<snicker> Pining about shortwave while typing on an iPad is a tad ironic!
It's easy to "hijack" the thread...I'll just change the subject line... I think I would cite two "golden ages" based on my own listening. First is 1965-1970; the cold war was going hot & heavy, and the ideological battles between East & West were in play. Receiver technology had matured, and the dawn of the Transistor Age made portable listening possible, although at some sacrifice of receiver performance. My second golden age would be 1985-1991. While the Cold War was winding down, thus challenging stations' reasons for existence, most were still on the air at this point. Satellite distribution technology had come down dramatically in price, enabling broadcasters to establish easy-to-hear relays close to audiences. This provided increased accessibility to stations such as CRI, Radio Japan, Radio Korea International (what I think KBS World Radio was called), DW, RNW, and the BBC, among others. So there was a diversity of signals on the air. On top of that, digitally-tuned receivers (or, at a minimum, digital frequency readouts) made tuning a snap, removing all of the guesswork in hunting down your favorite stations. Looking at the USA's consumption of shortwave from a broadcaster's perspective, the Golden Age was probably the time through 1945. By then domestic MW radio had matured enough that people no longer *needed* shortwave in North America; it had become a luxury at that point. My two cents... As for young people "not knowing what they're missing", I would offer that computer hobbyists who experiment with different flavors of the Linux operating system are somewhat the post-modern versions of shortwave hobbyists. Rich Cuff On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 11:56 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > > Pardon me if this hijacks the thread a bit, but I would like to know what > each of you think was the "golden age" of international SWL/DXing. You can > use a range of exact years, or a general decade range. > _______________________________________________ Internetradio mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/internetradio To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
