Ron Baker, Pluralitas! wrote:
"dead of night" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi. I own a new, Sony icf7600GR, delivered yesterday. I am brand new
to shortwave radio. I have printed out the Prime Time Shortwave
listings of English speaking shortwave broadcasts to America. After
noting the difference between the UTC time and my time, I tried finding
broadcasts.

Out of approximately 12, I could only get about 3. Is this par for
the course?

It doesn't sound unreasonable.

I had the antenna fully extended near my window. I tried
the reel antenna but it did not make much of a difference. Can you
offer any tips and advice? I'd prefer not to buy an expensive,
optional antenna right now, I want to make do with the whip and reel.


Thanks for the help and replies. I did a little better this morning.
I hung the reel antenna outside and tried to fing stations by
exclusively using the scanning function. I found it's better to let
the radio do the work, do the hunting and scanning. I found many
stations, most of them Christian gospel preaching. I will try again
tonight.
It depends on where you are in America and
where the broadcaster is. You might be in a
fringe area for a particular broadcaster. And
the listings are probably optimistic.

SWLing is a little like hunting. I don't know
about others but I scan looking for interesting
or surprising signals. Signals that are regularly
there, i.e. similar to a local AM broadcast aren't
that interesting to me. (Although Radio Havana
can be good for a laugh.)

If you are unsure of your radio or antenna then
there are regular signals you can test it against.
WWV is regular by design. Depending on
where you are and the time of day you should
get a good signal on 5 MHz and/or 10 MHz.

--
rb