I'm an old man. I have been a shortwave listener since the early 1960s. My main hobby these days is restoring antique radios. Some of you may know me from the Philco Phorum where I have been active for years. I was reading a thread about Genesis Communications on 4.84 MHZ. Someone made a reply that people don't use Mhz any more, and just use Khz. They should speak for themselves. I actually go back to the days when we used kiloCYCLES, Kc for standard broadcast AM (540-1600 Kc) and megaCYCLES, Mc for shortwave.
Sort of. There is no "official" standard (within a hobby community) for when to switch from kc (or kHz) to mc (or MHz), but the general rule I was taught in the 1960's was that (assuming you knew the frequency with enough precision) it was expressed in kHz (or kc) below 30 MHz, and MHz (or Mc) above 30 MHz, until you got up to 1000 MHz when you shifted to GHz (or kMc). Some people will say kHz (or kc) up to 3000 kHz, then MHz above that. It was very common, because of indicator limitations, to not know your frequency down to the kHz level, and so you might want to express the frequency in MHz instead of kHz if you did not know exactly what it was.
So to me shortwave has always (since my introduction, it sounds like around the same time as you) been expressed in kHz or kcs. My ham logs from the 60's all have the freq in kHz if I knew it.
However, most shortwave receiver main dials were in Mhz (or Mc). The bandspread dial (if it was so equipped) might be in kcs or in Mcs, depending on the brand or model. For example, if you look at a Hallicrafters SX-28 bandspread dial you will see that 80, 40, and 20 meters are all in kcs, while 10 and above are in Mcs. But the Hammarlund HQ-129X (roughly the same vintage) is all in Mcs.
The fact that someone chooses to use MHz vs kHz below 30 MHz does not bother me. But I will sometimes comment that the prevailing "convention" today is kHz below 30 MHz.
Then the term HERTZ began to be used instead of cycles per second, so things changed to kilohertz and megahertz. This new shift to using only kilohertz seems to have come about with digital tuning, and reflects the numbers which a person must punch in to the keypad to tune to the station.
Re the shift to kHz being a digital tuning derived thing, I don't think so, I think it predates that.
Sometime take a look at a BC-221 or an LM series frequency meter calibration book (these WW II surplus freq meters were commonly used with SW receivers to get accurate frequency indications). You will find all the frequencies, up to 20 MHz (were the books stop), listed in kcs.
Read a period book like the "ABC's of Short-wave Listening" (1962) and you will see it specifically say some SW station schedules are listed in kc, and others are listed in mc, so the ability to freely shift back and forth is a necessity. After that this book goes on to list all SW station schedules in kc, and defines the common shortwave band edges in kc. It uses kc far more than mc when discussing shortwave frequencies.
Or we can go on to find hundreds of further examples, if needed. But the end result is, the use of kHz (or kc) at SW frequencies far predates the ready availability of digital readouts in the hobby. And without a real driving "standard" it probably varied from region to region.
That's fine. If you like to call it that, I am bright enough to understand you; but please don't impose your own preference on everybody. To call 4.84 Mc "4.84 Mhz" is perfectly understandable to anybody but the most obtuse beginner in shortwave listening, and referring to that frequency as "4840 Khz" , while also technically correct, actually sounds peculiar to those of us who have been around the hobby for much longer than most of you have been alive.
Times change. Sometimes you must adapt. At this point there are more people in the hobby that have never heard the term kc or mc in common use than have heard those. If you insisted on staying with the "old" standard of mc or kc you would appear to be uniformed, because that is no longer the way it is done. The fact of the matter is that the use of kHz instead of MHz, in your example the use of 4840 kHz vs 4.84 MHz, is common today. Arguably more common, but I am not sure a study has been done. And it is not wrong, technically or otherwise.
T!
think maybe a GE.
