There seems to be two main groups of shortwave listeners: the dx'ers
who do marvellous feats of hearing weak stations, and the program
listener who wants to listen to the program material on a clear station
with good reception. My comments are directed to those listeners who
can't find any of their old favourite commentators anywhere on the
shortwave bands. People like Chuck Harder, Bo Gritz, and Robby Noel.
Because of a sprained knee, I was bedridden for a few days with only my
bedside (dx 394) short-wave radio ( and two vintage laptops: an IBM 380
ED and a Macintosh Powerbook 3400c.
Radio reception was terrible: selective fading, auroral garbling,
weak signals, and lack of programs to listen to. For some reason
(divine?) most of the stations that were clear were religious with EWTN
rock solid. After Brother Stair had taught me how to spell
Walterborough several times, I gave up and turned to the laptops to see
what I could find.
The two laptops had similar speeds(180 mhz), memories (50 mb), and
operating systems (win 98se and OS 8.5). To make a long story short,
the Mac was essentially useless, being unable to decode any audio site.
Nothing pointed out Apple's plan of planned obsolescence as much as
trying to load any Mac programs that would run on OS 8.5. Even the old
browser, IE 5.1 had to be supplied by Microsoft, Apple having nothing
to offer. No wonder they are moving to an Intel CPU. Kudos to Microsoft
for letting old machines run on new software and old software run on
new machines.
The old IBM, came through with flying colors, (if a little slowly)
and loaded everything I wanted. When installed, every program ran
properly. For the benefit of others with vintage machines, these were
the programs I loaded:
Winamp 9, Shoutcast, Quicktime (the Mac wouldn't even load its own
program),real player RP7U-S~L.exe ( to avoid all the spybots and popups
in later versions) ( get it from jmcanneyscience.com website), winmedia
9, IE6, Netscape 7.2 (to avoid most of the virii). It had about a 2 gig
hard drive and all these programs used up about 40%.
This whole effort was triggered by the disappearance of Robby Noel
from Genesis and its transmitters just as I hit the sack. I like to
listen to Robby: his view that we are all going to hell in a handbasket
seems quite reasonable to me and I like to have my prejudices
refreshed. I enjoyed finding his website and the blogs and streaming
audio, and later on, Chuck Harder's mellifluous tones were heard once
again as he touted his new satellite system. The session ended with the
infamous Bo Gritz who now lives in the southwest, rarely visiting his
real estate development in Idaho, "Almost Heaven"
To find a lost pundit, go to Google and type in the name. The
pundits are all out there doing something with microphones, it is the
nature of the beast. I find Shoutcast to be quite convenient and it
integrates nicely with winmedia.
Although there were some buffering gaps with winmedia, in general
the IBM could handle a 32 bit stream and gave much clearer audio than
did the short wave radio. Some sites where you can find pundits:
-Shoutcast (in talk)
-rbn
-Americanewsnet.com
-patriot radio newshour
-eaglesup.com
-talk star radio network
-republic broadcasting network

I think the rising cost of energy is making powerful short wave
stations too expensive and the trend to the internet will continue. I
was surprised to find so many of the old pundits still holding forth
and that I was able to listen to them so clearly, and it made the four
days in bed pass very pleasantly. For those who have difficulty hearing
Coast to Coast, they are on the net as is Imus.

I never heard of Robby Noel before.I miss listening to Chuck Harder and
Bo Gritz.
cuhulin

On 18 Aug 2005 17:34:10 -0700, wrote:
with good reception. My comments are directed to those listeners who
can't find any of their old favourite commentators anywhere on the
shortwave bands. People like Chuck Harder, Bo Gritz, and Robby Noel.
Because of a sprained knee, I was bedridden for a few days with only my
bedside (dx 394) short-wave radio ( and two vintage laptops: an IBM 380
ED and a Macintosh Powerbook 3400c.

Thanks for that, really insightful and confirms what I've also
observed here in the UK after coming back to SW DXing after ten years.

I wonder how much of the reception problem is due to the current high
solar activity, and how much is due to reduced investment in shortwave
broadcasting?

For instance, in my recent visit in January to Boston MA and LA/San
Francisco CA, I was completely unable to find the BBC World Service on
shortwave at all. On inspecting the BBC WS website, it appears that
they have completely stopped all shortwave transmissions to the USA
and are insted relying on Internet audio and overnight FM relays by
co-operative local stations. In the end, like yourself, I ended up
listening on my laptop in the hotels where there was broadband
available. When I stopped over at rural motels, this wasn't an option
- so no BBC at all, hardly "World Service", is it?

As regards content quality and presenters, for me as a Brit, obviously
the BBC World Service is my mainstay and I have to say, unlike your
experience, the BBC WS seems to be MUCH better these days than it was
ten years ago. I hear familiar big-name UK presenters and the news
coverage is superb, exactly the same high quality as our rolling news
TV channels. I'm actually quite glad that the news content of the BBC
WS seems to have increased at the cost of the magazine, drama and
music programmes since I never really saw the point of drama and music
on shortwave, and the magazine programmes were invariably Z-list celeb
interview filler or dreary consumber ramblings anyway.

It was interesting to hear that you got what you wanted from audio
streams over the Internet. Out of interest, do you have a solution for
listening to your PC output whilst in bed, or do you just keep your
laptop near your bedside?

My solution, and this was really irritating, was to purchase an FM
transmitter whilst in the USA and take it back to the UK with me. In
theory it is illegal to use an FM transmitter in the UK, but since
these little models are so short-range I can't really see what the
harm is. So now I plug in the FM transmitter to the headphone sockets
of my PC, or the audio output of my digital terrestrial TV receiver,
and listen from my bed in the next room using a regular FM bedside
radio.

--
Andrew Oakley andrew/atsymbol/aoakley/stop/com
Gloucestershire, UK

wrote:
I never heard of Robby Noel before.I miss listening to Chuck Harder and
Bo Gritz.
cuhuli
.................................................. ...........................
I used a webtv for a few years and found it to be very good. It
decoded audio through the tv speaker with its built-in program. In
those days, you just typed the station callsign and then clicked on the
"listen now" icon. Now, with money being so important, many stations
want money to hear their programs. Most notable among these is "Coast
to Coast am" which is a real money machine. Despite this, you can still
hear it for free: Look it up on shoutcast.com
If you want to hear Chuck Harder, just type "Chuck Harder" in Google
to get his site. Or you can just type in various radio call signs and
see what other stations you can hear.
The webtv I had was a Sony and it had a pentium II at 266 mhz, which
was good value for those days. I had just finished an expensive year
with Tandy/RS computers where nothing worked and Tandy couldn't give a
damn, and was amazed that this little machine worked right out of the
box. The webtv computer was the most underrated computer in history and
I hope that the newer ones have upgrades in programs and CPU.

I started listening to Chuck Harder back around the 1980's when he first
came on the air here in the Jackson area.At that time,he was either on
WPBQ 1240 AM or WJNT 1180 AM (AM radio band) and then he went to
shortwave radio so I would listen to him on shortwave radio and I used
to listen to Bo Gritz on Shortwave radio too.There isn't much in the way
of online radio AM and FM and Shortwave radio stations that can be
picked up on webtv nowdays.I use my computer or my Linksys Wireless B
Music System internet radio which I can use wirelessly up to 100 feet
from my computer,of course if I bought a longer range router,I suppose I
could use my internet radio further away from my computer.My shortwave
radios I own are nothing to crow about,most of them are Goodwill thrift
store radios and junk shop radios,but they mostly work good enough to
suit me anyway.If I was going to spend a lot of money on a shortwave
radio,I would save up and look around for a good second hand
Watkins-Johnson shortwave radio.I dont think Wakins-Johnson shortwave
radios are being made anymore.
cuhulin

Coast To Coast comes in loud and clear on FM 97.3 www.supertalkms.com
on my radios.I dont listen to Coast To Coast unless there is a guest
speaker on there who makes sense.Usually,that is about the time I hit
the sack anyway.
cuhulin