Shortwave Radio and The PC

An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has an indepth guide on the Ten Tec RX-320, a shortwave radio receiver that connects to the PC and is controlled by software (both Linux and Windows). The article goes into depth on different high frequency modes, broadcast shortwave, and even a bit on ham radio and new digital modes."

Comments

The Point?

[lordrich]

But internet radio is taking over shortwave, this is a pointless product! And besides, won't the pc cause interference with the radio?

Possible apps...

[jkrise]

1. Weather alerts - Global reach, software controllable as well. Should be ideal to get local alerts. Specially suited for /ers who spend hours in front of their PCs blissfully unaware of the weather!

2. Terror alerts - need we say more?

3. Service Pack alerts! the best of the lot. We could have daily bulletins, sponsored programs by virus writers, chat shows with hackers etc.

Good stuff.

Re:Possible apps...

[Surak]

1. Weather alerts - Global reach, software controllable as well. Should be ideal to get local alerts. Specially suited for /ers who spend hours in front of their PCs blissfully unaware of the weather!

Two things:

a. kweather.
b. One word: *window* (you know, that big glass thing in the wall that let's you look outside ;)

2. Terror alerts - need we say more?

Yeah, because as we all know terrorists are gonna wait until the condition is orange or red before they strike! ;)

3. Service Pack alerts! the best of the lot. We could have daily bulletins, sponsored programs by virus writers, chat shows with hackers etc.

Ummm, don't already do this? Or am I missing out on something here?

Interesting

[Kwelstr]

But I always wonder if the Internet could be carried by short wave radio. I mean, if you digitize the packets and send them via short wave, couldn't you just have a world wide wireless internet?

Just wondering, I am not an expert on this field.

How about the internet over short wave?

[Kwelstr]

Couldn't we just have a world wide wireless net if we digitize the signal and send the packets via short wave?

Just wondering.

Re:How about the internet over short wave?

[ch-chuck]

Sure, you can even have Internet over Carrier Pigeon, just don't expect it to perform very well! Much more interesting is Shortwave Radio over the Internet.

When I played around w/ Packet Radio there were a lot of problems, collisions, weak transmitters come and go, the retries and lag time is tremendous - the buzz at the time was: don't expect to be able to d/l PacMan video games using Packet! Whats the max packet baud rate these days? 9600? On HF it's even lower.

At work I can ping a remote site and get a response in about 70 milliseconds, going thru about 20 routers. Packet radio can't touch that.

Look into PSK31, it's an interesting active mode these days for point-to-point qso's, an HF chat room if you will.

Re:Shortwave ?? It still exists ??

[Angry Toad]

My favourite shortwave phenomenon was always the numbers stations. Where else can you listen to real-life spy messages, even if there's not a hope in hell you'll ever be able to decode them?

As I recall there was always a ton of mysterious signals on shortwave - wierd humming stations, modem-ish tone stations (in the 70's)and all sorts of strange, intelligent-sounding clicks and pops. Shortwave is a peculiar little world.

Yes, shortwave is thriving

[tkrotchko]

Primarily because its inexpensive and effective.

The BBC World Service, Deutsche Welles and a host of other national services give a good world opinion on the state of affairs, which seems to contrast with local news during periods of heightened global tension.

Its also fun to listen to the angry broadcasts of small angry countries like Cuba and NK, although the hey-dey for this kind of rhetoric was the cold war.

Now whether or not a PC is the most effective way to listen to shortwave is debatable, but the value of shortwave is not. For $250-300 you can get an excellent portable shortwave radio that will entertain you far longer than the latest hot video card.

Re:SW is not Dead! (Yet)

[mactov]

Hang on, then why the hell would I want to attach one to a PC? Surely even the pleasure of DXing doesn't get augmented with use of the PC.

Lots of reasons, but one is that SW listening conditions are changing constantly in only somewhat-predictable ways. If you are a dedicated DXer it can be both helpful and fun to exchange notes (quickly!) with other DXers.

Used to be, that happened via print media that was always pretty out of date by the time one got hold of it, or via radio programs that one had to have reception to get (so you got into a Catch 22 of how do you hear the program if you can't figure out current reception conditions?)

One group of DX'ers who moved from print to online is SPEEDX. Their website is a vast improvement over the old magazine format.

Re:SW is not Dead! (Yet)

[water-and-sewer]

Shortwave (better known as Worldband) is far from dead. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the mountains of Nicaragua from 1998-2000 and I was as addicted to SW in those days as I am to the internet today.

In remote sites and in poor countries where the internet is still basically another planet, the radio is still a regular and important source of news and information. Shortwave has certainly decreased in importance but it's by no means dead.

That said, there are new projects that may bring it back into vogue. Check out the Internet Radio Linking Project (http://www.irlp.net), which cuts the ionosphere out of the equation. Your voice is transmitted to a local node which feeds it into a VOIP receiver. The signal travels the rest of the way over the internet, and pops back out from another local node near the receiver. Much lower signal loss that way, and the infrastructure is already in place. They offer a modified Redhat solution you can pretty much drop into place on your Linux box. Of course, you still have to get your ham operator's license, but if you were thinking of transmitting you were responsible for doing that anyway.