Shortwave expectations

[ditto1958]

I am new to shortwave and am wondering what I can reasonably expect to hear on my radio. I live in Wisconsin in a medium sized city, no tall buildings. I know SW broadcasts have been declining but I’m sure there’s still interesting things out there. Last night I was getting a strong signal from 7335 which I believe is Radio Marti.

Are there some other frequencies I am likely to get here? What are good times to listen?

 

[W8WCA]

Evenings and Early Mornings are typically the best times.

Just band scan the HF SW BC Bands:
See Short-wave frequencies and bands used for radio broadcasting

Shortwave Radio Bands 101

A description and list of shortwave radio bands, and which are best during the day and at night.

modernsurvivalblog.com

 

[TAC4]

This will get you started. Try taking your radio outside
away from the house. If the station is in a foreign language
use Microsoft translate app it is free to translate in real time.
Logs - Algeria on 13790 Khz

Welcome to the hobby from Canada 🇨🇦

 

[ditto1958]

Thank you for the advice. A lot of useful information!

 

[Blackswan73]

Don’t forget the pirate broadcasters found between 6 and 7mhz. Hot freqs are 6.925, 6.935, 6.950, and 6.960. Best time to listen is 0000-0300 UTC

B.S.

 

[ditto1958]

It’s just after 1900 CDT tonite. I put up a wire and did a scan on SW and it picked up several signals. Nothing too interesting, but still kinda cool. I also scanned FM and it got about 34 stations. Not bad at all. 15770 kHz, Radio Slovakia, is strong and pretty clear tonite. I wonder where that signal comes from?

 

[TGuelker]

Radio Garden states Radio Slovakia International broadcasts from Bratislava, Slovakia

Listen to Rádio Slovakia International from Bratislava live on Radio Garden

Explore live radio by rotating the globe.

radio.garden

 

[TAC4]

Good start to the hobby you are picking up some stations 👍
Some beginners don't hear anything and pack up there radio
and send it back to Amazon. Big mistake because there are endless signals of all types on the HF band 24/7.

We use UTC time in this hobby so does the shortwave stations so we are all on the same page sorta speak.
To find this time tune your radio in the shortwave band
to 5, 10, 15, 20 mhz for the WWV time station. If your
radio has a clock set it to that time station.

Another tip is don't do scans of bands because
the radio will scan right over weak stations, do
manual tuning, rotating the tuning dial very slowly
listening for weak DX stations also.

Also Radio Slovakia gets rebroadcasted by WRMI in
Okeechobee, Florida USA 🇺🇸

Feel free to ask more questions most of us on this forum
have been doing this hobby for decades.

 

[mitbr]

Welcome to RR!!! Try this link to look up freqs it is quite accurate

Short-Wave Radio Frequency Schedule for BBC in ENGLISH

The short-wave radio frequencies used by station BBC for its international English language broadcasts, showing those on-air at 06:49GMT.

www.short-wave.info

Tim

 

[ditto1958]

Also Radio Slovakia gets rebroadcasted by WRMI in
Okeechobee, Florida USA 🇺🇸

Feel free to ask more questions most of us on this forum
have been doing this hobby for decades.

Listening to 15770 again tonite. 0045 UTC. Okeechobee is about 1500 miles from here. No, not from the other side of the world but still pretty cool.

 

[TAC4]

Listening to 15770 again tonite. 0045 UTC. Okeechobee is about 1500 miles from here. No, not from the other side of the world but still pretty cool.

That is great ! WRMI in Okeechobee, Florida 🇺🇸 has alot of
rebroadcasts from other countries around the world which
have great content usually in English.

Also keep a listen for a program called Wave Scan on WRMI, it is a great shortwave DX program in English.Short-Wave Radio Frequency Schedule for WRMI WAVE SCAN in ANY LANGUAGE

 

[mitbr]

This a video tour of the WRMI shortwave station....

Tim

 

[ditto1958]

That is great ! WRMI in Okeechobee, Florida 🇺🇸 has alot of
rebroadcasts from other countries around the world which
have great content usually in English.

Also keep a listen for a program called Wave Scan on WRMI, it is a great shortwave DX program in English.Short-Wave Radio Frequency Schedule for WRMI WAVE SCAN in ANY LANGUAGE

They had an English language show on from Radio Slovakia last night and they were interviewing a journalist who’d covered the Olympics. He had an interesting perspective.

 

[devicelab]

Listening to 15770 again tonite. 0045 UTC. Okeechobee is about 1500 miles from here. No, not from the other side of the world but still pretty cool.

You may not realize, but I think they put out 100,000 watts during daytime hours. That's a lot of RF! It better reach 1500 miles!

 

[ditto1958]

Since posting this thread, I have spent some time every day with my radio, and have specifically concentrated on learning to do SW listening. I’ve found out a few things so far.

First, at about 0000 to 0100 UTC, I can usually pretty consistently get a few stations. I get Radio Marti, 7335 kHz, and Radio Nacional Da Amazonia, 11780. Also, WRMI, Okeechobee, FL is strong. I usually get 15770 and 17790 kHz pretty strong from them. I did get a pretty strong catch one night from Turkey- someone posted it here and I tried it and heard it, too.

All but the Turkey station have in common that they are southwest of me in Wisconsin. So, what I’m not finding is anything from North of here (Canada), or from Asia or Africa. No Europe either.

Also, I try in the mornings, and have some success. There is very little so far during the middle of the day or also later at night.

Again, I’m very new at this, but it’s so far been fascinating. And it’s amazing how much a little $40 radio can do.

 

[devicelab]

WRMI TECHNICAL SUMMARY

WRMI-Radio Miami International :: Technical Facilities

www.wrmi.net

Location: The property is in an agricultural part of rural Okeechobee County, about two and a half hours north of Miami and about 20 miles north of Lake Okeechobee. (North Latitude 27 degrees, 27 minutes, 30 seconds. West Longitude 80 degrees, 56 minutes, 00 seconds.) The property is around 660 acres, just a little more than a standard section. In round numbers, it is about one square mile..
Climate: Semi-tropical with a high incidence of thunderstorms during the summer months.

Terrain: Relatively flat pastureland, swampy in places.

Mains Power: 60 Hz, 22,800 volts stepped down to 480 volts

Transmitters: Twelve 100,000 watt and one 50,000 watt. All are high-level plate modulated (some include supplementary screen and control grid modulation). Some are entirely air-cooled; some also use water cooling and vapor-phase cooling. The transmitter building is 16,000 square feet. The 13 transmitters consist of two 100 kW Continental 418-Ds, and eight composite-construction 100 kW transmitters based on the 418-D but built by WYFR. One of the transmitters has been retrofitted with a solid state modulator and could be converted to DRM digital operation. There are three older Gates/Harris transmitters (1 x 50-kilowatt and 2 x 100-kilowatt). All of the 100-kw transmitters can also be operated at 50 kilowatts, and one of them is able to operate at a continuously-variable power level up to 100 kilowatts.
*From my experience, the day Tx is usually highest power (100kw) and night Tx is only 50kw.

 

[ditto1958]

WRMI TECHNICAL SUMMARY

WRMI-Radio Miami International :: Technical Facilities

www.wrmi.net

Location: The property is in an agricultural part of rural Okeechobee County, about two and a half hours north of Miami and about 20 miles north of Lake Okeechobee. (North Latitude 27 degrees, 27 minutes, 30 seconds. West Longitude 80 degrees, 56 minutes, 00 seconds.) The property is around 660 acres, just a little more than a standard section. In round numbers, it is about one square mile..
Climate: Semi-tropical with a high incidence of thunderstorms during the summer months.

Terrain: Relatively flat pastureland, swampy in places.

Mains Power: 60 Hz, 22,800 volts stepped down to 480 volts

Transmitters: Twelve 100,000 watt and one 50,000 watt. All are high-level plate modulated (some include supplementary screen and control grid modulation). Some are entirely air-cooled; some also use water cooling and vapor-phase cooling. The transmitter building is 16,000 square feet. The 13 transmitters consist of two 100 kW Continental 418-Ds, and eight composite-construction 100 kW transmitters based on the 418-D but built by WYFR. One of the transmitters has been retrofitted with a solid state modulator and could be converted to DRM digital operation. There are three older Gates/Harris transmitters (1 x 50-kilowatt and 2 x 100-kilowatt). All of the 100-kw transmitters can also be operated at 50 kilowatts, and one of them is able to operate at a continuously-variable power level up to 100 kilowatts.
*From my experience, the day Tx is usually highest power (100kw) and night Tx is only 50kw.

WRMI is pretty cool. Not only because it’s so strong where I am, but also the programming is often actually interesting.

 

[Blueliner]

As winter approaches signals seem to improve. I've had better luck with getting many more stations on winter nights. However, snow can bring in more static, but clear nights are the best.

 

[ditto1958]

As winter approaches signals seem to improve. I've had better luck with getting many more stations on winter nights. However, snow can bring in more static, but clear nights are the best.

lol, now that I posted that, I did a scan at 1810 UTC and picked up a whole bunch of strong SW signals 🤷‍♂️

17855 is coming in strong and has futbol in espanol right now. Radio Exterior de Espana maybe?

 

[majoco]

I suggest you go to "eibispace.de" and download the frequency version. You'll see that it starts from the very lowest frequencies and goes right up to over 28MHz. You'll note that many stations seem to be on the same frequency and they are but not at the same time or the same target area. The transmitter owners aren't in the business of squirting out their signal in a random fashion and hope that it gets to their target audience - they've done a lot of homework forecasting the best frequencies at a particular time of day at the particular target area. Here's my chart showing the broadcast bands - incidentally, your local time has more influence on propagation than UTC. Do a bit of research into "the grey line".