Does Anyone Use Shortwave Radio Anymore?

Long distance receivers still let you tune in internationally

Edward C. Baig,

AARP

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Published August 27, 2024

Photo Collage: AARP; (Source: Getty Images (3))

As a kid, I listened to overseas broadcasts via shortwave radio. Is shortwave still a thing?

Long before the internet turned shortwave radio into what some might perceive as an endangered species, I too was passionate about it. As a boy, I loved listening to broadcasts from halfway around the world and hearing about foreign cultures and ideologies.

Shortwave is surely not what it was decades ago, but, yes, these radios still have a pulse. Concrete user numbers are hard to come by, but a relatively small community of shortwave diehards remains active, many 50 and older.

A Shortwave Radio Listeners Club on Facebook has more than 21,300 members. Several websites are devoted to shortwave.

You can buy brand new radios without having to spend an arm and a leg and find stations to listen to — albeit not nearly as many as in shortwave’s heyday during the Cold War.

“Many of the big world services have stopped targeting North America in favor of the web or gone out of business entirely because they don’t want to spend the money,” says James Careless, a shortwave enthusiast and Ottawa journalist. He’s also a frequent contributor to Radio World, an online site that caters to broadcast radio executives and engineers.

Shortwave allows you to listen to the world

As a young teen, I had a tabletop radio I could plug in or operate on batteries. By delicately twisting a dial across shortwave frequency bands — 3,000 to 30,000 kHz, the equivalent of 3 to 30 MHz — I tuned in stations such as Radio Netherlands and BBC.

Most intriguing were English-language propagandist Cold War broadcasts from Radio Havana, Radio Moscow and Radio Peking, later Radio Beijing, targeting “U.S. imperialists.” I resisted brainwashing; I listened to Voice of America too.

I also remember getting a strong signal from HCJB out of Quito, Ecuador, and was thrilled when “The Voice of the Andes” sent me a QSL card in the mail, which acknowledged my own letter telling them about my reception quality in Queens, New York. QSL is not an English acronym; instead it's one of many Q signals that radio operators use, this one to ask and acknowledge receipt of a transmission.

Ask The Tech Guru

HCJB was a Christian missionary station — its call letters stood for Hoy Cristo Jesús Bendice and Heralding Christ Jesus’ Blessings in its initial languages of Spanish and English — and lots of what you’ll stumble on shortwave nowadays still has a religious bent. But you’ll also hear propaganda, political talk and music, and at times amateur ham radio, says Jeff White, general manager and founder of WRMI Radio Miami International, based in Okeechobee, Florida.

WRMI has 14 transmitters and is the largest privately owned shortwave station in the Western Hemisphere. It broadcasts its own programs but also sells airtime to outside organizations and relays or boosts shortwave signals from other countries.

Don’t assume that any given frequency is coming directly from the country of origin, radio manufacturer C. Crane says on its website, adding that some of what you’ll hear is not directly targeted at U.S. listeners.

When I heard a broadcast from Spain, I launched the Google Translate app to make out what was being said. Still, many countries broadcast in English, including U.S adversaries China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.

Expect lots of static, few clear channel broadcasts

In my experience, static was — and still is — an inevitable part of the shortwave soundtrack, with stations frequently fading in and out. That’s part of the challenge, or you might even say charm, of shortwave. I was always jazzed when I detected a distant station the first time.

Of course, these days you can stream live crystal-clear overseas broadcasts via the internet or through a smartphone app such as Radio Garden.

Somehow, that strikes me as too easy. While the internet may have put shortwave on life support, listening on a phone or computer kind of misses the point of what made the radios so appealing.

Want to get started with a shortwave radio hobby?

If you can find that old shortwave you used as a kid, give it a try. It might still work, but not as well as the latest radios, which have improved over the years.

Public radio-band use

AM stations: 540 to 1700 kHz
Shortwave radio: 3 to 30 MHz
TV channels 2 to 6: 54 to 88 MHz
FM stations: 88.1 to 107.9 MHz
TV channels 7 to 13: 174 to 216 MHz
TV channels 14 to 36: 470 to 608 MHz

1,000 kilohertz (kHz) = 1 megahertz (MHz)

New shortwave radios are relatively inexpensive, with models in the $40 to $100 range, or even less, which are fine as a start. By spending more, you may bolster your chances of receiving weak signals or have better luck separating stations jammed into congested frequencies.

A variety of atmospheric factors affects reception quality: time of day, time of year, weather, electromagnetic interference, even antenna angle.

Attaching a wire antenna and placing it by a window can improve reception. You’ll typically have better results at night, but try listening at different times.

Consider a radio with a digital readout to punch in a station’s frequency. Analog knobs and sliders are less precise.

Many shortwave radios also let you tune into FM, weather and other bands.

Use the internet as a reference

In a hint of irony, you can turn to the internet for help.

Careless suggests visiting an enthusiast website such as SWLing Post for radio reviews and other shortwave news. Other sites that may help you identify what’s on the air include HFCC, Short-Wave Info, ShortwaveSchedule.com and Glenn Hauser’s World of Radio.

In some instances, you can log onto audio streams on the web to compare what you’re hearing on the radio.

Bonus tip: Explore shortwave recordings from the past

The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive website includes a collection of historic radio recordings from the Cold War and other periods that have been posted by enthusiasts. You can search recordings by country, station IDs or theme, such as nostalgia or propaganda.

I recently heard a November 1982 Radio Moscow broadcast on the death of Soviet Union leader Leonid Brezhnev, and a December 1990 Voice of Peace from Baghdad recording beamed to American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm. Great stuff for fans of history.

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Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedIn; Threads; and X, formerly known as Twitter.

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