Is Shortwave Radio Cost Effective?

If you decide to read this in one sitting and it takes you a day to do it, the world will have spent millions of dollars on getting its message to you.

That's only transmission costs for broadcasting stations.

If there is that level of investment in sending the stuff, we owe it to ourselves to listen to it. I tried a similar sum to work out the prime-time ERP. I ran out of digits. No prizes, but if you know how many watts are in the air at any one time, do contact us.

Over the holidays, the crystal-set bug got me again. An improvised short-wave coil found me about half a dozen stations at head-phone strength. Not so goodfor DX, though.

Our AR7030 has to handle the world's wattage, great, small and the very, very tiny. And there are parts of the spectrum where the great and tiny are side by side. The sub-band 7000-7500kHz, for example, contains a ham-band with tiny DX signals next to power-house broadcasters.

In Europe, we have to deal with this dynamic range and AOR make this a design point. And having designed it in, all you have to do is enjoy it. With this tremendous daily investment, I see my listening as a tax rebate.