I'll tell you what, listening to a radio station over the air from a long way away will never, ever lose its thrill and fascination. Now days you can hear everything over the internet, it loses is uniqueness.
Remember sitting in London as a kid tuning into weird and wonderful sounds - especially from the Soviet States - same time as Star Wars came out. Sounded as exotic and exciting as anything if it had come in from outer space.
When I was 8 (1992) I took a radio from my grandfather. I remember I was fascinated by the multitude of languages out there. That is how I became a polyglot and a translator ))).
I'm a former engineer at Radio Deutsche Welle, retired about 20 years ago and are living in an old peoples home now. That Clip pushed me years back. I was also a radio ham and an enthusiastic shortwave listener. I did spent time on realais kigali/Ruanda. I'm still listening via SDR receivers via internet such as Twente and Kiwi SDRs all over the world. So thank you for the memory!
@@pressureworks You'r surtain that*s from DW? I worked at BFBS before and there we had a guy called Terry James who used that expression. I have it in my ear, but I can't put no other name to it, I'm afraid.
Oh wow - UK memories of tuning in to Radio Albania in the 1970s and hearing how awful life was in the west and how great it was in Albania. Tractor production seemed to be the measure of success back in those days. Thanks for posting.
Thanks, mate. In fact I'm 17 years old, not an old man. But I wanted to create this sound collage for the generations to come. :) Shortwave is still a fascinating hobby, by the way. :)
As wonderful as the Internet is, it does have drawbacks, including the high cost of a good connection. If the power goes out, forget it. Meanwhile with a battery operated shortwave radio, that's all you need. The year all schooling was virtual thanks to COVID, my son's school asked parents for help. When what to do in case of natural disasters was part of a class, I did a presentation on shortwave radio and what people can hear.
Here's a list of all the intervals in the video: 0:00 - KNLS Anchor Point, Alaska 0:30 - Radio Tirana International, Albania 1:04 - Radio Andorra, Andorra 1:08 - Adventist World Radio (AWR), USA (Broadcasted via Radio Andorra) 1:32 - Radio Anguilla / The Voice of Anguilla, Anguilla 1:50 - LRA36 Radio Nacional Arcángel San Gabriel, Argentina (Argentine Antarctica) 2:17 - Radio Yerevan, Armenian SSR (now Armenia) 2:39 - BBC World Service Radio (Transmitting from BBC Atlantic Relay Station), Ascension Island 3:13 - ABC Radio Australia, Australia 4:04 - Radio Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (now Azerbaijan) 4:55 - Radio Bangladesh / Bangladesh Betar, Bangladesh 5:25 - Radio Minsk, Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus) 5:41 - Rádio Canção Nova, Brazil 6:10 - Radio Sofia, Bulgaria 7:02 - China Radio International (CRI) (ex-Radio Peking), People's Republic of China 7:41 - China National Radio (CNR), People's Republic of China 8:29 - Radio Havana Cuba (RHC), Cuba 8:51 - Radio Canada International (RCI), Canada 9:24 - CyBC Radio External Service, Cyprus 10:29 - Radio Prague International, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic) 10:50 - Radio Denmark (DR), Denmark 11:21 - HCJB "The Voice of the Andes", Ecuador (Japanese Broadcast) 12:11 - Radio Tallinn, Estonian SSR 12:38 - YLE Radio Finland, Finland 13:08 - ORTF Radio Tahiti, French Polynesia 13:45 - ERT The Voice of Greece, Greece 14:10 - Voice of America (VoA), USA (Transmitting from Rhodes, Greece Relay Station) 15:00 - IRIB World Service / The Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran 15:40 - Radio Riga, Latvian SSR (now Latvia) 15:53 - Trans World Radio (TWR), Monaco (Possibly transmitted from another nation, I'm not sure) 16:23 - The Voice of Mongolia, Mongolia 17:16 - Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (RNW), Netherlands 17:44 - ORF Blue Danube Radio, Austria 18:10 - Radio Polonia, Poland 18:43 - Adventist World Radio Asia / The Voice of Hope, Guam (Transmitting from Portugal) 19:19 - Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany (Transmitting from Sines, Portugal) 19:46 - RDP Internacional Rádio Portugal, Portugal 20:13 - Radio Vilnius, Lithuania 20:44 - Radio Bucharest, Romania 21:10 - WYFR Family Radio, USA 21:44 - Vatican Radio, Vatican City 22:02 - Radio Moscow, Soviet Union (USSR) 23:03 - The Voice of Russia, Russian Federation 23:48 - Radio Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia / Serbia 24:26 - SR Radio Sweden International, Sweden (60s-Early 70s Interval) 25:06 - SR Radio Sweden International, Sweden (Current Interval) 26:09 - Makedonska Radio / Radio Makedonija, North Macedonia 27:36 - Rai Internazionale Radio, Italy 28:19 - All India Radio (AIR), India 29:12 - NRK Radio Norway, Norway 29:35 - Radio France Internationale (RFI), France 30:20 - Radio Pyongyang, North Korea 31:20 - KOL Israel / Israel Radio International, Israel 31:40 - RTBF International / La Voix de l'Amitié, Belgium 32:00 - Radio Veritas Asia, Philippines 32:29 - Radio Kiev, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine) 32:51 - Radio Thailand World Service, Thailand 33:37 - TRT The Voice of Turkey, Turkey 34:08 - Swiss Radio International, Switzerland 34:37 - Trans World Radio Swaziland, Eswatini 35:15 - Radio Budapest, Hungary 36:08 - Radio Berlin International (RBI), East Germany 36:40 - DeutschlandFunk (DLF), Germany 37:10 - RRI World Service The Voice of Indonesia, Indonesia 37:41 - RÚV Ríkisútvarpið Radio Iceland, Iceland 38:20 - Radio Baghdad, Iraq 38:44 - Africa N°1, Gabon 39:23 - Radio Exterior de España (REE), Spain 40:45 - Radio Frunze, Kirghiz SSR (now Kyrgyzstan) (It took me 50 minutes. Totally worth it.)
I was fortune to work in the last few years of Radio Netherlands Worldwide 2013-2015 as RNW Media for Latin America. We produced a 13 minute radio show called El Toque and it was broadcast on shortwave targeting mainly to Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela. I was based in Mexico City, where I fully produced some of the editions of the show and multimedia content. I also had the fortune to work a full week in RNW legendary HQ in Hilversum, before they moved out the new newsroom and studios where it once was the RNW Training Center right beside the main building.
As a teenager in the 70’s, one of the coolest yet simplistic things was to manually tune through the radio bands at night. Living in New England, picking up a radio station from Baltimore or Detroit, if only for a few moments, was fascinating . Scanning on my shortwave set was better still. The world was much bigger then, more mysterious and full of things to discover. My son always asks me why I still use a tuner on my hifi setup and not stream. My answer is always the same, there’s just something romantic about hearing an over the air broadcast❤️
Same here, John. I too was a New England teenager in the 70s when I discovered SW. I fell in love with Radio Nederland, especially its dungeon-like interval signal. It also had a great show called “What’s New” that I used to listen to on Saturday nights.
When I was stationed in West Germany during the Cold War in the 70s I use to work as a Desk Sergeant in a Military Police Station during the midnight shifts.....and I would alway listen to Cold War short wave stations for Radio Moscow, Albania, and Eastern Europe...fascinating time for listening to short wave radio and hams...missed those nights and late night radio...way before Art Bell...
It was wonderful beyond description. There was no internet, and NO ONE had a computer in their homes. It was the only way to get information, uncensored, from the source. I'd go back in a heart-beat if I could.
There's no way to explain what it was like to build an old radio from a kit and then spend hours in the dark searching for far away stations. I remember almost all of the stations in the video. If I tried to get a 12 year old to spend the time and effort I spent putting together a relatively complicated kit for the reward of listening to a scratchy voice go in and out of a tiny speaker they would think we were all crazy. Our kids and our grandkids have the entire world at the tip of their fingers without the satisfaction that came from turning on the power for the first time and seeing a radio that you built by yourself come to life. Great times....
We had a good valve domestic set when i was a kid plus outdoor longwire aerial, but as i got into my teens as you quite rightly state the thrill of making something like a simple trf set from say UK 'Practical Wireless' magazine and hearing so many interesting stations was phenomenal.
@@richardkell4888 I sat my grandson in front of a short wave set and other than amateur radio, there was nothing on the air. I started listening in southern California during the mid 60s and the bands were full of stations from around the world. At that time we had 7 TV channels that shut down at 1am. Great time for short wave. I know we have the world available online but it's just not the same. It really did feel like we were exploring the world. Thanks for the comment, take care.
BTW you can still hear the interval signal from Pyongyang (30:21) in North America on 9435 KHz in the mornings. It may be the last true interval signal broadcast.
So many memories! Can I ever forget the Christmas morning of 1978 when I heard Radio Nepal from Seattle, WA or Radio Somalia from Durham NH which put my homesick somalian friend to tears. Visiting WYFR in Guam, Radio Budapest, BBC Turkish Service, VOA... I am so glad I am old enough to have lived those wonderful years.
I recognized the call sound from Radio Tirana, Radio Canada International, Voice of America, Radio Netherland International, Deutsche Welle, Vatican Radio, Radio Moscow, Radio Beijing, Radio Sweden, Radio Norway, Radio France International, Kol Israel, RTBF, Voice of Turkey, Swiss Radio International, Africa N°1 Radio Exterior de España. My favourites were VOA, Deutsche Welle, RFI, RCI, RNW (Radio Netherlands) and RTBF and the BBC (not mentioned). Started SWL from 1981 to 1986 when I was in Africa. Fun times. Shortwave radio was our source of information when the marcos dictatorship in the Philippines was overthrown in 1986. I remember, some of our Filipino friends came over to listen to get the latest info.
I loved the interval signals of Radio Sofia Bulgaria, Radio Budapest Hungary,Radio Canada Interntional, Radio Sweden, and the Swiss broadcasting.I sure do miss those days of shortwave radio.
Man, you brought tears to my eyes...and a deep melancholy. I was a kid and teenager during the 70s and 80s...i used to tune to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, BBC and many others from Romania under Communism. We had to listen in secret because you would go to the Gulag if caught. I had this old tranzistor Grundig radio conected with a wire to the steam radiator that acted as a huge antena and reception was almost perfect. Under Communism SW was our ear to freedom. Even then people were kinder, more humane, really the Short Wave Golden Age. I escaped communism in '87 and made a new life in US. If i was asked to choose a time period to be reborn into...i"d choose the same period i lived through. It was a blast. And yes...siting for hours by the window listening to the fading signal for hours was indeed magic.
I also have tears of nostalgia in my eyes right now but I was in the west (Sweden) listening to Radio Moscow, Praha, DDR, South Africa, and Bucharesti.
CORNELIU ZELEA CODREANU: "The first and fiercest punishment ought to fall first on the traitor, second on the enemy. If I had but one bullet and I were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the traitor have it." Hugo Miller says, "My father was an ethnic German from Romania. For his national service he had the choice of joining the Romanian army or Hitler's SS (Hitler was running short of troops by then, so offered a posting in the elite SS as a sort of bribe). My father had a nephew who came home on leave from the Romanian army wearing two left boots, as they had no right ones. So my father understandably joined the SS. Then Romania changed sides and Stalin took control of the country. He had joined up to do his national service, and all of a sudden he found himself labelled a traitor. Those Romanian ethnic Germans - and there were many - who had fought in the SS or Wermacht, were unable to go home after the war. The ones that did go back tended to disappear in the middle of the night. The communists seized the family farm, so my father lost everything, through no fault of his own. He served as a cook in the SS, with a unit that was chasing the Serb Partisans around Italy if I remember correctly."
I cant even start to say how much I miss the glory days. So much action on the 25 and 31 meter bands for example. I would stay up all night to go after the Pacific and Central and South America. On 4890 was the NBC from Papua New Guinea, always a good signal. I always went for the stations that were harder to get. I miss it.
this is so bittersweet for me and im sure so many other shortwave listeners. im 57 and i remember my start in 1968. it started out on an old wooden radio where i heard radio rsa for the first time. i had stars in my eyes. radio fascinated me to the max. i learned many things over the decades and logged so many stations and had heard things that left me in wonder. ive had many radios over the years and rebuilt several. im in the process of rebuilding another hammarlund hq129x. over the last 10 years, ive heard less and less stations. the 31 meter band was so crowded with stations that you could hardly separate them. progress has taken the romance of shortwave radio and the smell of old electronics, the fading in and out of the signal, the turning of knobs, antennas, wire etc. and high power stations and now can be accessed by the click of a mouse. so sad for us. how i miss the good old days of radio :(
stormchsr 101 so beautifully expressed! You brought a tear to my eye. The RCI interval signal made me cry, too. I miss the 70’s and 80’s when the bands were jammed with signals from all the international powerhouses.
Anyone else find this whole video weirdly relaxing/soothing? Helps that half the interval signals sound like they're coming out of a music box. Sometimes when I can't sleep I like to play this and imagine I'm surfing the shortwaves of 40-50 years ago, something I sadly never got to experience growing up in the 90's/2000's. Thanks for posting.
Tuning the analog dial on my Sony AM-FM radio, on the top of every hour, I used to hear a looooong frequency schedule of R.Bulgaria - the external service of my country, which also used to broadcast on AM, where I listened to it in my native language and some other languages. By the time, I wondered what shortwave means, but after a friend of my father explained to me, he gave me a shortwave receiver Sony ICF-SW11 and I started listening. Then I discovered this wonderful world! 73
This is a marvelous archive. I am glad you recorded all this. It brings back a lot of memories. I was a teenager in India in the 1970s when I "discovered" the Telerad vacuum tube radio that occupied the pride of place in our living room. I used to spend many teenage hours late into the night chasing shortwave broadcasts from different countries. My parents would invariably admonish me when they found me hunched in the dark over a glowing radio. They would remind me that I had to be at school in a few hours! I developed something of a "reputation" in our little, close-knit neighborhood as the "kid" who regularly got exotic-looking mail from "abroad". Usually these were marvelously colorful QSL cards from stations I wrote to. In those days, money was tight and I had to scrounge around a lot (often pouncing on dropped coins in the street!) to save the money required to send in a reception report on an "aerogramme". So my collection of QSLs was not large. But my collection of memories are! Sometime in 1976, I wrote to Radio China and a few weeks later there arrived a substantial package in the mail. There was a station pennant in silk and a vinyl LP of traditional music and other "goodies". Of course, there were a few high-gloss pamphlets on the the "glories of communism" (LOL). A month or so after this, one dark evening, my family got a visit from an agent of the Central Bureau of Investigation who interrogated me for a while on what my "connections" to China were. He showed me a list of targets he was required to investigate. Against my name in the list was the remark: "reported to be receiving communist material from China." This was an era of political instability in India and it was not unknown for people to disappear overnight. So, naturally, this brought another round of chastisement from upset parents. But not everything ended so badly. The BBC used to have a weekly show on Tuesday nights called The Jolly Good Show (hosted by DJ Dave Lee Travis) that used to play song requests from listeners around the world. If they played your song, you got a BBC t-shirt. One night I was thrilled to hear "DLT" acknowledging my letter and playing my song request. (I can't for the life of me remember what I requested!). I couldn't sleep for the next 10 days because I could only think of the t-shirt making its way slowly to our little backwater of a city. My (jealous?) siblings said it would probably be stolen in transit. But the mailman did bring it in one hot afternoon. Wearing that t-shirt around the neighborhood was one of the few highlights of my somewhat deprived, yet strangely rich teenage years.
Fond memories of mid 70's warm nights when my dad used to put his comfy chair in the middle of the yard beneath the sparkling stars and would then tune in his favorite SW stations... those tunes and voices fading out and back in, especially if someone moved near the antenna, theremin-like... that was in a small town in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Life was so good then.
Oh my! This is fantastic. This takes me back 25yrs to DX-ing as a schoolboy. Some of these call signs I still hum to this day. Please save international radio broadcasting even if it is just through the internet.
Tnx Mate, this is so great, it takes me back 30 years when I was a SWL and a Young HAM Operator! 73's my friend and thank you for the journey into the past! Most of that Signals immediately came back to me when I heard them! GREAT!
I got my first shortwave radio for Christmas when I was in 4th grade. It was a very simple AM only SW from Sears with plug-in coils to switch bands. There was no cable or internet in 1972 and I was utterly fascinated by radio; it was magical to me. I delivered lots of papers and saved all my money to buy a used SW with a BFO. I was now able to receive SSB and life was good! I later got into CB radio, then ham radio. I went to college and earned a degree in electrical engineering. That first shortwave radio literally changed my life.
0:00 KNLS 0:30 Radio Tirana 1:04 Adventist World Radio via Radio Andorra 1:33 Radio Anguilla 1:51 Radio Nacional Arcangel San Gabriel 2:15 Radio Yerevan 2:39 BBC Ascension 3:13 Radio Australia 4:04 Radio Baku 4:54 Radio Bangladesh Betar 5:24 Radio Minsk 5:43 Radio Cancao Nova 6:10 Radio Sofia 7:00 China Radio International 7:40 China National Radio 8:28 Radio Havana 8:51 Radio Canada International 9:24 Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation 10:29 Radio Prague Czechoslovakia 10:50 Radio Denmark 11:20 HCJB Ecuador 12:10 Radio Tallin 12:38 Radio Finland 13:08 Radio Tahiti 13:45 Pyrgos Broadcasting Station 14:10 Rhodes 1260 KHz 15:00 Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran 15:40 Radio Riga 15:52 Trans World Radio 16:22 Voice of Mongolia 17:15 Radio Netherlands 17:45 Blue Danube Radio 18:09 Radio Polonia 18:46 Adventist World Radio via Portugal 19:19 Deutsche Welle 19:46 ? 20:14 Radio Vilnius 20:44 Radio Bucharest 21:10 WYFR 21:45 Vatican Radio 22:02 North American Service of Radio Moscow 22:35 Radio Mayak 23:02 Voice of Russia 23:48 Radio Yugoslavia 24:28 Radio Sweden old signal 25:05 Swedish Telecommunications Administration experimental broadcast 26:13 Rado Skopje 27:35 Radiotelevisione Italiana 28:20 All India Radio 29:12 Radio Norway 29:35 Radio Paris 29:50 Radio France International 30:20 Radio Pyongyang 31:21 Kol Israel 31:39 RTBF International 31:59 Radio Veritas Asia 32:29 Radio Kyiv 32:50 Radio Thailand 33:37 Voice of Turkey 34:07 Swiss Radio International 34:37 Trans World Radio Swaziland 35:15 Radio Budapest 36:04 Radio Berlin International 36:40 Deutschlandfunk 37:10 Voice of Indonesia 37:45 Radio Iceland 38:20 Unknown Iraqi broadcaster 38:45 Africa №1 39:25 Radio Exterior de Espana 40:45 Kyrgyz Radio
Like so many others here I become a SW fan as a teenager in the 70s. The Motorola multiband radio was by my bedside. After the day was over, lying in bed in my dark room, I traveled halfway around the world courtesy of the broadcasters who packed the SW band so tightly it was hard to separate them. Every evening was an adventure. The comfort of hearing familiar friends, the excitement of something never heard before. The internet has been useful in many ways -- it enables us to share memories ike this -- and yet there was a romance in SW listening that seemed a little like magic. I was lucky to grow up in a time when voices and music from the shortwave band were often the last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep.
We were truly blessed to have this every night, every day of our lives for all those years. I sure miss shortwave. It helped me to be fascinated about the world, languages and life. I am a much better person because of shortwave. All these interval signals are engraved forever in my brain. Happy DX ing fellow SWers! We are a dying but wonderful breed.
Thank you very much for your time and efforts to keep these glory days for generations to follow who did not know those days. Greetings and thanks from Sri Lanka. 4S7VK
Radio Polonia had one of the most wonderful interval signals I remember...but all the ones reproduced are a wonderful voyage in time! Thank you, my friend!
It's essential to know that in "the good ole days" of shortwave radio not only was there no internet, but there were NO PC's. And not just that......there were basically no wireless devices. In those days the home environment was almost RF free, except for a few very low level local oscillator signals from your analog TV or AM radio. The phone system was hard wired except for microwave links from switch offices which were usually 100's of feet over surrounding structures. So what I'm saying is that in those days everyone was transmitting on shortwave, in a time when it was easy to hear someone on shortwave. The only noise you ever had to deal with was usually passing motor vehicle engine noise, or atmospheric lightning and on rare occasions deliberate jamming. Nowadays when you turn on a shortwave radio all you will hear is basically the roar of digital hash ! And even if you do have a properly designed external antenna with a coaxial downlead, youv'e basically got China and a few American syndicated religious broadcasters to chose from. Ah....such were the days...............
I started listening to Shortwave in 1972 , I was 10 at the time. My uncle traded for a 1930s giant SW radio and had no where to keep it so my Dad let him keep it at our house. It was great no one used it but me . about a year later he traded it off and I was hart broken but a couple months later he traded for another one and it came to our house also and it was there about a year. My uncle would trade on anything but no more Shortwaves. I still have the hobby today but not my uncle. Thanks for the video.
I started out MW dx'ing about the same time. I had a neat, old tube car radio powered by a slot car power supply, antenna of coat hangers, and would listen at night for the far away stations. Then we had bad flooding in our neighborhood and our neighbor had a old radio set out to be thrown out. Cabinet was damaged but the radio chassis never got wet. This was my introduction to shortwave. Girls soon had my interest and the SW took a back seat. It was revived when I met my soon to be wife's brother in law. I still have the radio he let me use, old military AN/GRR5 and it works very well. Currently I have a Radio Shack DX302 and a Heathkit SW-7800 along with my Kenwood TS-430, Kenwood twins.
This video has me imagine sitting in warmly lit room in the evening and cruising the dial, trying to catch what signals were there. I was introduced to shortwave in the late 70s I think it was, by one of my brothers and an uncle. It has been an on/off interest until I was able to get my own. I love the idea of searching the dial, wondering what I will find. I also like the idea of getting news from elsewhere in the world, a different view on things. Three years ago, on a Sunday night, the power was out thanks to a storm, and without the electromagnetic interference I could hear a lot more. So while laying on the livingroom floor I was able to listen to Radio New Zealand by candlelight in the middle of the night.
Remember sitting in London as a kid tuning into weird and wonderful sounds coming in on shortwave- especially from the Soviet States - same time as Star Wars came out. Sounded as exotic and exciting as anything if it had come in from outer space.
It is sad so many have stopped shortwave and gone to the internet. I remember listening back in the 50s and 60s to my Hallicrafters S-38 shortwave radio.
I've spent plenty of time on this SDR, and what is cool from my standpoint here in the US is the AM broadcast portion, both LW and MW, many countries coming in on bands that we here associate with only one metro area at a time. 'Local' meaning France or Germany or Netherlands etc. rather than just Cleveland or Phoenix. That plus hearing hams in areas that we in the US may not hear as readily, QSOs happening on 20 meters with far flung areas, and even US hams being the distant sounding ones. The Internet has made many fantastic things possible in communications, but there's still nothing like throwing up a wire, painstakingly tuning in a station trying to beat the atmosphere, and plucking one out of the ether. That is still a thrill.
Lyle, you are like a lot of us . I had a Knight Star Roamer and still do. Doesn’t work though! But still remember the old days . Long cold nights when I could listen to the world! Wouldn’t trade it for anything
Fabulous, it may be an old video but it pulls at my heart strings. I spent years working in the wilds and short wave was my sanity booster. On those evenings I had little to do so I searched the short waves for contact with the outside world. So many of the stations I've listened to. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
Ok let's see which of these I can remember hearing in the mid-2000s: 7:02 - Can still be heard today. 14:10 - But in another version. 15:53 - This was always very strong, I guess they had a relay here in Germany. 19:59 - Of course. 21:14 - I would say this can still be heard today. 21:45 - Also on medium wave here in Europe. 23:03 - A little bit creepy, isn't it? 25:06 - There was a longer version with some kind of flute. 30:20 - Can still be heard today. 34:08 - I guess I still heard it on medium wave 531 khz, but am not sure. 34:07 - Not totally sure either...
Young people today have no idea how much fun shortwave listening used to be - especially in the 1950's. There were dozens of English language broadcasts from all over the world to choose from every evening. One of my favorites was the English language service of Radio Denmark with their very famous female announcer "Mary Ann". She had the most appealing voice in the known world. Guys would purchase tapes of her speaking - just reading the news or whatever; it didn't matter what she said. It was just the sound of her voice. Of course those old all tube radios sounded infinitely better than the solid state shortwave receivers of today.
+Bob A I wish I could have experienced shortwave broadcasts back in the day, it would have been Heaven for me. There is nothing I love more than relaxing at night listening to my shortwave radio, usually listening to Radio Havana Cuba. I got into this hobby when I was 16, now I'm only 18! Still a great hobby! And I agree with the tube radio part. I have a Zenith Trans-Oceanic H500, and it has an incredible sound for a receiver of it's age. The antenna on it is also fantastic, I can pick up stations as far as Saudi Arabia with just the telescopic antenna!
Thanks for compiling this! I was a very avid shortwave listener in the 80's & 90's and I really miss all of these interval signals since so many stations have switched their transmitters off. It's a shame that we cannot introduce shortwave, as it used to be, to our younger generations.
I have been listening to shortwave since 1976, the internet is fine but there is something romantic about just having a radio and a piece of wire and using the earth as the ( internet ) .............Please put up some more videos
Voices from the ether. It was fascinating in those days to hear the gifts these countries were sending your way, as if they were programmed just for you. It all felt very warm and personal. Thanks for the memories.
I was an active SWLer in the 60's and 70's and never got a chance to hear many of these stations in North America. It was great to hear all these again. It's the best collection I have heard since Ian McFarland put out his CD set years ago.
Not many broadcasting stations left on short wave these days,such a shame.I used to love trawling the bands for the english speaking schedules when i was a youngster. Happy Days,they all come to an end......
A lot of people my age aren't really into shortwave listening, (I wasn't around when most of these signals were in use! I almost wish I had been so I could hear them live!) but I personally can't go a day without seeing what's happening on the airwaves. I remember the first time I heard the interval signal of Radio Romania, I ran out and showed my mom. Ever since, I've amassed a nice collection of recordings, from your everyday interval signals to silly pirate broadcasts and all kinds of sounds, and I always show my friends when I catch a new recording because I'm just so passionate about all of this. SWLing made me love radio so much as a whole that I'm now working at a radio station as a board operator and I'm dreaming of starting my own station someday, which will definitely broadcast on shortwave if I can help it. Shortwave truly is a magical and fascinating thing and I hope it never dies! I can promise that in the future I'll be showing my kids these recordings, too. :) Long live shortwave!
Listened to many of these on a bendix RA10 aircraft receiver with a remote head. Made me quite sad as it reminded me of how old I am... "Greetings, dear listeners from the Peoples Republic of Albania" sitting in the bath on a Saturday night. Simpler times.
HCJB in Ecuador had a relay station in Bonaire Netherlands Antilles , came in super strong in CT. You could pick it up with a crystal radio it was so strong
Remember hearing many of these as a teen with my Soundesign portable shortwave radio, out in my mom and dads garage in the winter, hooked to a long wire, logging them all. I miss the stations....beautiful short tunes....took me a way for a short while. I miss hearing them all
Was listening to Radio Sweden on a Gold Star Cassette Radio in 1984...I was six. Now it's interval is my SMS-tone on my Galaxy phone...Things change....
Thank you for posting this. It's been so many years since I've heard all these great musical interval signals. I loved looking up new interval signals in the World Radio TV Handbook. The few bars of music printed at the end of each station listing put my music reading to good use.
Such a fantastic collection. I miss listening for hours at night. Then we got cable TV. Less and less over the years. Our oldest daughter at night while she was sleeping, I would tune in the BBC overnight service for her. I have no idea if anyone is still broadcasting.
That was absolutely priceless! I have only just stumbled across this. It probably means nothing to the average bloke, but for me i can remember falling asleep to some of this in the eighties especially on a Sunday night after radio luxembourg closed down for the night.
I would echo John Bruce's comment. I used to love to spend cold winter nights listening to broadcasts from around the world, bringing the world into my bedroom. Thank you for posting, a bit of wonderful nostalgia.
Excellent video, I enjoy hearing all the classic interval signals that I never got the chance to hear. I'm still glad I got into this hobby two years ago. There is nothing I love more than receiving a station that I haven't heard before and writing out a reception report, and then waiting for the mail to deliver a QSL card to me. Here's hoping for shortwave radio to stay strong for years to come!
My favorite stations were Radio Moscow and Radio Habana, Cuba. On Radio Moscow, I enjoyed the "Moscow Mailbag" show with Joe Adamov. I listened to Radio Habana in the mornings before going to school and they had a wonderful show with old-time Cuban music. I really miss those days. Modern times just don't fit me that well.
AWESOME JOB! I STARTED LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE WHEN I WAS 13.TUES,I SHALL BE 50! STILL LOVE SHORTWAVE. GREAT SIGNALS AND OPENINGS!! GREAT MEMORIES! MY NAME AND QUESTIONS WERE ON RADIO MOSCOW MANY TIMES BACK IN 79-81.ALSO, ON RADIO AUSTRALIA! ENJOY!!!LOVE THIS!
In 1965 I received a Halicrafters S120 radio for my 11th birthday! I was fascinated for hours every day and evening as to what I was hearing, all around the world!⚡📟🎧
I wish I was 15 years younger. I only heard a small sample of these stations on a set my brother brought home from his tour in Vietnam. I love the QSB and QRN on the bands. It reminds me of better days. Thank you.
Thanks for this masterpiece. Great memories of the late 80's and early 90's for me, spending hours listening on my Sangean ATS-803A with a simple long-wire clipped to the radio's whip antenna. I definitely miss this hobby.
I used to live only a few miles from the Radio Canada international site. I could see the towers from my bedroom window. It was so strong the station would play through the speaker in my guitar amp. We could also here it through the copper pipes in my friends house. I was heartbroken to see it gone.
One of the best collection of signature tunes of radio stations, many of them are gone for ever.🎉
I'll tell you what, listening to a radio station over the air from a long way away will never, ever lose its thrill and fascination. Now days you can hear everything over the internet, it loses is uniqueness.
Totally agree. Or better: I hear you!
Also more reliable. I don't get so good internet around my area. Drops out a lot.
John Bruce p
i'm born in the modern era (1991) but I'm a OM since a few years but I couldn't agree more. Those times must have been magical in our field.
Remember sitting in London as a kid tuning into weird and wonderful sounds - especially from the Soviet States - same time as Star Wars came out. Sounded as exotic and exciting as anything if it had come in from outer space.
When I was 8 (1992) I took a radio from my grandfather. I remember I was fascinated by the multitude of languages out there. That is how I became a polyglot and a translator ))).
I'm a former engineer at Radio Deutsche Welle, retired about 20 years ago and are living in an old peoples home now. That Clip pushed me years back. I was also a radio ham and an enthusiastic shortwave listener. I did spent time on realais kigali/Ruanda. I'm still listening via SDR receivers via internet such as Twente and Kiwi SDRs all over the world. So thank you for the memory!
Nick Barker Yes. Fond memories of DW Sunday Nights. Who's the guy who used to say "from the cat what am" ?
@@pressureworks You'r surtain that*s from DW? I worked at BFBS before and there we had a guy called Terry James who used that expression. I have it in my ear, but I can't put no other name to it, I'm afraid.
Oh wow - UK memories of tuning in to Radio Albania in the 1970s and hearing how awful life was in the west and how great it was in Albania. Tractor production seemed to be the measure of success back in those days. Thanks for posting.
Thanks, mate. In fact I'm 17 years old, not an old man. But I wanted to create this sound collage for the generations to come. :) Shortwave is still a fascinating hobby, by the way. :)
At least you did something nice for us!
Well, you are kinda old now lol
You're 27 now boy!
🎉🎉🎉🙏🙏🙏🌹
Yes
I wish shortwave radio would make a comeback 😢 I miss it
me too
it very much alive
With current events shortwave radio might get popular again
shame countries stopped these global stations. they were the voices of their countries, uncensorable. better than the internet in some ways.
And this, you can listen everywhere, even without the internet
As wonderful as the Internet is, it does have drawbacks, including the high cost of a good connection. If the power goes out, forget it. Meanwhile with a battery operated shortwave radio, that's all you need. The year all schooling was virtual thanks to COVID, my son's school asked parents for help. When what to do in case of natural disasters was part of a class, I did a presentation on shortwave radio and what people can hear.
Here's a list of all the intervals in the video:
0:00 - KNLS Anchor Point, Alaska
0:30 - Radio Tirana International, Albania
1:04 - Radio Andorra, Andorra
1:08 - Adventist World Radio (AWR), USA (Broadcasted via Radio Andorra)
1:32 - Radio Anguilla / The Voice of Anguilla, Anguilla
1:50 - LRA36 Radio Nacional Arcángel San Gabriel, Argentina (Argentine Antarctica)
2:17 - Radio Yerevan, Armenian SSR (now Armenia)
2:39 - BBC World Service Radio (Transmitting from BBC Atlantic Relay Station), Ascension Island
3:13 - ABC Radio Australia, Australia
4:04 - Radio Baku, Azerbaijan SSR (now Azerbaijan)
4:55 - Radio Bangladesh / Bangladesh Betar, Bangladesh
5:25 - Radio Minsk, Byelorussian SSR (now Belarus)
5:41 - Rádio Canção Nova, Brazil
6:10 - Radio Sofia, Bulgaria
7:02 - China Radio International (CRI) (ex-Radio Peking), People's Republic of China
7:41 - China National Radio (CNR), People's Republic of China
8:29 - Radio Havana Cuba (RHC), Cuba
8:51 - Radio Canada International (RCI), Canada
9:24 - CyBC Radio External Service, Cyprus
10:29 - Radio Prague International, Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic)
10:50 - Radio Denmark (DR), Denmark
11:21 - HCJB "The Voice of the Andes", Ecuador (Japanese Broadcast)
12:11 - Radio Tallinn, Estonian SSR
12:38 - YLE Radio Finland, Finland
13:08 - ORTF Radio Tahiti, French Polynesia
13:45 - ERT The Voice of Greece, Greece
14:10 - Voice of America (VoA), USA (Transmitting from Rhodes, Greece Relay Station)
15:00 - IRIB World Service / The Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iran
15:40 - Radio Riga, Latvian SSR (now Latvia)
15:53 - Trans World Radio (TWR), Monaco (Possibly transmitted from another nation, I'm not sure)
16:23 - The Voice of Mongolia, Mongolia
17:16 - Radio Nederland Wereldomroep (RNW), Netherlands
17:44 - ORF Blue Danube Radio, Austria
18:10 - Radio Polonia, Poland
18:43 - Adventist World Radio Asia / The Voice of Hope, Guam (Transmitting from Portugal)
19:19 - Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany (Transmitting from Sines, Portugal)
19:46 - RDP Internacional Rádio Portugal, Portugal
20:13 - Radio Vilnius, Lithuania
20:44 - Radio Bucharest, Romania
21:10 - WYFR Family Radio, USA
21:44 - Vatican Radio, Vatican City
22:02 - Radio Moscow, Soviet Union (USSR)
23:03 - The Voice of Russia, Russian Federation
23:48 - Radio Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia / Serbia
24:26 - SR Radio Sweden International, Sweden (60s-Early 70s Interval)
25:06 - SR Radio Sweden International, Sweden (Current Interval)
26:09 - Makedonska Radio / Radio Makedonija, North Macedonia
27:36 - Rai Internazionale Radio, Italy
28:19 - All India Radio (AIR), India
29:12 - NRK Radio Norway, Norway
29:35 - Radio France Internationale (RFI), France
30:20 - Radio Pyongyang, North Korea
31:20 - KOL Israel / Israel Radio International, Israel
31:40 - RTBF International / La Voix de l'Amitié, Belgium
32:00 - Radio Veritas Asia, Philippines
32:29 - Radio Kiev, Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine)
32:51 - Radio Thailand World Service, Thailand
33:37 - TRT The Voice of Turkey, Turkey
34:08 - Swiss Radio International, Switzerland
34:37 - Trans World Radio Swaziland, Eswatini
35:15 - Radio Budapest, Hungary
36:08 - Radio Berlin International (RBI), East Germany
36:40 - DeutschlandFunk (DLF), Germany
37:10 - RRI World Service The Voice of Indonesia, Indonesia
37:41 - RÚV Ríkisútvarpið Radio Iceland, Iceland
38:20 - Radio Baghdad, Iraq
38:44 - Africa N°1, Gabon
39:23 - Radio Exterior de España (REE), Spain
40:45 - Radio Frunze, Kirghiz SSR (now Kyrgyzstan)
(It took me 50 minutes. Totally worth it.)
Thanks
Thank you so much!!
I was fortune to work in the last few years of Radio Netherlands Worldwide 2013-2015 as RNW Media for Latin America. We produced a 13 minute radio show called El Toque and it was broadcast on shortwave targeting mainly to Mexico, Cuba and Venezuela. I was based in Mexico City, where I fully produced some of the editions of the show and multimedia content. I also had the fortune to work a full week in RNW legendary HQ in Hilversum, before they moved out the new newsroom and studios where it once was the RNW Training Center right beside the main building.
Massive Thanks !!!
Amazing thx man!
This is gold, have my all best regards from Hungary, dear Uploader!
As a shortwave listener who grew up in the 70s and 80s, this is just an amazing compilation. The memories! 73 from Chicago...
What's your call sign?.. K6HZH calling CQ-DX and listening!!! ✌️
As a teenager in the 70’s, one of the coolest yet simplistic things was to manually tune through the radio bands at night. Living in New England, picking up a radio station from Baltimore or Detroit, if only for a few moments, was fascinating . Scanning on my shortwave set was better still.
The world was much bigger then, more mysterious and full of things to discover. My son always asks me why I still use a tuner on my hifi setup and not stream. My answer is always the same, there’s just something romantic about hearing an over the air broadcast❤️
Same here, John. I too was a New England teenager in the 70s when I discovered SW. I fell in love with Radio Nederland, especially its dungeon-like interval signal. It also had a great show called “What’s New” that I used to listen to on Saturday nights.
When I was stationed in West Germany during the Cold War in the 70s I use to work as a Desk Sergeant in a Military Police Station during the midnight shifts.....and I would alway listen to Cold War short wave stations for Radio Moscow, Albania, and Eastern Europe...fascinating time for listening to short wave radio and hams...missed those nights and late night radio...way before Art Bell...
From a teenager who recently got into shortwave....it's fun, but I can only imagine how fun it was.
If there are more people like us in the future, then maybe we won't have to imagine.
Keep using it!
It was wonderful beyond description. There was no internet, and NO ONE had a computer in their homes. It was the only way to get information, uncensored, from the source. I'd go back in a heart-beat if I could.
There's no way to explain what it was like to build an old radio from a kit and then spend hours in the dark searching for far away stations. I remember almost all of the stations in the video. If I tried to get a 12 year old to spend the time and effort I spent putting together a relatively complicated kit for the reward of listening to a scratchy voice go in and out of a tiny speaker they would think we were all crazy. Our kids and our grandkids have the entire world at the tip of their fingers without the satisfaction that came from turning on the power for the first time and seeing a radio that you built by yourself come to life. Great times....
We had a good valve domestic set when i was a kid plus outdoor longwire aerial, but as i got into my teens as you quite rightly state the thrill of making something like a simple trf set from say UK 'Practical Wireless' magazine and hearing so many interesting stations was phenomenal.
@@richardkell4888 I sat my grandson in front of a short wave set and other than amateur radio, there was nothing on the air. I started listening in southern California during the mid 60s and the bands were full of stations from around the world. At that time we had 7 TV channels that shut down at 1am. Great time for short wave. I know we have the world available online but it's just not the same. It really did feel like we were exploring the world. Thanks for the comment, take care.
BTW you can still hear the interval signal from Pyongyang (30:21) in North America on 9435 KHz in the mornings. It may be the last true interval signal broadcast.
So many memories! Can I ever forget the Christmas morning of 1978 when I heard Radio Nepal from Seattle, WA or Radio Somalia from Durham NH which put my homesick somalian friend to tears. Visiting WYFR in Guam, Radio Budapest, BBC Turkish Service, VOA... I am so glad I am old enough to have lived those wonderful years.
short wave was internet before internet
Markus Koetzle so true
So true. Radio Moscow’s Mailbag feature sealed the deal.
Internet today is censored and filtered. Shortwave is still _free and open._
Exactly
It is Internet without spammers, scams and trolls.
Alas we have lost such beautiful days
I recognized the call sound from Radio Tirana, Radio Canada International, Voice of America, Radio Netherland International, Deutsche Welle, Vatican Radio, Radio Moscow, Radio Beijing, Radio Sweden, Radio Norway, Radio France International, Kol Israel, RTBF, Voice of Turkey, Swiss Radio International, Africa N°1 Radio Exterior de España.
My favourites were VOA, Deutsche Welle, RFI, RCI, RNW (Radio Netherlands) and RTBF and the BBC (not mentioned).
Started SWL from 1981 to 1986 when I was in Africa. Fun times.
Shortwave radio was our source of information when the marcos dictatorship in the Philippines was overthrown in 1986. I remember, some of our Filipino friends came over to listen to get the latest info.
I loved the interval signals of Radio Sofia Bulgaria, Radio Budapest Hungary,Radio Canada Interntional, Radio Sweden, and the Swiss broadcasting.I sure do miss those days of shortwave radio.
Man, you brought tears to my eyes...and a deep melancholy. I was a kid and teenager during the 70s and 80s...i used to tune to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, Deutsche Welle, BBC and many others from Romania under Communism. We had to listen in secret because you would go to the Gulag if caught. I had this old tranzistor Grundig radio conected with a wire to the steam radiator that acted as a huge antena and reception was almost perfect. Under Communism SW was our ear to freedom. Even then people were kinder, more humane, really the Short Wave Golden Age. I escaped communism in '87 and made a new life in US. If i was asked to choose a time period to be reborn into...i"d choose the same period i lived through. It was a blast. And yes...siting for hours by the window listening to the fading signal for hours was indeed magic.
You're a Star. I can totally relate
There was no Gulag in Romania in the 70s and 80s.
AMEN AMEN.👍
I also have tears of nostalgia in my eyes right now but I was in the west (Sweden) listening to Radio Moscow, Praha, DDR, South Africa, and Bucharesti.
CORNELIU ZELEA CODREANU: "The first and fiercest punishment ought to fall first on the traitor, second on the enemy. If I had but one bullet and I were faced by both an enemy and a traitor, I would let the traitor have it."
Hugo Miller says, "My father was an ethnic German from Romania. For his national service he had the choice of joining the Romanian army or Hitler's SS (Hitler was running short of troops by then, so offered a posting in the elite SS as a sort of bribe). My father had a nephew who came home on leave from the Romanian army wearing two left boots, as they had no right ones. So my father understandably joined the SS. Then Romania changed sides and Stalin took control of the country. He had joined up to do his national service, and all of a sudden he found himself labelled a traitor. Those Romanian ethnic Germans - and there were many - who had fought in the SS or Wermacht, were unable to go home after the war. The ones that did go back tended to disappear in the middle of the night. The communists seized the family farm, so my father lost everything, through no fault of his own. He served as a cook in the SS, with a unit that was chasing the Serb Partisans around Italy if I remember correctly."
Lovely memories from our teen days! Just imagine, how big was the world in those days...
Fantastic collection of signature tunes. So lovely.
This bought back so many memories from 1980's miss radio Netherlands . Shame so many have gone away
De M0JFE
I cant even start to say how much I miss the glory days. So much action on the 25 and 31 meter bands for example. I would stay up all night to go after the Pacific and Central and South America. On 4890 was the NBC from Papua New Guinea, always a good signal. I always went for the stations that were harder to get. I miss it.
this is so bittersweet for me and im sure so many other shortwave listeners. im 57 and i remember my start in 1968.
it started out on an old wooden radio where i heard radio rsa for the first time. i had stars in my eyes. radio fascinated me to the max. i learned many things over the decades and logged so many stations and had heard things that left me in wonder. ive had many radios over the years and rebuilt several. im in the process of rebuilding another hammarlund hq129x. over the last 10 years, ive heard less and less stations. the 31 meter band was so crowded with stations that you could hardly separate them. progress has taken the romance of shortwave radio and the smell of old electronics, the fading in and out of the signal, the turning of knobs, antennas, wire etc. and high power stations and now can be accessed by the click of a mouse. so sad for us. how i miss the good old days of radio :(
stormchsr 101 so beautifully expressed! You brought a tear to my eye. The RCI interval signal made me cry, too. I miss the 70’s and 80’s when the bands were jammed with signals from all the international powerhouses.
Anyone else find this whole video weirdly relaxing/soothing? Helps that half the interval signals sound like they're coming out of a music box. Sometimes when I can't sleep I like to play this and imagine I'm surfing the shortwaves of 40-50 years ago, something I sadly never got to experience growing up in the 90's/2000's. Thanks for posting.
Tuning the analog dial on my Sony AM-FM radio, on the top of every hour, I used to hear a looooong frequency schedule of R.Bulgaria - the external service of my country, which also used to broadcast on AM, where I listened to it in my native language and some other languages. By the time, I wondered what shortwave means, but after a friend of my father explained to me, he gave me a shortwave receiver Sony ICF-SW11 and I started listening. Then I discovered this wonderful world! 73
This is a marvelous archive. I am glad you recorded all this. It brings back a lot of memories.
I was a teenager in India in the 1970s when I "discovered" the Telerad vacuum tube radio that occupied the pride of place in our living room. I used to spend many teenage hours late into the night chasing shortwave broadcasts from different countries. My parents would invariably admonish me when they found me hunched in the dark over a glowing radio. They would remind me that I had to be at school in a few hours!
I developed something of a "reputation" in our little, close-knit neighborhood as the "kid" who regularly got exotic-looking mail from "abroad". Usually these were marvelously colorful QSL cards from stations I wrote to. In those days, money was tight and I had to scrounge around a lot (often pouncing on dropped coins in the street!) to save the money required to send in a reception report on an "aerogramme". So my collection of QSLs was not large. But my collection of memories are!
Sometime in 1976, I wrote to Radio China and a few weeks later there arrived a substantial package in the mail. There was a station pennant in silk and a vinyl LP of traditional music and other "goodies". Of course, there were a few high-gloss pamphlets on the the "glories of communism" (LOL). A month or so after this, one dark evening, my family got a visit from an agent of the Central Bureau of Investigation who interrogated me for a while on what my "connections" to China were. He showed me a list of targets he was required to investigate. Against my name in the list was the remark: "reported to be receiving communist material from China." This was an era of political instability in India and it was not unknown for people to disappear overnight. So, naturally, this brought another round of chastisement from upset parents.
But not everything ended so badly. The BBC used to have a weekly show on Tuesday nights called The Jolly Good Show (hosted by DJ Dave Lee Travis) that used to play song requests from listeners around the world. If they played your song, you got a BBC t-shirt. One night I was thrilled to hear "DLT" acknowledging my letter and playing my song request. (I can't for the life of me remember what I requested!). I couldn't sleep for the next 10 days because I could only think of the t-shirt making its way slowly to our little backwater of a city. My (jealous?) siblings said it would probably be stolen in transit. But the mailman did bring it in one hot afternoon. Wearing that t-shirt around the neighborhood was one of the few highlights of my somewhat deprived, yet strangely rich teenage years.
wow i can say you're childhood was amazing and that old time was ❤️
What a great story!
Fond memories of mid 70's warm nights when my dad used to put his comfy chair in the middle of the yard beneath the sparkling stars and would then tune in his favorite SW stations... those tunes and voices fading out and back in, especially if someone moved near the antenna, theremin-like... that was in a small town in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Life was so good then.
this is like "time machine" for me!
great work❤
Oh my! This is fantastic. This takes me back 25yrs to DX-ing as a schoolboy. Some of these call signs I still hum to this day. Please save international radio broadcasting even if it is just through the internet.
Yep, the Radio Tirana trumpet call is an ear-worm that's been with me for 40 years!
Listening to this is so relaxing. I want to listen to this before sleeping. Thank you for uploading!
Tnx Mate, this is so great, it takes me back 30 years when I was a SWL and a Young HAM Operator! 73's my friend and thank you for the journey into the past! Most of that Signals immediately came back to me when I heard them! GREAT!
Some of these interval signals will last forever in my memory. Thanks!
Love those sounds. My favorites are Soviet radio 22:33, Bangladesh 4:56, Minsk 5:25, China 7:41, Romania 20:52, India 28:20, Pyongyang 30:20
Thank you as a boy in the 60s I'd listen to short wave broadcast stations on an old Paterson. Lots of memories.
I got my first shortwave radio for Christmas when I was in 4th grade. It was a very simple AM only SW from Sears with plug-in coils to switch bands. There was no cable or internet in 1972 and I was utterly fascinated by radio; it was magical to me. I delivered lots of papers and saved all my money to buy a used SW with a BFO. I was now able to receive SSB and life was good!
I later got into CB radio, then ham radio. I went to college and earned a degree in electrical engineering.
That first shortwave radio literally changed my life.
0:00 KNLS
0:30 Radio Tirana
1:04 Adventist World Radio via Radio Andorra
1:33 Radio Anguilla
1:51 Radio Nacional Arcangel San Gabriel
2:15 Radio Yerevan
2:39 BBC Ascension
3:13 Radio Australia
4:04 Radio Baku
4:54 Radio Bangladesh Betar
5:24 Radio Minsk
5:43 Radio Cancao Nova
6:10 Radio Sofia
7:00 China Radio International
7:40 China National Radio
8:28 Radio Havana
8:51 Radio Canada International
9:24 Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation
10:29 Radio Prague Czechoslovakia
10:50 Radio Denmark
11:20 HCJB Ecuador
12:10 Radio Tallin
12:38 Radio Finland
13:08 Radio Tahiti
13:45 Pyrgos Broadcasting Station
14:10 Rhodes 1260 KHz
15:00 Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran
15:40 Radio Riga
15:52 Trans World Radio
16:22 Voice of Mongolia
17:15 Radio Netherlands
17:45 Blue Danube Radio
18:09 Radio Polonia
18:46 Adventist World Radio via Portugal
19:19 Deutsche Welle
19:46 ?
20:14 Radio Vilnius
20:44 Radio Bucharest
21:10 WYFR
21:45 Vatican Radio
22:02 North American Service of Radio Moscow
22:35 Radio Mayak
23:02 Voice of Russia
23:48 Radio Yugoslavia
24:28 Radio Sweden old signal
25:05 Swedish Telecommunications Administration experimental broadcast
26:13 Rado Skopje
27:35 Radiotelevisione Italiana
28:20 All India Radio
29:12 Radio Norway
29:35 Radio Paris
29:50 Radio France International
30:20 Radio Pyongyang
31:21 Kol Israel
31:39 RTBF International
31:59 Radio Veritas Asia
32:29 Radio Kyiv
32:50 Radio Thailand
33:37 Voice of Turkey
34:07 Swiss Radio International
34:37 Trans World Radio Swaziland
35:15 Radio Budapest
36:04 Radio Berlin International
36:40 Deutschlandfunk
37:10 Voice of Indonesia
37:45 Radio Iceland
38:20 Unknown Iraqi broadcaster
38:45 Africa №1
39:25 Radio Exterior de Espana
40:45 Kyrgyz Radio
19:46 Radio Portugal Livre
Almost brought a tear to my eye.
have the actual calling cards dated 1935 for Davenport, Iowa. One of my family members done the radio communication here in Davenport.
Thank you very much for posting this nostalgia-inducing montage!
Like so many others here I become a SW fan as a teenager in the 70s. The Motorola multiband radio was by my bedside. After the day was over, lying in bed in my dark room, I traveled halfway around the world courtesy of the broadcasters who packed the SW band so tightly it was hard to separate them. Every evening was an adventure. The comfort of hearing familiar friends, the excitement of something never heard before. The internet has been useful in many ways -- it enables us to share memories ike this -- and yet there was a romance in SW listening that seemed a little like magic. I was lucky to grow up in a time when voices and music from the shortwave band were often the last thing I heard before I drifted off to sleep.
This is a very nice compilation you put up. Thank you Very Much!!!!!!!!! I was an SWL starting in 1971, and it was indeed interesting.
Really miss those days. spend many a night hearing those stations. Sad so little to hear on Short Wave now.
Rohn Daughty
Sad? Bloody disastrous!
We were truly blessed to have this every night, every day of our lives for all those years. I sure miss shortwave. It helped me to be fascinated about the world, languages and life. I am a much better person because of shortwave. All these interval signals are engraved forever in my brain. Happy DX ing fellow SWers! We are a dying but wonderful breed.
I still do it with my ICOM and Yaesu radios, but the old world charm is gone and CRI has invaded the whole short wave sadly.
Indeed, man!
Thank you very much for your time and efforts to keep these glory days for generations to follow who did not know those days. Greetings and thanks from Sri Lanka. 4S7VK
Radio Polonia had one of the most wonderful interval signals I remember...but all the ones reproduced are a wonderful voyage in time! Thank you, my friend!
It's essential to know that in "the good ole days" of shortwave radio not only was there no internet, but there were NO PC's. And not just that......there were basically no wireless devices. In those days the home environment was almost RF free, except for a few very low level local oscillator signals from your analog TV or AM radio. The phone system was hard wired except for microwave links from switch offices which were usually 100's of feet over surrounding structures. So what I'm saying is that in those days everyone was transmitting on shortwave, in a time when it was easy to hear someone on shortwave. The only noise you ever had to deal with was usually passing motor vehicle engine noise, or atmospheric lightning and on rare occasions deliberate jamming. Nowadays when you turn on a shortwave radio all you will hear is basically the roar of digital hash ! And even if you do have a properly designed external antenna with a coaxial downlead, youv'e basically got China and a few American syndicated religious broadcasters to chose from. Ah....such were the days...............
I started listening to Shortwave in 1972 , I was 10 at the time. My uncle traded for a 1930s giant SW radio and had no where to keep it so my Dad let him keep it at our house. It was great no one used it but me . about a year later he traded it off and I was hart broken but a couple months later he traded for another one and it came to our house also and it was there about a year. My uncle would trade on anything but no more Shortwaves.
I still have the hobby today but not my uncle. Thanks for the video.
I started out MW dx'ing about the same time. I had a neat, old tube car radio powered by a slot car power supply, antenna of coat hangers, and would listen at night for the far away stations. Then we had bad flooding in our neighborhood and our neighbor had a old radio set out to be thrown out. Cabinet was damaged but the radio chassis never got wet. This was my introduction to shortwave. Girls soon had my interest and the SW took a back seat. It was revived when I met my soon to be wife's brother in law. I still have the radio he let me use, old military AN/GRR5 and it works very well. Currently I have a Radio Shack DX302 and a Heathkit SW-7800 along with my Kenwood TS-430, Kenwood twins.
This video has me imagine sitting in warmly lit room in the evening and cruising the dial, trying to catch what signals were there. I was introduced to shortwave in the late 70s I think it was, by one of my brothers and an uncle. It has been an on/off interest until I was able to get my own. I love the idea of searching the dial, wondering what I will find. I also like the idea of getting news from elsewhere in the world, a different view on things. Three years ago, on a Sunday night, the power was out thanks to a storm, and without the electromagnetic interference I could hear a lot more. So while laying on the livingroom floor I was able to listen to Radio New Zealand by candlelight in the middle of the night.
Good compilation.....thanks for your posting! 5 stars! Historic recordings.Quality!
Remember sitting in London as a kid tuning into weird and wonderful sounds coming in on shortwave- especially from the Soviet States - same time as Star Wars came out. Sounded as exotic and exciting as anything if it had come in from outer space.
I'm an unashamed Radio Geek. I was a kid in the 80's when I had a notebook with all my frequencies and stuff. Love this.
Read that as unashamed Radio Greek for half a second.
Great, I remember all my past hobby of shortwave radio listening. I love it. Thanking you.
I miss the cold war. Shortwave was so much better then.
I don't think it's got anything to do with the cold war, just the technological time we were in. Unless you want to listen to numbers stations...
James Staley Putin too..
Yes, listening to short wave in the 80s had a certain mystery that the cold war added to.
And this was one of the only times the line “I miss the Cold War” has some Creedence
@@sixthgear5874 True, we at least knew where we stood.
Wonderful nostalgia! Thank you for bringing back my childhood memories!
Started listening in 79. Started out with a dx-160. I'M 58 now and miss though days.
It is sad so many have stopped shortwave and gone to the internet. I remember listening back in the 50s and 60s to my Hallicrafters S-38 shortwave radio.
Lyle Johnson Shortwave + internet = websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901
+Dean Denton thanks for link
I've spent plenty of time on this SDR, and what is cool from my standpoint here in the US is the AM broadcast portion, both LW and MW, many countries coming in on bands that we here associate with only one metro area at a time. 'Local' meaning France or Germany or Netherlands etc. rather than just Cleveland or Phoenix. That plus hearing hams in areas that we in the US may not hear as readily, QSOs happening on 20 meters with far flung areas, and even US hams being the distant sounding ones. The Internet has made many fantastic things possible in communications, but there's still nothing like throwing up a wire, painstakingly tuning in a station trying to beat the atmosphere, and plucking one out of the ether. That is still a thrill.
I still have mine!!!
Lyle, you are like a lot of us . I had a Knight Star Roamer and still do. Doesn’t work though!
But still remember the old days . Long cold nights when I could listen to the world!
Wouldn’t trade it for anything
Fabulous, it may be an old video but it pulls at my heart strings. I spent years working in the wilds and short wave was my sanity booster. On those evenings I had little to do so I searched the short waves for contact with the outside world. So many of the stations I've listened to. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
Ok let's see which of these I can remember hearing in the mid-2000s:
7:02 - Can still be heard today.
14:10 - But in another version.
15:53 - This was always very strong, I guess they had a relay here in Germany.
19:59 - Of course.
21:14 - I would say this can still be heard today.
21:45 - Also on medium wave here in Europe.
23:03 - A little bit creepy, isn't it?
25:06 - There was a longer version with some kind of flute.
30:20 - Can still be heard today.
34:08 - I guess I still heard it on medium wave 531 khz, but am not sure.
34:07 - Not totally sure either...
dxlookup Pyongyang Radio can still be heard
28:20 can still be heard today on their MW and SW broadcasts.
0:00 can also be heard today
„Swiss Radio International“ now broadcasts as their public broadcaster under SRF, I guess from Kall-Krekel.
@@TheSealinBlack The now-Voice of Korea never changed its interval signal
Young people today have no idea how much fun shortwave listening used to be - especially in the 1950's. There were dozens of English language broadcasts from all over the world to choose from every evening. One of my favorites was the English language service of Radio Denmark with their very famous female announcer "Mary Ann". She had the most appealing voice in the known world. Guys would purchase tapes of her speaking - just reading the news or whatever; it didn't matter what she said. It was just the sound of her voice. Of course those old all tube radios sounded infinitely better than the solid state shortwave receivers of today.
+Bob A I wish I could have experienced shortwave broadcasts back in the day, it would have been Heaven for me. There is nothing I love more than relaxing at night listening to my shortwave radio, usually listening to Radio Havana Cuba. I got into this hobby when I was 16, now I'm only 18! Still a great hobby! And I agree with the tube radio part. I have a Zenith Trans-Oceanic H500, and it has an incredible sound for a receiver of it's age. The antenna on it is also fantastic, I can pick up stations as far as Saudi Arabia with just the telescopic antenna!
Bob A , young people dont even know what the hell short wave is
I could listen to this all day long
Thanks for compiling this! I was a very avid shortwave listener in the 80's & 90's and I really miss all of these interval signals since so many stations have switched their transmitters off. It's a shame that we cannot introduce shortwave, as it used to be, to our younger generations.
I have been listening to shortwave since 1976, the internet is fine but there is something romantic about just having a radio and a piece of wire and using the earth as the ( internet ) .............Please put up some more videos
Voices from the ether. It was fascinating in those days to hear the gifts these countries were sending your way, as if they were programmed just for you. It all felt very warm and personal. Thanks for the memories.
This is a great historical record, but also a little sad to see all the channels that no longer broadcast!
Thank you very much! Many of these signal I've heard from low nineties to 2010, being in northern Kazakhstan...
I was an active SWLer in the 60's and 70's and never got a chance to hear many of these stations in North America. It was great to hear all these again. It's the best collection I have heard since Ian McFarland put out his CD set years ago.
Thank you for uploading this precious piece of shortwave history.
Not many broadcasting stations left on short wave these days,such a shame.I used to love trawling the bands for the english speaking schedules when i was a youngster. Happy Days,they all come to an end......
A lot of people my age aren't really into shortwave listening, (I wasn't around when most of these signals were in use! I almost wish I had been so I could hear them live!) but I personally can't go a day without seeing what's happening on the airwaves. I remember the first time I heard the interval signal of Radio Romania, I ran out and showed my mom. Ever since, I've amassed a nice collection of recordings, from your everyday interval signals to silly pirate broadcasts and all kinds of sounds, and I always show my friends when I catch a new recording because I'm just so passionate about all of this. SWLing made me love radio so much as a whole that I'm now working at a radio station as a board operator and I'm dreaming of starting my own station someday, which will definitely broadcast on shortwave if I can help it. Shortwave truly is a magical and fascinating thing and I hope it never dies! I can promise that in the future I'll be showing my kids these recordings, too. :) Long live shortwave!
Thanks ever so much for sharing this. Brings back so many memories... and a strong urge to get a proper outdoor antenna back up.
Listened to many of these on a bendix RA10 aircraft receiver with a remote head. Made me quite sad as it reminded me of how old I am... "Greetings, dear listeners from the Peoples Republic of Albania" sitting in the bath on a Saturday night. Simpler times.
Thank you. Brings back so many memories from early days of my DX, since 1970.
HCJB in Ecuador had a relay station in Bonaire Netherlands Antilles , came in super strong in CT. You could pick it up with a crystal radio it was so strong
Omg... What awesome stuff. I wish I tapped fully into this when I was a kid in the 80s.
I wish it were like this now.
Radio now is dreadful
Remember hearing many of these as a teen with my Soundesign portable shortwave radio, out in my mom and dads garage in the winter, hooked to a long wire, logging them all. I miss the stations....beautiful short tunes....took me a way for a short while. I miss hearing them all
Wow, this is wonderful. I listened to this enthralled with a tear in the eye as well.
Listening seemed exciting and romatic then.
Radio Sweden's new indent at 25:05 is simply marvelous!!! Does anyone know if it is a sample or a cover of a specific song?
Never mind, I'll answer myself ^_^, it is Out In The Wide World by Ralph Lundsten
@@ThePiquedPigeon thx mate
@@ThePiquedPigeon Nice, Ralph Lundsten is a bit of a Swedish legend. I have a vinyl box set of ambient and new age music with one of his tracks.
Nice compilation of vintage SW catches :) Thanks for sharing 73!
Was listening to Radio Sweden on a Gold Star Cassette Radio in 1984...I was six. Now it's interval is my SMS-tone on my Galaxy phone...Things change....
Thank you for posting this. It's been so many years since I've heard all these great musical interval signals. I loved looking up new interval signals in the World Radio TV Handbook. The few bars of music printed at the end of each station listing put my music reading to good use.
Such a fantastic collection. I miss listening for hours at night. Then we got cable TV. Less and less over the years. Our oldest daughter at night while she was sleeping, I would tune in the BBC overnight service for her. I have no idea if anyone is still broadcasting.
Shortwave had such a cool sound; you could hear it was coming from far away.
My parellel thought it's real
That was absolutely priceless!
I have only just stumbled across this.
It probably means nothing to the average bloke,
but for me i can remember falling asleep to some
of this in the eighties especially on a Sunday night
after radio luxembourg closed down for the night.
I would echo John Bruce's comment. I used to love to spend cold winter nights listening to broadcasts from around the world, bringing the world into my bedroom. Thank you for posting, a bit of wonderful nostalgia.
Brings back great memories...still have all my QSL cards.. good times
Excellent video, I enjoy hearing all the classic interval signals that I never got the chance to hear. I'm still glad I got into this hobby two years ago. There is nothing I love more than receiving a station that I haven't heard before and writing out a reception report, and then waiting for the mail to deliver a QSL card to me. Here's hoping for shortwave radio to stay strong for years to come!
CyBC still uses this signal for the first program which is broadcasting these days in both FM and medium waves and also digital.
My favorite stations were Radio Moscow and Radio Habana, Cuba. On Radio Moscow, I enjoyed the "Moscow Mailbag" show with Joe Adamov. I listened to Radio Habana in the mornings before going to school and they had a wonderful show with old-time Cuban music. I really miss those days. Modern times just don't fit me that well.
AWESOME JOB! I STARTED LISTENING TO SHORTWAVE WHEN I WAS 13.TUES,I SHALL BE 50! STILL LOVE SHORTWAVE. GREAT SIGNALS AND OPENINGS!! GREAT MEMORIES! MY NAME AND QUESTIONS WERE ON RADIO MOSCOW MANY TIMES BACK IN 79-81.ALSO, ON RADIO AUSTRALIA! ENJOY!!!LOVE THIS!
Your recordings are also awesome! Thanks for the comment and wish you all the best in the new year.
In 1965 I received a Halicrafters S120 radio for my 11th birthday! I was fascinated for hours every day and evening as to what I was hearing, all around the world!⚡📟🎧
I wish I was 15 years younger. I only heard a small sample of these stations on a set my brother brought home from his tour in Vietnam. I love the QSB and QRN on the bands. It reminds me of better days. Thank you.
Thanks for this masterpiece. Great memories of the late 80's and early 90's for me, spending hours listening on my Sangean ATS-803A with a simple long-wire clipped to the radio's whip antenna. I definitely miss this hobby.
wow thanks for this video ! brings back alot of memories listening to the station music intervals ...
Wonderful! I love Radio Norway and Radio Ukraine interval signal. Thank you to post this video! Shortwave listening is magic, is amazing!
I used to live only a few miles from the Radio Canada international site. I could see the towers from my bedroom window. It was so strong the station would play through the speaker in my guitar amp. We could also here it through the copper pipes in my friends house. I was heartbroken to see it gone.