What is shortwave radio and why should you listen to it?
Shortwave
listening, or SWLing, is the hobby of listening to shortwave radio broadcasts
transmitting on frequencies between 1700 kHz and 30 MHz. These transmissions
can propagate thousands of miles and can reach audiences worldwide. For
instance, if you live in the United States you can easily hear shortwave
broadcast stations from countries like Australia, Canada, China, Cuba, Egypt,
France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, New Zealand, North/South Korea, Saudi
Arabia, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, and many other
counties if you have a good shortwave radio receiver, and you know when and
where to listen!
Quite
simply shortwave radio provides the listener with a window to the world that no
other communications medium can provide. The listener will be entertained with
unique perspectives to events from around the world that you cannot get from
most national media outlets.
Throughout
the world, shortwave radio remains the most readily available and affordable
means of global communication and information. You'll learn about the lives and
concerns of people from all walks of life in over 300 different languages and
dialects. Shortwave radio also provides nearly instantaneous coverage of news
and events from around the world.
There
are even transmissions from the dark side of shortwave radio from broadcasters
known as clandestine or clanny stations. Clandestine broadcasters are deceptive
and they usually exist to bring about political changes or actions to a
particular target country. Programming is essentially propaganda, and may
largely be half-truths or sometimes outright lies.
If
you want to get into the action then the International Shortwave Broadcast
Guide is a must purchase to let you know when and where to listen for broadcast
radio stations in the shortwave broadcast spectrum.
The
Winter 2015-2016 International Shortwave Broadcast Guide, by Amazon bestselling
author Gayle Van Horn, W4GVH, is that all important information resource you
need to tap into the worldwide shortwave broadcast radio spectrum.
It
is a 24-hour station/frequency guide to “all” the known stations currently
broadcasting on shortwave radio at time of publication. This unique shortwave
resource is the “only” publication in the world that offers by-hour schedules
that includes all language services, frequencies and world target areas for
each broadcast station.
New
In this edition, there is a feature on listening to Asia’s broadcast giant –
China, updated information on the state of tropical band broadcasting, and a
special feature on Who’s Who in the shortwave radio spectrum outside the
regular broadcast bands. Frequency and station coverage has also increased in
this edition to include Longwave frequency broadcasters, and international
standard time and frequency stations worldwide.
The International Shortwave Broadcast Guide
(Winter 2015-2016 edition) is now available for purchase worldwide from
Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0196UYDTI.
The price for this latest edition is US$5.99. Since this book is being released
internationally, Amazon customers in the United Kingdom, Germany, France Spain,
Italy, Japan, India, Canada, Brazil, Mexico and Australia can order this
electronic book (e-Book) from Amazon websites directly servicing these
countries. All other countries can use the regular Amazon.com website.
This new e-publication edition is an expanded version of the English shortwave broadcast guide that was formerly printed in the pages of Monitoring Times magazine for over 20 years. This one of a kind electronic e-book is published twice a year to correspond with station seasonal time and frequency changes.
If
you enjoy listening or monitoring HF shortwave stations, and you miss the
monthly English frequency listings formerly published in the late Monitoring
Times magazine, and multilingual station listing in the old MTXpress
electronic magazine, this valuable tool will now be your new guide to listening
to the world.
Frequency updates between editions will be
posted on her Shortwave Central blog
at: http://mt-shortwave.blogspot.com/.
And, the good news is that you do not need to
own a Kindle reader to read Amazon e-book publications. You can read any Kindle
book with Amazon’s free reading apps.
There are free Kindle reading apps for the
Kindle Cloud Reader, Smartphones (iPhone, iTouch, Android, Windows Phone and
Blackberry); computer platforms (Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8 and Mac); Tablets
(iPad, Android and Windows 8), and, of course, all of the Kindle family of readers
including the Kindle Fire series. A Kindle e-book allows you to buy your book
once and read it anywhere. You can find additional details on these apps by
checking out this link to the Amazon website at www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771.
For additional information on this and other
Teak Publishing radio hobby books, monitor the company sponsored Internet blogs
– The Military Monitoring Post (http://mt-milcom.blogspot.com/), The Btown Monitor Post (http://monitor-post.blogspot.com/) and The Shortwave Central (http://mt-shortwave.blogspot.com/) for availability of
additional e-books that are currently in production.
You can view the complete Teak Publishing
book catalog online at http://mt-shortwave.blogspot.com/. Click on the Teak Publishing radio hobby e-book link at
the top of the blog page. You can learn more about the author by going to her
author page on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Gayle-Van-Horn/e/B0084MVQCM/.
The
International Shortwave Broadcast Guide will have wide appeal to shortwave
radio hobbyists, amateur radio operators, educators, foreign language students,
news agencies, news buffs, and many more interested in listening to a global
view of news and events as they happen.
If
you are an amateur radio operator or shortwave radio enthusiasts, and want to
hear what is happening outside the ham bands on that transceiver or portable
shortwave radio in your radio shack, then this new e-book from Teak Publishing
is a must in your radio reference library.
Here are a few of the public comments from
radio hobbyists who purchased the first four editions of this Amazon e-book.