I've always enjoyed shortwave radio. I've learned a lot about the world as a youngster listening to the BBC, CBC, Radio Havana, Radio South Africa, etc. One of my favorites is an older Optimus/Realistic 12-808 PLL digital job. It went missing a few years back.
While repairing the floor in our camper/caravan this past summer, I found the radio shoved way back in a cabinet. It had been there since July, 2017, with the batteries in it. That was the last time we were able to use the camper.
The battery compartment was pretty nasty with an ugly green color. I scraped the terminals as clean as I could, then hit it with contact cleaner a few times. I put it in my basement to dry out.
Fast forward to last night, I put in new batteries and everything worked. Yay! I now live in the bottom of a bowl so SW reception is a crapshoot at best without an antenna tower but I can pick up my favorite FM station from Chicago, so that makes me smile.
As an aside, just imagine what happens to a mid western American kid in the sixties that lets it slip he's listening to commie Radio Havana every evening. It wasn't fun but I got to see how screwed up my teachers were.
Great to hear you found and got the shortwave radio working. Radios, Hi-Fi, and all that sort of stuff has interested me from when I was quite young. When, in my youth, I was entombed in those boarding schools reading Science Fiction books and having a portable transistor radio was one of the things that kept me sane. I still have that wee pocket radio but can't find the earphone which let me listen to it under the bedclothes when I was supposed to be asleep! Used to listen to Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg which was very "with it" in those days and especially Charles Chilton's "Journey into Space" - Thrilling stuff! You can find episodes on you tube.
Some years later, shortly after I was married, I had a friend who owned a very nice Hi - Fi set up and I was blown away by the experience of listening to stereo music. I managed to convince Mrs J that we should have one but, being newly married, couldn't afford anything comparable to the one my friend had. Ended up buying this:
It had two quite big speakers with bass reflex ports but no tweeters:
Made a much better sound than our wee kitchen radio or record player though. No doubt you'll have noticed the 8 track cassette player? At that time the battle between cassette and 8 track was raging strongly with little indication as to which was going to be more popular so, as I had an 8 track in the car and a number of 8 track cartridges I went for 8 track - I'll say no more on that as we all know how that one worked out! Luckily it also had/has AM and FM tuners in it and an aux feed on the back:
Whilst pretty pathetic by today's standards it sounded quite good back in the early '70's - with headphones it actually sounded even better and it whetted my appetite for Hi Fi. So, when I bought a VHS recorder/player and discovered it could play sound back through a separate amp I plugged it into the Shibuya and, found it was not compatible! Wouldn't play would it! So now I was on a mission to save for a decent sound system to link in. Took me about 3 years to save enough for a basic Sony AV amp, two Sony bookshelf speakers and two very small Sony surround speakers. No centre speaker or sub. WOW! 100% better than the old Shibuya which I installed in the garage where, over 40 years later, it still keeps me company to this day - mostly tuned to Radio4.
The amp was very basic with no internal decoders so just amplified whatever it was fed with. It took me about 2 years to realize that the VHS player was capable of decoding sound formats and that, when activated, the amp would attempt to reproduce it. This improved the sound from the speakers but without a centre speaker or subwoofer I was missing a lot of the quality and the wee rear speakers weren't really up for it. Another period of saving up followed and I also increased my evening classes from 2 to 5 per week which allowed me to save enough to buy a really good quality Yamaha 7.1 amp, 2 large bookshelf main speakers and a really good centre speaker with 2 smaller system matched rear speakers and, a year later, a dedicated subwoofer. The results are spectacular. The attack scene from Master and Commander is quite literally a shattering experience with the sound of bits of fractured wood making you inclined to "duck". In other movies bullets ricochet around the room, space ships come up behind you and fly overhead to appear on the screen, etc, etc. Have to be a bit careful with the sub as it vibrates the floor considerably - good thing our house doesn't share any walls with the neighbours too!!
I was so pleased with the amp that for some time all I did was use it to watch blu rays and stuff on the TV when one day I discovered it has inbuilt radio tuners and an internet radio tuner. The internet radio one has an enormous inventory, seems to be able to pick up anything from anywhere! I really love listening into some of the "small town" (would you call them "Hick" Cheest?) country and western stations from across the pond. Some are so small and local that you get them advertising for folks to come along to the dance this Saturday and bring stuff for the tombola etc. Some have accents so "thick" I can hardly understand what they're saying. In some respects I find myself thinking of the DJ "Super Soul" in the film Vanishing Point. Not quite short wave, but I can spend hours listening in.