Does anybody out there listen to shortwave radio anymore? My husband and I just got one.?

We ordered one off ebay and there are some very interesting programs from all over the world in English on there. We were wondering if anyone else listened to shortwave? And curious how you feel or think about it's effect concerning the future as far as communication?

I do all the time, have about 4 of them to prove it.. but basically there are books and magazines (Passport to world band radio for the book and Popular Communications for the magazine) are really good for beginners to get their feet wet and to see what is actually out there.

In fact I heard about the first opening shots of the 1st Iraq war in 1990 from the BBC.. about 7 minutes before American media broke news programming for this.

Bu there are many different programs out there but broadcasts to the states are getting harder to find as most Americans rather stream than listen in (such as the BBC that doesn't broadcast to the US on shortwave anymore but can still be heard as they broadcast to the Caribbean still in the US area)

But shortwave will still be here for years to come, however it will be harder in North America to catch as these programs will be aimed more at 2nd and 3rd world countries which have limited resources and internet. This is where these broadcasts are going slowly year by year.

There's lots of SW operators out there. Plug "short wave message board" into any search engine (without the quotes) and you'll find a lot more people who are interested than here on YA (although there are a couple of crusty old operators lurking about).
-a guy named duh

Thousands of us do. Check Monitoring times magazine and many on line SWL listings. There are many types of listeners as well. As a US professional broadcast engineer I rarely listen to broadcast radio on short wave, (to much bus man's holiday!) I do listen to a lot of "Utility" type things like long range aircraft, ships at sea, military, and other things. Besides the short wave (Below 30 MHz) there is a lot of interesting stuff above that which can be heard on low cost scanners. Another thing, I am a Ham radio operator and do a lot of listening on those bands and sometimes even transmit. Listen for WB0KSW.
Bill

Its rare but seems old is gold!

no. i neva heard of that. so thanks 4 telin me a little bouts it!

Yes. I started listening to short wave with a little $8 kit from Radio Shack with 3 transistors as a kid back in the early 70s. My first "antenna" was a 20 foot piece of hook-up wire thrown on my bedroom floor.

I will never forget my request (via a letter) being played on Radio Kiev, Ukraine, in the former U.S.S.R.

A separate sub-hobby of shortwave listening is obtaining QSL verification cards from all the different stations one can receive:
http://www.joecool.org/shortwave_qsl_car...

I still "DX" the shortwave bands after all these years!

Enjoy.