In article ,
Gene wrote:

On Tue, 2 Aug 2005 20:46:46 +0100, "Mike Terry"
wrote:

Why are there so few on topic postings on this newsgroup? Is shortwave dying
like stamp collecting and other hobbies of the past?


When I got into shortwave listeniing around 1973, it wasn't popular
then. People around me preferred a solid 24/7 AM or FM signal to the
fading in and out of SW and formats that were just a general 1-3 hour
service. SW was added as an after thought to most cheap portables.
Telescopic antennas and dial slider tuning that would whisk past 6
bands in one sweep.

Anyone really into the hobby wanted a longwire and a "serious" $150+
rig, something anyone in any country saturated with AM/FM stations of
any format did not care for.

While it may have popular in the 1930s to 1960s, magazines like
Popular Electronics started dropping their SW columns as the computing
hobby gained steam.

The growth of the Internet has cut into SWBC. Most can stream their
signals to such users and they want to leave SW to outlying regions
that still use it as a means of contact. Times just change.

SWBC is not going away completely, just as newspapers won't.

Every time anything exciting happens anywhere in the world the servers
FAIL. They just can't handle the number of interested people. Even the
BBC servers can't keep up and at the NORMAL connection rate the sound
sucks due to the dismally low audio sampling rate. SW sounds much better.
I stopped listening to their computer audio feed because it sounded so
bad.

I've been into SW since I was a teenager and my computer interests have
not supplanted SW radio at all. I am usually listening to SW on the SW
radio while on the computer and connection is plenty fast to stream
audio and do several other things at the same time. I was listening to
Australia on 21,740 and now 17,715. I was listening to Japan and
Netherlands earlier this morning on the SW radio.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California