Shortwave is dead. Yeah right.
Nah, shortwave isn’t dead yet. Nothing beats the magic of radio waves. True, Internet radio (which by definition isn’t radio at all) took over in many occasions. Better sound quality (but not always), no hassling with receivers and antennas, no worries about band conditions, and no worries about a coughing sun causing HF blackouts.
WRTH cover 2013
WRTH, the SWL Bible
Yet there are numerous places on Earth where they might never have heard of Internet. Even if they did, they probably wouldn’t be able to afford even the slowest dial-up account. Then there are shortwave listeners, who think picking up the tiniest signals makes a great hobby. Many of them have an even better understanding of antennas than the average ham. If you want to know more, DXZone has put together a nice list of SWL-related websites.
SWL is an art. Some say it’s a religion. If this would be true, they sure have their own Bible: WRTH (World Radio TV Handbook). The very first edition was published in 1947, years before I was born. The first copy I bought dates back to the early seventies. The price for the 2013 edition is £24.95 (about $40, or €31). This is includes shipping anywhere in the world.
WRTH is divided into the following sections:
Features – This section is in full color and contains reviews of receivers and ancillary equipment, articles on topical issues such as digital radio, interviews with broadcasters, reception conditions, color maps showing the location of SW transmitters, and other topics of interest to Listeners and DXers.
National Radio – This section covers the world’s domestic radio services. The listings are by country and include all stations broadcasting on LW, MW and SW, and most stations broadcasting on FM, together with contact details.
International Radio – Full details of all broadcasters transmitting internationally are given in this section and are listed by country. The schedules shown are the ‘B’ or ‘winter’ SW frequencies as supplied by the broadcasters and confirmed by monitoring, together with any LW or MW frequencies used. It also contains a sub-section showing Clandestine and Other Target Broadcasters arranged by target country.
The ‘A’ or ‘summer’ schedules, along with updates to broadcaster details, are available as a pdf download from the WRTH website in May each year. Please note – International broadcast SW frequencies change twice a year. The ‘B’ season comes into effect at the end of October each year and the ‘A’ season at the end of March. It typically takes 4-6 weeks after the start of the season for the broadcasters to settle on the final frequencies they will use, although changes do continue to be made. We monitor all the frequencies and changes before releasing our information.
Frequency Lists – This section contains MW frequency lists grouped by frequency within regions, lists of all international and domestic SW broadcasts in frequency order, and international SW broadcasts in English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish, and DRM transmissions shown by UTC.
Television – The TV section has details of the main terrestrial national broadcasters, large regional networks, and some local stations, arranged alphabetically by country.
Reference – This section has tables and listings of: International and Domestic Transmitter sites, Standard Time and Frequency Transmissions, DX Club information, International Organizations, and other essential information.
KBC to test digital text transmissions
The Mighty KBC will test to the USA on Sunday 11 November 2012 00.00 – 02.00 UTC on 9450 kHz.
Please join the Mighty KBC for a test of a digital text sent via a shortwave broadcast transmitter. This will take place during the next transmission to North America, Sunday 0000-0200 UTC, at approximately 0130 and just before the end of the broadcast at 0200.
All you need is a basic shortwave receiver (no SSB mode is necessary), and a basic personal computer. Using a patch cord, you will feed the audio out of the earphone jack (or line out) of your radio into the microphone jack of your PC. If you don’t have a patch cord, you can try placing the speaker of your radio close to the built-in microphone of a laptop PC.
You will also need software. There are several freeware or shareware programs used by the amateur radio community that decode digital text modes. One is FLDIGI, available from http://www.w1hkj.com/. After installing FLDIGI, pull down the Configure menu, then click Sound Card, and select the soundcard your PC is using.
You might also have to adjust your audio settings. In Windows 7, left click twice on the speaker icon in the lower right of PC display, then click Options, then click Properties, then click Recording, then click the input that works. Other operating systems will have different procedures. A good way to test your audio settings is to try to decode the radio amateurs using the PSK31 mode on 14070 kHz.
For the test digital text transmissions on Sunday, The Mighty KBC will be using the QPSK125 mode. On your software, your cursor should be centered on 1500 Hertz, where you will see the ‘waterfall’ of the QPSK125 signal. You can decode the transmission while you receive it, or record the transmission and decode from the recording. The latter will give you more opportunities to perfect the technique.
The test to be transmitted will be a formatted html file. Copy it from <html> to (and including) </html>, and paste it to a text editor (such as Notepad in Windows). Save the file, using any file name, with the suffix .htm or .html. Then open the file in any web browser. If all goes well, this might be the first time you receive a shortwave radio broadcast in color!
In the future, an app will be developed to make this process simpler.
Review Tecsun PL-310
I’m probably more of a listener than a ham. Many of my antennas are dedicated to listening, not transmitting. Receivers outnumber transmitters by a factor of 2. In spite of modern technologies such as satellite and the Internet, listening to shortwave stations is alive and kicking. While it is great to sit behind a professional desktop receiver connected to excellent outdoor antennas, I don’t always want to spend a large part of the day in the shack.
As my old Aiwa SW portable started to die, I went online to check out the current breeds of portable SW radios. One of the brands I ran into, was Tecsun. The models were so cheap that I could buy a truckload of them and still keep some of the the money I reserved for replacing the Aiwa. After reading (sometimes raving) reviews elsewhere, I ordered three models: the PL-310, the PL-390 and the PL-660. This is the first review in the Tecsun series and covers the cheapest of the lot, the PL-310. I bought mine here.
Tecsun PL-310
In the box:
The radio, three rechargeable batteries, soft pouch, earphones, USB charger / power supply. Note: other sellers will ship an external wire antenna instead of a USB charger. Compare the extras each seller offers before buying.
Look & Feel
Measuring only 141(W) X 87(H) X 30(D) mm, this radio will slide into your pocket easily. It is thoughtfully designed, beautiful even, and all the buttons and knobs are 
exactly in the right place. The amber LCD gives more information than you can dream of: frequency, time, bandwidth, signal strength (in dBµ!), signal-to-noise ratio, temperature (in Celsius or Fahrenheit), battery type, charge indicator, battery level, and the time you want the alarm to go off. The LCD illumination can either be temporary or continuous, an option I never saw before.
Connections
At the right side of the radio you will find the tuning and the volume knobs. Both are driving opto couplers, so no crackling pots to worry about. At the left side you will find two 3.5mm connections for a stereo headphone and an external antenna. There’a also a USB connector present, which can only be used to power the radio and/or charge the three NiMH AA cells this radio uses. The type of batteries (standard or rechargeable) can be selected from the front panel. This will not only prevent problems, but will also display the right battery level.
Basic specifications
The PL-310 is designed around the Silicon Labs Si4734 chip, which basically is a complete DSP receiver in one small package. All Tecsun had to do was to link it to an audio amplifier, buttons and knobs, a display and such and voilá, one working radio! Brilliant. For more specs you can go to the end of this post and download the manual.
The frequency range is as follows: LW: 153 – 513 KHz, MW: 520 – 1710 KHz, SW: 2300 – 21950 KHz, FM: 64 – 108 MHz. The desired MW spacing, 9 or 10 KHz, is user selectable. When set at 10 KHz, which is the norm in the USA, the temperature will be automatically displayed in Fahrenheit instead of Celsius. The integrated DSP is nothing short of amazing. When listening to SW stations, the bandwidth can be set to 6, 4, 3, 2 or 1 KHz. As this is not an audio DSP but a ‘real’ IF DSP, this thing really works. Splatter and such can be filtered out with ease, and easily defeats some of the desktop receivers I own.
Tuning
Tecsun offers more than one way of tuning. One of them is, of course, tuning manually. The second option is entering a frequency by using the keypad. The third way is to let the Tecsun itself find all the stations. This system, dubbed ATS (Automatic Tuning System), will find all stations within the selected band and store them into memory. After scanning, the tuning knob will enable you to quickly switch from station to station. Similar systems in other radios often failed miserably, as they couldn’t distinguish noise from real signals. Tecsun got it right this time though, and it’s a blessing when listening to shortwave. Just after the hour, when stations come and go, I let the Tecsun scan again, after which the old memory contents are overwritten with active stations.
Something to get used to is the way Tecsun implemented manual tuning. When you rotate the tuning knob fast, the radio will skip frequencies by the standard channel spacing (e.g. 9 KHz on MW, 5 KHz on SW). When rotating slowly, the radio will tune one KHz at the time. It proved to be very challenging to get the rotation speed just right.
Performance LW, MW
When you buy this radio, you will quickly discover that LW is disabled by default. This seems odd, but as it turns out there’s a reason for that: on LW this radio is as deaf as a post. Even a reasonably strong station such as the BBC (198 KHz) is hardly noticeable. As the external antenna input only serves FM and SW, connecting a long wire won’t help. On MW the performance is quite good though. Sensitivity is above average, and the selectivity is excellent. AM 747, the strongest MW transmitter here, and located very close to me, didn’t manage to overload the receiver. Note: the to-be-reviewed-later Tecsun PL-660 did collapse completely.
Performance FM, SW
On FM, this radio is excellent. Not much else to tell here. Period. On SW, especially with an external wire antenna connected to the radio, the performance is much better than one would expect from a small package like this. Only one thing is slightly annoying: the hard coded (and sometimes completely wrong) frequency range of SW bands. 41 meters, for example, starts at 7.1MHz instead of 7.2Mhz (in effect since March 29, 2009). Bottom line: tuning manually is a must now and then. Many stations transmit outside these outdated and limited ranges embedded in the Silicon Labs chip.
Audio quality
The audio quality is a pleasant surprise. You can turn up the volume without any distortion, and the frequency spectrum is better than any other similar sized radio I ever owned. Great stereo sound on FM too, when using a headphone.
Conclusion
For less than $45, you get an amazing piece of technology; the price/performance ratio is off the scale. A nice touch is the inclusion of the 4 meters band, which is already available to hams in some countries. The Tecsun PL-310 is not perfect though. The radio is completely deaf on LW, uses outdated or limited SW ranges, and manual tuning can be challenging.
