Hello, Mark...I'm one of the co-perpetrators of this group as well. One of the things that has changed since I first started listening as a 10-year-old in the mid-1960s and even since I awakened from SWL dormancy in 1985 is that information from faraway places is much, much easier to come by now...thus some of the "thrill" of shortwave has vanished. However, if you chat with a broadcaster, all they want is for people to hear them by whatever means is possible and affordable.
The development and maturity of National Public Radio also comes into play, I would opine -- until NPR came into existence there was no domestic source for a global perspective on news and world events; shortwave-based international broadcasters were the only radio sources available to us. As many have mused, the end of the Cold War ideological struggle took the wind out of the collective sails for many broadcasters...as there was less of a reason for them to exist, in the eyes of the funding sources for them. Other broadcasters -- Radio Netherlands and Radio Australia come specifically to mind -- have focused their energies (creative as well as RF) on reaching areas where media diversity, availability, and freedom are not as plentiful as the bounty available here in the developed world. We have tried to keep this group focused more on the "messages" that shortwave broadcasters espouse(d) than strictly the technology of shortwave. There are many groups that exist for discussions regarding DXing, QSLing, propagation, and the like, and we really have tried not to duplicate the fine efforts of others who specialize in those areas. We have tended to focus on English language spoken-word programming, but there still is a ton of great music accessible via shortwave (and admittedly on other platforms) that's worth firing up the receiver for. What part of the world do you call home? Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA USA On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 3:53 PM, Mark F. Tattenbaum, M.F.A. <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mike, > > Yes there is more qrn but the new receivers seem to be handling it better. > Conditions are never as good as we remember them. It does seem that > propagation paths have changed from the past though. 15 meters was open this > am with some Europeans and 20 meters is spotty here usually opens as the sun > comes up but is gone before the afternoon. _______________________________________________ Swprograms mailing list [email protected] http://montreal.kotalampi.com/mailman/listinfo/swprograms To unsubscribe: Send an E-mail to [email protected]?subject=unsubscribe, or visit the URL shown above.
