something I'd like to try out, but the wife may get sick of quickly :P - maybe I'll put it in the man cave (better known as the second bedroom with a desk/computer)
Definately a cool man cave gadget. I don't know any ladies that listen to shortwave as much. They have short wave radios that are digital but I like the old school dials. Won't have it any other way. I like to tinker for better reception on my own touch. It's not that hard to DX. If you can understand meter bands and UTC hours and Kilohertz and Megahertz, it makes following a short wave broadcasting chart more fun. Or just play with the dial until you find something you like. You want to know UTC hours because that is the hours that a station broadcast. So if they are in London, around 2400 Greenwich time, which is UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) or ZULU military time, all the same, you just calculate to your known UTC time zone. Like East Coast USA is around 0500 UTC time, so if they are broacasting at midnight, you know to check your dial at 5AM and then go to the prescribed meter band and exact kilohertz to listen to BBC for instance. You can pull all the UTC chart conversions online. Maps are a big help. World is divided into 24 time zones. It's not that complicated. I clip some wire leads to a slinky for better reception, and extend it. The better your antenna, the better the strength and the more stations you may pick up. You don't have to go technical here for a little rig like this one. I would figure in Denver up in the mountains, on a clear night, you can pick up alot of stations. Overcast, forget about good reception.
Sadly, I'd probably have to hope for eastward stations with the mountains in mind. Denver's official elevation is 5280 feet, but the mountains to the west of us are more than twice that. That can't be good, unless it's a molehill in the grand scheme of things.
Shortwave is not "Line of sight". The signals skip off the ionosphere and bounce back to earth. Mountains to your left shouldn't affect your signals coming from Asia for instance. That's why you can listen to signals half way around the world.
How about 3/4 around the world? ;)
Edit: Also, Colorado has 300 days of sunshine a year. That may be pretty good reception on an average day :)
I was picking up Brazil yesterday. They were talking in Portuguese and about the world cup soccer. Another interesting station.....RADIO CATOLICA. Couldn't quite figure out exactly where they were beaming from but they seem to have various stations, one in Alabama and another in Europe. I pulled up their web site. Got some Arabic station from I don't know where, got Chinese station, probably Radio Taiwan, got British Broadcasting Corporation and I heard Russian broadcast, or some slavic country. No need to sink big bucks into a fancy shortwave radio. Yea, you get what you pay for inasfar as a nice radio perhaps, in like having digital tuning, or fancy craftsmanship, better speakers, ect..... but you don't really need fancy to pick up good stations and you don't need to pay big bucks for one. I used to listen to VOA alot out in the Pacific, but its hard to pick them up here. They target outside the USA maybe to Africa and Europe. Don't even know if they beam to South America anymore, probably cut back alot since the cold war days. This is real cool. Go to this link at VOA, VOICE OF AMERICA and listen to this program. Click LISTEN to hear some GOLD tunes. Songs from 50's and 60's....http://www.voanews.com/archive/ameri...1439/1439.html
VOA Broadcast Frequency Schedules
Effective March 31, 2013 – November 2, 2013
Frequencies starting with:
4 = 75 Meter Band 5 = 49 Meter Band
6 = 49 Meter Band 7 = 41 Meter Band
9 = 31 Meter Band 11 = 25 Meter Band
13 = 22 Meter Band 15 = 19 Meter Band
17 = 16 Meter Band 21 = 13 Meter Band
English to Africa
0300-0400 UTC Daily 909 1530 4930 6080 9885
0400-0430 UTC Daily 909 1530 4930 4960 6080 9885 12025
0430-0500 UTC Daily 909 4930 4960 6080 12025
0500-0600 UTC Daily 909 4930 6080 12025 15580
0600-0700 UTC Daily 909 1530 6080 12025 15580
1400-1500 UTC Daily 4930 6080 15580
1500-1600 UTC Daily 4930 6080 15580 17895
1600-1700 UTC Daily 909 1530 4930 6080 15580
1700-1800 UTC Daily 6080 15580 11795 17895
1800-1830 UTC Daily 6080 15580 17895
1800-1830 UTC Sat./Sun. 909 4930
1830-1900 UTC Daily 4930 15580
1830-1900 UTC Sat/Sun. 909
1900-2000 UTC Daily 909 4930 9850 15580
2000-2030 UTC Daily 909 1530 4930 15580
2030-2100 UTC Daily 909 1530 4930 6080 15580
2030-2100 UTC Sat./Sun. 4940
2100-2200 UTC Daily 1530 6080 15580
English to Far East Asia, South Asia and Oceania
0100-0200 UTC Daily 7430 9780 15205
1100-1200 UTC Sat./Sun. 1575
1200-1300 UTC Daily 7575 9510 12075 12150
1300-1400 UTC Sat./Sun. 7575 9510 12075 12150
1400-1500 UTC Mon.–Fri. 7540 7575 12150
1500-1600 UTC Daily 7540 7575 12150
2200-2300 UTC Sun.–Thurs. 5895 5915 7480 7575 12150
2230-2400 UTC Fri./Sat. 1575
2300-2400 UTC Daily 5895 7480 7575 12150
Learning English
0000-0030 UTC Daily 7430 9790 12015 17820
0030-0100 UTC Daily 1575 9325 15290
0130-0200 UTC Tues.–Sat. 9820
1500-1600 UTC Daily 6140 9485 9760
1600-1700 UTC Daily 11915 13570 15470 17895
1900-2000 UTC Daily 7485
2230-2300 UTC Daily 5820 7460 9570
2300-2400 UTC Daily 1593 5820 7460 9490 11840
I didn't see any broadcasting to South America. Probably when they beam from Washington DC, to Asia, the signal due to its path misses me in Texas because I'm in the "SKIP ZONE".
Which is probably why I never hear VOA here. Skip zone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia