Scan and ocr by SW77
5
Preface
Approximately twenty million short-wave receivers have been sold in the United States over the
past decade, yet for many people shortwave is an arcane art and its listeners are recluses chained by
headphones to complex receivers only slightly smaller than a refrigerator. Most persons who are not
already shortwave listeners would probably be surprised to learn that English broadcasts and music
direct from England, Germany, Spain, Australia, and a host of other nations can be received on sets
small enough to fit in an office drawer and not much harder to operate than a digital FM radio.
One of the great barriers to wider use of shortwave has been this lack of understanding. The
primary object of this Handbook, ever since Hank Bennett's first edition in 1974, has been to break
down that barrier by showing that enjoyable shortwave listening can easily be achieved, and moreover
that the more difficult shortwave feats are based upon fairly simple principles. A shortwave listener
can spend months of planning and waiting for a weak signal from Africa or Asia, or he can simply
punch four digits into a portable set by his bedside and listen to news from the British Broadcasting
Corporation or Radio Japan. He can spend hundreds of dollars erecting an antenna, or design a
specialized one built from a few dollars' worth of ordinary wire, or can get by with the two-foot
"whip" built into his set. But to do any of these, a prospective listener needs to know how to choose
his set, evaluate antennae, and locate the best frequencies for the planned reception. If he desires
confirmation of his "catches," he needs to know the protocol for obtaining a verification and, perhaps,
how to describe his reception in the local language. This is the type of information this Handbook was
designed to give, in a form readily usable by the average shortwave listener.
