Shortwave Radio is Dying; otherwise, All Is Well. More later.

 

A Radio blog post needs a pic of a radio, correct? This is my XHDATA D-220. which I got on Halloween, 2024. Decent radio. Will take a wire on SW, and will DX on MW with a loop. Decent emergency radio. Tuning both the MW and SW bands can be tricky, but it will pull in stations. The orange ones will glow in the dark, as you can tell. Seemed to fit Halloween, really.

This is just a note to say I'm doing OK overall. Still in decent health. I haven't posted any new blog articles here because I sadly have neglected my blog lately. Some of it is trying to straighten out finances left over from my late mother's estate. Other issues are just the work it takes to put out a blog article. It is indeed a bit of work, and I tend sometimes to put it off.

I also have been trying to finish a new fiction novel, and that also takes up a considerable amount of writing time.

All that aside, I am well, my two cats Tigger and Racofrats are well. I have a couple additional portable radios since my last blog post, a Tecsun PL330 and a small XHDATA D220, and a spare Grundig G2 that was for sale, factory-refurbished, on Amazon for a few weeks. I got one of the 15 they had remaining. It's a great radio, works a bit differently from my first G2, in that the bandwidth is a bit wider so it's more pleasing on MW and SW, and it also will take a 25 ft. wire, which helps bring in stations with a bit more signal.

And it will RECORD. Which is the main thing, because SHORTWAVE RADIO IS DYING.

It's a combination of stations going off the air -- VOA, Marti, etc., are gone, and who knows if they will come back. Even World's Last Chance Radio on 9330 kHz, which used to be on most of the night here from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. or so -- both in English and Portuguese -- seems to have cut back some hours.

Some other US domestic broadcasters like WRMI and WWCR seem to have operated at reduced schedules compared to 5 years ago. It may be a combination of that and crappy ionospheric conditions, but there is less to hear than there was in 2022.

I think that a lot of broadcasters, and the programs which use SW broadcasters, are running out of money. Just a guess, but it would fit the present day economy where worldwide inflation is still a factor to many people's wallets.

So I am using my new G2 to record what I hear. My old G2's 4GB of internal audio memory is full. The new one has over 67 hours of record time left on it.

Not only is Shortwave Broadcasting dying, but the HF ham bands are dead half the time. For being such boasting braggarts -- 'you SWL's just listen to 200 KW stations, we hams have to WORK the weak ones!' -- hams are pretty much lazy-asses who DO NOT USE THEIR SPECTRUM.

It's not just that the Solar Cycle is a weak one (less eUV to ionise the Ionosphere), it's the issue of hams not using the HF bands as much as they did in the 2010's, the 2000's, the 1990's, 1980's, etc. They're just not using the bands as much. I guess they like their internet more than switching on their Icom 7300 and getting on the air.

Maybe they trust their waterfalls too much, and are just lazy about making contacts. I don't know how many times I've read comments by a ham talking about using their stupid waterfall display to find contacts instead of just tuning and listening for the weak ones that might not look so great on a waterfall, but could be usable DX contacts.

I know there are some hams who worked other stations on 10 Meters when it was in a few months back, and they were actually trying to make the best of the propagation -- but when I tune the HF ham bands, even on good propagation days and evenings the bands are surprisingly DEAD compared to 11, 22, 33 years ago, during past Solar Cycle peaks Even when the prop is up, there are swaths of 20 Meters that are vacant.

I know some hams online think this past Solar Cycle has been great. They'll post graphs of Sunspot numbers, not realising that Sunspots do not make the ionosphere work. EUV makes the ionosphere work, and even if Sunspots are UP, if the eUV is DOWN, the ionosphere is going to be weaker. And eUV is down from 1996, it's been gradually dropping.

But the 'Solar Cycle 25 is Great' myth persists. Even some veteran hams have told me that myth online. But they obviously haven't checked their old logbooks to recognise the relative absense of activity on the bands today compared to back in 1995, or 2003.

Some of the problem might be that they're all on FT8. Which means that eventually the governments can reduce the HF ham bands to maybe 5 frequencies, FT8 only, and give the rest of the band spectrum to HF Traders and the like.

Use it or lose it, guys. So far, it looks like you're willing to gamble on losing it. Oh well.

Either way, I'm preparing for the inevitable downturn in propagation, and the fact that on HF at least, there will be much less to hear as the years progress. That means I'm recording more of what I hear, and also trying out DSP SSB radios to see if they will be useful in the future when the propagation recedes, because DSP seems to be helpful in RESOLVING weak signals. And I think the years ahead we're going to be hearing weak signals, mostly.

Tigger the Cat. He's 18 years old. Still in good health, thank God. I make sure I pet him more and more each day. He still hunts rats and mice. He is a survivor. I got him when he was a tiny kitten in March, 2007. Amazing how the years go by.

My cat Racofrats. I've had him since he was a kitten, September 2011. He's doing well, thank God. He has a tiny meow for being a large cat.

Timmy the Cat, he was a great little pal. He took ill rather quickly and then after getting stronger, he died on me on March 1st. Pet your cats, folks, and treasure them. You never know how long you will have them around.

All that said, I will post some articles over the next few weeks. 

Until then, Peace.

C.C. May 9th, 2025.