Prep Comms - Shortwave Radio pt2

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

In this episode, Caleb returns to chat Shortwave Radio with listener feedback. He reminds the listener of the power of SWL as well as the idea of external antennas for greater capacity. Additionally, he touches on Ham Radio Transceivers and the Weather Radio shortage (gasp!). Show Mentions: Freq List: C. Crane SWL List Shortwave Schedule: Up to the min freq listings Shortwave.live Whats on the air, now Video: Build An Antenna https://youtu.be/NipjLBYuQCs?si=SLIxM-gbQ6tP_KuV Clip On Antenna https://youtu.be/Zl93BYE0jyk?si=mW0zjdUS3IDC_xnl *Listener BONUS* Download Your Free PDF of show notes and Action Items/Stretch Goals from this show Here!Free to Print and Place in your @PrepComms Planning Binder!   Show Sponsor: Hub City Mercantile Berkey and British Berkefeld Water Filter Systems and Parts   Mentions: Active Antenna Clip-on antenna Aligator Clip Slinky Antenna Indoor Coil Antenna   Not to get too far ahead of the show map, but there may be some of you looking for more to do with your new shortwave radio (ps we'll get there!). Give this AmRRON video a look: Receiving Digital HF

Welcome back into the PrepComs podcast. I'm Caleb Nelson, K4CDN. Thank you so much for taking the time to sit down or maybe do your daily walk or even your drive in today with me. I'm not going to take a lot of your time, but I do want to go back and touch on some things that I mentioned in the previous program, the first shortwave radio program. A lot of great feedback on that, by the way. And in that feedback, I had some questions that weren't completely answered. So I want to go back and touch on some of those things. I had one gentleman say, hey, the show was great, but you didn't really talk about external antennas and how that could increase the capabilities of the radio. That is a very valid and fair point. And I will say that we're going to talk a lot about antennas in the future.

As we build out this ground level, basement level understanding of communications for preparedness, we can go there for just a moment. And I'll say this. It depends on the radio that you purchase or that you even have in your hands now as to how you will apply an external antenna to that radio. Some of my older RadioShack radios that I have, the shortwave models that I bought when I worked there and then, you know, even after getting married and then the demise of RadioShack, the saddest day ever, almost, they have external jacks that you can just wire up a little like a headphone jack plug, stick that in the side of the radio and run a wire out through the yard or through the window

or across the room or maybe around the ceiling of your bedroom, plug that into your radio, and you've increased the chances of receiving or capturing signals that much more. If that's not going to work, there's some active antennas that you can actually purchase. And these guys are, they work with batteries. So they have like an amplifier, a receive amplifier, if you will. And you hang this guy in your window and it helps pull signals in with the amplifier. It's like a reverse amplification. In addition to that, you've got some desktop models that look really cool. There's a million ways to skin this cat. I found that back when, before I was a licensed ham and I was just a shortwave listener and

a prepper and Y2K, et cetera, I carried around my little, my smaller version of the Radio Shack shortwave radio. And I had an alligator clip. Are you familiar with those? Some of you may be really familiar with those. But anyway, you can buy these things in a packet, Harbor Freight tool for almost nothing. Of course, you can get them online.

And I took a 14 gauge speaker wire. I used to be back, you know, back in the big subs and all that stuff. But I had some 14 gauge stuff laying around. I pulled it down to one conductor and rolled it out and attached it to the little alligator clip there and just rolled it up, put it in the back. Well, when I got to wherever I wanted to listen to shortwave,

I could take the antenna and drape it up through some trees or maybe hang it from the ceiling fan as long as it was turned off in the room or even across the porch banister, anywhere that it could be somewhat elevated, and then take the alligator clip and clip it directly to the telescopic antenna on the back of that shortwave radio. Now that's kind of the cheap poor man's version of the little extensions you can buy from Amazon that clip onto the antenna. They're plastic. They roll up under themselves. They look really nice. And actually I have one from RadioShack that works really well. But you know, I mean, you may want a longer antenna to receive more signal. That's kind of how it works.

And wire is still kind of cheap enough. And you probably have some laying around, especially you old, you know, hi-fi guys or whatnot. But 14 gauge or, you know, even a 16 or 18 gauge wire will work. You're not, you know, any power, nothing here. It's just receiving. So thank you, Chris, for that reminder. We're going to talk about antennas again way down the road as we, you know, build this

thing out. But we did want to mention that you can increase the receive even with your AM FM radio from the very first points here with a clip on antenna. And I like the little alligator clips. I mean, they're cheap enough. You I like the little alligator clips. I mean, they're cheap enough. You can buy a whole box. Like I said, at Harbor Freight, wire's cheap enough. You clip that dude on, and when you're finished, you just roll it up, you know, neatly, tuck it in a bag, maybe find you a piece of Velcro, and you're good to go.

Another thing to mention that I had someone bring up to me was how a ham radio works like a short wave radio in the fact that they kind of can hear the same frequencies. Some of the older ham radios can't. They don't have a general coverage receive, meaning they're only capable of listening to the ham radio bands. But some of the later models, most all of the later models, have a general coverage receiver, which means as long as you're turning the dial, it's going up through the frequencies and you can hear the same things that a shortwave receiver can hear. Truth of the matter is they'll also decode single sideband because that's what they're made for. So for instance, I have an amateur radio on the bench in my shack, if you will. It belongs to my daughter. And it's a Icom IC7200. It's a

really nice radio. She got it when she got her general class license. And this guy will listen to AM. It'll listen for Morse code. It'll listen to RTTY, which is radio teletype. It'll listen to upper sideband, lower sideband, FM. I mean, it'll listen to all these different modes, including the uppers and lower sidebands that we talked about last time through with the single sideband. It's the same thing. So upper and lower sideband is another way to say single sideband. And you hear sideband in there, right? So it's the same thing.

It's the same principle. The only difference is the shortwave radio will only receive, whereas the ham radio can receive and can transmit. It's a transceiver, so it'll do both. So if you're thinking about going forward and you're like, hey, this ham thing sounds pretty cool, might be something to investigate. If you have questions down that road, please feel free to contact me. I mean, I'm an open book.

I'd be happy to share with you anything I can to help you. But if you kind of just want to stay grounded and just want to stay out of the way and you're not interested in studying and, and having to take a test, shortwave radio is what you got to get. And again, I'm going to recommend with, you know, with my last breath here, the single sideband shortwave radio receiver, the antennas again, it's a really big deal. Thank you again, Chris, for that. It will increase the capacity of what you can hear, and it's not hard. You don't

have to buy the clip-on. You don't have to buy the active. Again, an alligator clip and a piece of wire, you'll be surprised what you can do there. I've got some video links that I'll put in the show notes that show how to do those sorts of things and maybe even put some links in there about things I would use or things I have here. Beyond that, shortwave radio is really kind of like a dark horse in all of this because so many people, again, like the AM FM radio, have forgotten about shortwave radio to the point that a lot of the broadcasters back in the day, I mean, the last decade, have said,

we are completely giving up on this technology. We're walking away from our testing. We're walking away from our broadcasting. We don't even care anymore. It's over. It's done. And, you know, when you see news stories about taking Starlink receivers and placing those inside of a tribe somewhere in the middle of nowhere that has never seen the internet or whatever, and they walk up with a Starlink receiver and hand all of the locals and the tribesmen a cell phone, now all a sudden, they've gone from, you know, doing what they've done for the last 600 years to turning into us and looking at your cell phones all day. So it used to be that shortwave radio would be a way to reach those people, would be a way for folks in third world countries to stay abreast of what's going on, you know, living out

in the bush or whatever you'd say. But with all of that said, it has diminished, but it's still a very powerful tool that I believe will become, I believe it's going to have a renaissance because of the socio-political climate we find ourselves living in today. I really believe that it's going to be forced back into the forefront and going to be brought back into service because of, uh, the, the, the different challenges technologically that we have with servers and online whatnot, and, and, you know, attacks, uh, over, uh, those sorts of things. It's just, to me, I believe that shortwave radio will have a revival. And even if it doesn't, it allows you to listen to all of the HF bands, tune those things in with single side band and, and gain some knowledge and get ahold of some things that you can't just find

on the local everyday six o'clock news. Does anybody watch the six o'clock news? I don't even know. Nowadays, the news starts at four o'clock in the morning and runs till lunchtime, so it can start back at four 30 in the afternoon. I don't, do people watch that much local news? I don't, I don't even know. Anyway, say all that to say shortwave radio is still powerful. It still is a great force multiplier. And I really encourage you to pick one of those up. We've got the show notes, the links there in those. We've got some videos as well that can help you understand how to listen, how to tune. We're going to link some frequency lists for you to go and listen on those frequencies to find. Shortwave radio, until you kind of get the

hang of it, it's kind of like fishing. And you basically throw your line in the water and you reel in a little bit and you wait and you reel again. You may cast again and whatnot. Same way with the shortwave radio. If you don't really know where they are or what they're talking about or what frequency they're on or what time they're working in. It's kind of like fishing. You're going to have to go figure that part out. But there'll be some lists and whatnot in the show notes that can help you kind of get through that. All right.

Hey, I appreciate you listening. Again, this is a very abbreviated program. I don't want to take too much of your time and just belabor the points, but shortwave radio is powerful. Amateur radios can talk on and hear on those same frequencies with even greater capacity and capability. External antennas, thank you, Chris, again and again and again. It's a big deal. It'll really enhance the listening for your shortwave enjoyment. And don't give up on the AM-FM. I mean, it's still out there, still very powerful.

Oh, and I will mention too, speaking of AM FM, that leads me into weather radios and man, who saw that coming? A short shortage of weather radios available online. And it has to be related to all the storms that have been happening in the Midwest here lately. Uh, I guess, uh, I mean, I don't think that I've got enough listeners that we bought Amazon out, but Hey, I would recommend that you check out your local Walmart. They do have those in stock at most places that I see here, at least in South Carolina and Tennessee that I've seen. Um, check those out again, show notes. We've got the links. If you're, if you're looking to buy online, appreciate you listening. Thank you so much for being a part of what we're doing here on prep comms. Don't forget that the Hub City Mercantile, our store and the show's sponsor,

has all the filters you need, the parts, even new filter systems for your British Birkfeld. Or maybe you've got a Berkey and you need some replacement filters. I've got them. I've got them in the store. We ship for free and would love to do business with you. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time here on the PrepComs Podcast. 73, y'all. God bless.