How to Listen to International Radio

I recall as a teen receiving a multi-band radio for Christmas one year. This was a very cool gift by my standards. This little radio covered nearly the entire useable radio spectrum at the time. It started out covering the standard am radio band from 550 kilohertz all the way up to 1.6 megahertz. Then with a flick of a switch you went up a notch in frequency and you could listen in on the marine band or short wave and even all the way up to the citizens band in the 26 to 27 megahertz area of things. Heady stuff for a 13 year old boy.

I can remember spending long winter nights listening to BBC radio or VOA, the Voice of America. It is one of the characteristics of radio wave propagation that long distance signals are best picked up by your radio in the winter, and well after dark. The reason for this is the sun. When the sun is shining on your side of the planet, it is creating a zone of ionized atmosphere. The zone of ionization behaves exactly like a mirror as regarding electromagnetic waves. They bounce off of it and back to the ground. Those who play around with radio quite a bit call this phenomenom, skip. The radio waves literally skips off of the zone of reflection and back to ground. Often upwards of hundreds of miles distant. But this is still too short of a range for really multi thousand mile broadcats. For that, you still need a zone of reflection from the ionizing gas in the atmosphere, just not the zone produced by te sun during the day. There is more than one zone and the one we like to use is up very high near the limits of the very atmosphere we breathe. And during the day, the zone created by the sun, is the lowest and the first struck by the radio waves. As for why winter is the best season for long distance listening, well, lightning storms are wide spread during the summer and can make a real hash of your listening efforts. Just a constant crashing static is some instances. Good listening can be a problem.

Interestingly enough, I found that the news I could find coming from other countries did not always reflect exactly the news I was hearing on the television from David Brinkley and Chet Huntley or any of the other talking heads you find on the tube. It became apparent that these news programs from these far distant countries were actually the voices "OF" those countries. An amazing concept for a young boy. They desired to tell the world their side of events.

And there were so many things to listen for on the air too. Just exactly what were these numbers stations doing? A recorded voice, usually a woman, would recite a long string of numbers. Give a date and time stamp and launch into a new string of numbers, and then the whole thing would repeat. I understand this goes on to this day. The language was usually english or spanish.

Then there were those mysterious donald duck voices. I had no clue what these were but there were many of them and usually all clustered together. I finally asked my Dad what these were and he informed me that these were actually ham radio stations and the reason they sort of sounded like donald duck was that they were using a form of radio transmission called side band radio. Wow ! And these guys could talk to people in other countries that were also licensed to operate on those frequencies. Years later I also attained my own ham radio license and enjoyed many hours chatting with people all over the U.S. and using morse code to communicate across hundreds of miles.

I addition to all these different things to listen to, there were universal time transmitters set up on different frequencies so that people and ships at sea and even other radio stations would have a method of accurate time setting. There were military aircraft and ships at sea to find as well. These were elusive and sporadic and to hear one was a treat even if they did use a great deal of code. Years later I would learn that some of these transmissions were actually B-52 bombers on flight rotation. They were already in the air in the event a nuclear strike was set against the U.S. This way they would not get caught on the ground and destroyed.

I found I could also search and occasionally find what are called pirate stations. These self proclaimed pirates were just ordinary people who felt the need to express their individual points of view. They were unlicensed transmitters and usually low powered. As interesting as these guys were, nothing compared to tuning in to the occasional ship to shore telephone calls. WOW !!

Then there were the aircraft to ground conversations. Planes in the air speaking to an airport hundreds and in a few case thousands of miles away. Later in life I found out this was done using relay repeaters and such but at the time I was fascinated.

It seems that recreational tuning of the radio spectrum is a dying pass time. I know that with the coming of the internet age I have even let my ham radio license expire. These days I much prefer to google up an answer about something, or pull up a youtube video of a far distant place than actually talk to some one from there.

There is still a great deal of magic to be found in listening to far distant radio transmitters. What the major networks tell you may have a whole new meaning once you listen to the other side of the story from the other side of the world.

And multi band radios aren't too awful expensive. A good one can be had for under 200 hundred dollars easily. And a really good used one, for about the same price. Some things to look for in a radio is side band capability. This will allow you to tune in ham radio and military. You want a radio that is ultra stable and able to stay on frequency without drifting. It should have a memory capability that will let you save favorite frequencies that you want to listen to again or on a regular basis. Some built in frequency filters are nice too. Some stations are getting deliberately jammed, and a frequency filter will help you block out the noise and allow the station to come through.

So think about it. Consider getting a nice radio. Look into setting up an antenna and tuning in to a world you may not have realized was even there.