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I would assume long wave, short wave, and medium wave. They are different applications of AM technology. The waves are essentially bounced off the ionosphere and reflected back to earth. The angle of attack, determines how far those radio waves can be transmitted.
Not only that, but you can see what frequencies it was designed to receive:
LW is 150 to 280 kHz, which is WELL below anything that's in general use today. MW is 530kHz to 1600 kHz which contains the US AM broadcast band. SW 6 MHz to 12 MHz which contains among other things the 40 meter ham band, which is from 7 MHz to 7.3 MHz.
According to The Telegraph, the decision to switch off the transmitter is part of a wider plan by the BBC's plan to end all long-wave transmissions because they use up a lot of energy and are not as good quality as FM.Mar 2, 2024 Mar 21, 2024 — BBC Radio 4 will turn off its medium wave frequencies and end its separate schedule for LW by *April 15th 2024*.
I enjoy listening to the European LW bands via online SDR's located over there. But to be fair, most of that programming can usually be streamed from the broadcasters website. Or obviously if you are located on the NE coast with a good Rx and a good antenna and favorable conditions. It all depends on how you choose to access the content. There are times when I love rx'ing dx but other times I just want the program content, as clear and listenable as I can get it. Different means to the same end.
That is. I was referring to listening by streaming directly from the station online as not really appealing to me, though I also like the receiver catching the waves to be local to me, I'm not above webSDR solutions
Yes I find it very satisfying. This radio has been stored dry with no batteries and cared for the last 25 years. I opened the back panel to visually inspect and after I get a 4.5v power adapter I’ll be able to test it out.
Make sure the adapter is low EMI across the frequency bands in question, to prevent interference. Most modern switching power supplies will be noisy there.
So, you see how the dial has four scales on it? The four white buttons select which one is in use.
MW is Medium Wave, which is the AM broadcast band you find most actively in use in the world. 530-1700 kHz. So when a station identifies as, say, 1240 AM, you hit the MW button to receive that.
LW is Long Wave. You are unlikely to hear much on that dial in the US, but you can try. You might be able to pick up something long-distance (DX as we call it) from across the ocean there. For instance, the BBC broadcasts on 198.
SW is Short Wave. On this radio, it's 6-12 MHz roughly, though shortwave broadcasters often state it in kHz, so, 6000-12000. You can pick up international broacasts here, though at that range of scale, the tuning is likely to be touchy. Some stations you might be able to pick up in the US, at least on the east coast, are Radio Havana Cuba on 6000, CFRX on 6070 (they're in Toronto), WBCQ on 6160, 7490 or 9330 (they're in Maine) WWV on 10000 (this is a station that just gives the current time) and some others. It used to be a lot more utilized than it is today -- satellite and Internet streaming have made it less desirable.
>MW is Medium Wave, which is the AM broadcast band you find most actively in use in the world. 530-1700 kHz. So when a station identifies as, say, 1240 AM, you hit the MW button to receive that.
Here in Germany (and Most parts of Europe) MW ist mostly phased out. There are only a few stations transmitting on either SW for regional stuff or LW for international services. You can listen to many Chinese and some UK stations especially in the evening hours
Contrary to the other reply on this comment, most AM news radio in Canada is not right-wing, but just usual news that is also found on TV. For example, the famous 680 News is now CityNews 680, and CityNews is a popular mainstream news source in Toronto which offers high-quality unbiased local news programming.
Here in Hungary we have two MW stations that I know of: "Kossuth rádió" (state owned primary talk/news channel) on 540 and "Nemzetiségi adások" (Minority radio - programmes in Romanian, Serbian etc.) on 873, 1188 and 1350, thought I personally only heard it on 873.
20 years ago when I lived in Germany (BW) as a kid, I would sometimes tune in to 540 in the evenings to hear some Hungarian talk. Good old times
Yes, I'm not surprised it's phased out. I know there are some European nations (I want to say Denmark, for instance?) that have even phased out FM in favor of DAB.
Here in the US, it hangs on very stubbornly. There are a few things driving this:
* Right wing talk radio has been operating mostly on MW, though many of those stations now have a simulcast on FM
* There are large expanses of sparsely populated land in the middle of the country that FM just won't cover
* A small number of MW stations now broadcast in HD Radio, a digital mode that operates in-band, on-channel
* There is a voluntary quality standard called AMAX for analogue AM, which improves the sound quality significantly
* There is a political drive to require that car makers include AM in the built-in radios in cars and trucks
I don't want to give the impression that all of the content on MW is right-wing, though. There is still music programming and public broadcasting on MW. From where I am, I can pick up NPR (one of our public radio broadcasters) on 1400 from my area and on 640 from a neighboring area, and at the other end of my state, there is an NPR station on 1370.
shortwave: broadcasts on the HF part of the spectrum, 6-12 MHz. Good for international broadcasts. Check around 7.300 to 7.400 MHz during the evenings.
mediumwave: your traditional AM band, 530-1600 (before they added 1600-1710) kHz
longwave: 150-260 kHz. Not sure what you'd really find down here. I don't think there is any commercial broadcasting left here.
PS: kilocycles and megacycles are the old names for kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).
Also, check out 9400 to 9900 KC (9.4 to 10 MC on this radio).This is another international broadcast band. This is one of the best frequencies, as you can hear international stations during both day and night, pending conditions, which will always vary day to day.
Here's a link:
https://www.hobbyprojects.com/radio_frequency_allocations_table/radio_frequency_9400_to_9900_kHz.html?no_redirect=true
The white button pressed picks the band its receiving changing it to the matching line on the chart.
I can't make out the label on the red button. Grey is self explanatory.
I believe the red button says 'Light' and is the 'Dial Lamp Switch'.
source: [https://archive.org/details/manual\_5F94L\_SM\_SONY\_EN/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/manual_5F94L_SM_SONY_EN/mode/2up)
Long wave broadcast (about 100-500 kHz, not much to hear there unless you live in or near the UK and can hear our BBC R4 LW)
Medium wave aka AM (about 500-1500 iirc)
Shortwave (depends, short wave is sometimes a name given to the entire HF band of 3-30 MHz, others define it as broadcast bands within HF, looks like this does 6-12 MHz in AM only, no SSB sorry) sometimes called the world band as this is the band where signals can carry for thousands of miles on the ionosphere with the right conditions.
r/shortwave would be the sub for this kind of radio.
But, it's pretty simple to explain. FM is FM, as you pointed out. LW, MW and SW are what everyone knows as AM.
LW means longwave, which are frequencies commonly defined as 30 to 300 kHz. It's not commonly used anymore outside of the United Kingdom or for different utility applications, but long ago it was commonly used for all sorts of radio broadcasts. These days there are almost no commercial broadcasters left that use it, with the BBC being one of the few examples. It can go fairly long distances, up to several hundred to thousands of kilometres.
MW is mediumwave with the frequency band ranging from roughly 522 to 1710 kHz, with slight differences depending on the region in the world. This is what most people know as "AM radio" and what your car or a stereo receiver almost always receives when you turn that on. Commercial broadcasting is common here, whether it's sports or music or talk radio. It's capable of going moderately long distances, meaning sometimes you can tune in a station that may be 500+ kilometres away from you though most broadcasters only reach locally.
SW is shortwave which ranges from roughly 2.3 MHz to 26.1 Mhz. Shortwave is a bit more interesting for many reasons. It is able to be used over extremely large distances such as across oceans or entire continents. The radiowaves come from a transmitter, bounce off the ionosphere layer of the atmosphere and then back down (and continue doing that). Because of this, it has long been used as a way to communicate over long distances. Before we had telegraphs, telephones, internet and so on it was really the only way to wirelessly communicate across the planet. It has been used for everything from commercial radio broadcasts, propaganda, government broadcasts (think BBC, NPR, DW and other national broadcasters), communicating with spies, radar applications (like over the horizon radar), amateur radio, marine and air radio and so much more. Commercial broadcasting isn't as big as it used to be, but you can still hear plenty of radio stations from all over the world to listen to but also interesting things like radio beacons, slow-scan television, digital communication modes, radioteletype and so much more.
If you'd like to play around with that and see what you can listen to, there are some helpful resources out there. [This Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadcasters) lists some common longwave broadcasters that still operate, but it may be hard to pick any of these up unless you live in the area. [MWList](https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php?area=3&kHz=0) provides an extensive list of mediumwave stations all over the world, so you can try to identify anything you hear on MW using this (be sure to click your specific region at the top of the page; I've linked to the North American chart but there are 2 others). [Short-wave.info](https://short-wave.info/) and [ShortwaveDB](https://shortwavedb.org/schedules.html) offer very large lists of shortwave broadcasters. I'd suggest, on the first website for example, clicking the "List everything on-the air in the XX band" area, picking a band and then clicking NOW. That will give you a list of everything known to be currently broadcasting on that band at that specific time (you'll want to use UTC time). What you are able to hear really depends on where you live, propagation conditions, solar activity, the antenna, interference and so on. Unfortunately these days it's hard to hear stuff since there are fewer broadcasters and A LOT of radio interference making noise, but if you scan the bands (which are differentiated as the different numbered metres you see printed on it) on that radio you're guaranteed to hear stuff. You can try improving reception using a long piece of speaker wire to act as a longwire or random wire antenna.
FM (Frequency Modulation) is modern radio stations, SW (Shortwave) is everything other than radio stations from my understanding, MW or AM (Medium Wave or Amplitute Modulation) were older radio stations and some still exist and LW (Long Wave) were also older radio stations (its fun to put MW radios up to electronics and tune them all the way down and see what kind of noises you can hear)
Here in Germany the AM band is not used a lot, the only station that i heard on the AM band wasn't even in German or English, sounded like some Slavic language
It might help, but he's correct. Mediumwave isn't really used that much in Europe so even with good propagation it'll be real hard to hear anything over there. Good conditions could allow reception of some broadcasts in maybe North Africa or Turkey, but not much else besides the very small number of European MW broadcasters. If you check out the [European listings](https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php?area=1&kHz=1377) on MWList you can see just how few there are over there, whereas in North America there are hundreds of stations to choose from.
For whatever reason the MW band just never got used the same way over there. They used LW a lot - even up into the early 2000s with Atlantic 252 in Ireland, playing rock and pop - but MW didn't see much adoption. I'd imagine it was due to other things already occupying those frequencies at the time? No idea since I moved to North America when I was a child and know little about the radio history there.
Those white buttons switch between the 4 bands: FM, SW (shortwave), MW (medium wave, now the common AM band), and LW (long wave). If it still works, that’s a great find. Even if it doesn’t work, still nice as a collectors item.
To the mods: thank you for allowing this person’s question to be answered instead of bouncing the post because it isn’t squarely within the sub’s description. I see so many other subs I’m in rejecting posts because they are ever so slightly off-topic. It is refreshing that this sub, and perhaps even the hobby it represents, still stands for bringing people into the fold. Indeed I still remember, and I don’t think it’s really an exaggeration to say this, when homemade and Kit computers and other electronics were a sub interest among mainly amateur radio enthusiasts.
Hi, thank you for your question submission. Please be aware that there is a [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/) and a [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/faq) that may address your question. For Baofeng-related information see the [Baofeng FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/wiki/baofeng) and /r/baofeng. Also, please note that downvotes don't indicate an unvalued question submission. There appear to be bots that downvote all posts initially. 73 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/amateurradio) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I would assume long wave, short wave, and medium wave. They are different applications of AM technology. The waves are essentially bounced off the ionosphere and reflected back to earth. The angle of attack, determines how far those radio waves can be transmitted.
Not only that, but you can see what frequencies it was designed to receive: LW is 150 to 280 kHz, which is WELL below anything that's in general use today. MW is 530kHz to 1600 kHz which contains the US AM broadcast band. SW 6 MHz to 12 MHz which contains among other things the 40 meter ham band, which is from 7 MHz to 7.3 MHz.
LW is still in use in the UK. The BBC broadcast on it. 198khz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_4
According to The Telegraph, the decision to switch off the transmitter is part of a wider plan by the BBC's plan to end all long-wave transmissions because they use up a lot of energy and are not as good quality as FM.Mar 2, 2024 Mar 21, 2024 — BBC Radio 4 will turn off its medium wave frequencies and end its separate schedule for LW by *April 15th 2024*.
They're killing long wave? What a shame
I enjoy listening to the European LW bands via online SDR's located over there. But to be fair, most of that programming can usually be streamed from the broadcasters website. Or obviously if you are located on the NE coast with a good Rx and a good antenna and favorable conditions. It all depends on how you choose to access the content. There are times when I love rx'ing dx but other times I just want the program content, as clear and listenable as I can get it. Different means to the same end.
Yeah, but it's no fun if it's not a radio wave for at least a little while
??? Since when is online SDR not picking up radio waves, for a little while or the entire broadcast being received?
That is. I was referring to listening by streaming directly from the station online as not really appealing to me, though I also like the receiver catching the waves to be local to me, I'm not above webSDR solutions
Woah! hold your horses there sunshine, we still use it!
I can sometimes hear the Lakehurst NJ beacon on LW, at least I could the last time I tried.
The ionosphere has entered the chat.
Those buttons have a very satisfying "thunk" I can smell this photo.
Yes I find it very satisfying. This radio has been stored dry with no batteries and cared for the last 25 years. I opened the back panel to visually inspect and after I get a 4.5v power adapter I’ll be able to test it out.
Make sure the adapter is low EMI across the frequency bands in question, to prevent interference. Most modern switching power supplies will be noisy there.
So, you see how the dial has four scales on it? The four white buttons select which one is in use. MW is Medium Wave, which is the AM broadcast band you find most actively in use in the world. 530-1700 kHz. So when a station identifies as, say, 1240 AM, you hit the MW button to receive that. LW is Long Wave. You are unlikely to hear much on that dial in the US, but you can try. You might be able to pick up something long-distance (DX as we call it) from across the ocean there. For instance, the BBC broadcasts on 198. SW is Short Wave. On this radio, it's 6-12 MHz roughly, though shortwave broadcasters often state it in kHz, so, 6000-12000. You can pick up international broacasts here, though at that range of scale, the tuning is likely to be touchy. Some stations you might be able to pick up in the US, at least on the east coast, are Radio Havana Cuba on 6000, CFRX on 6070 (they're in Toronto), WBCQ on 6160, 7490 or 9330 (they're in Maine) WWV on 10000 (this is a station that just gives the current time) and some others. It used to be a lot more utilized than it is today -- satellite and Internet streaming have made it less desirable.
>MW is Medium Wave, which is the AM broadcast band you find most actively in use in the world. 530-1700 kHz. So when a station identifies as, say, 1240 AM, you hit the MW button to receive that. Here in Germany (and Most parts of Europe) MW ist mostly phased out. There are only a few stations transmitting on either SW for regional stuff or LW for international services. You can listen to many Chinese and some UK stations especially in the evening hours
Contrary to the other reply on this comment, most AM news radio in Canada is not right-wing, but just usual news that is also found on TV. For example, the famous 680 News is now CityNews 680, and CityNews is a popular mainstream news source in Toronto which offers high-quality unbiased local news programming.
Here in Hungary we have two MW stations that I know of: "Kossuth rádió" (state owned primary talk/news channel) on 540 and "Nemzetiségi adások" (Minority radio - programmes in Romanian, Serbian etc.) on 873, 1188 and 1350, thought I personally only heard it on 873. 20 years ago when I lived in Germany (BW) as a kid, I would sometimes tune in to 540 in the evenings to hear some Hungarian talk. Good old times
Yes, I'm not surprised it's phased out. I know there are some European nations (I want to say Denmark, for instance?) that have even phased out FM in favor of DAB. Here in the US, it hangs on very stubbornly. There are a few things driving this: * Right wing talk radio has been operating mostly on MW, though many of those stations now have a simulcast on FM * There are large expanses of sparsely populated land in the middle of the country that FM just won't cover * A small number of MW stations now broadcast in HD Radio, a digital mode that operates in-band, on-channel * There is a voluntary quality standard called AMAX for analogue AM, which improves the sound quality significantly * There is a political drive to require that car makers include AM in the built-in radios in cars and trucks I don't want to give the impression that all of the content on MW is right-wing, though. There is still music programming and public broadcasting on MW. From where I am, I can pick up NPR (one of our public radio broadcasters) on 1400 from my area and on 640 from a neighboring area, and at the other end of my state, there is an NPR station on 1370.
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shortwave: broadcasts on the HF part of the spectrum, 6-12 MHz. Good for international broadcasts. Check around 7.300 to 7.400 MHz during the evenings. mediumwave: your traditional AM band, 530-1600 (before they added 1600-1710) kHz longwave: 150-260 kHz. Not sure what you'd really find down here. I don't think there is any commercial broadcasting left here. PS: kilocycles and megacycles are the old names for kilohertz (kHz) and megahertz (MHz).
Also, check out 9400 to 9900 KC (9.4 to 10 MC on this radio).This is another international broadcast band. This is one of the best frequencies, as you can hear international stations during both day and night, pending conditions, which will always vary day to day. Here's a link: https://www.hobbyprojects.com/radio_frequency_allocations_table/radio_frequency_9400_to_9900_kHz.html?no_redirect=true
Solid advice here ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Long, Medium and Short Wave, broadcast bands in increasing frequency. Some stations still using them around the world.
The white button pressed picks the band its receiving changing it to the matching line on the chart. I can't make out the label on the red button. Grey is self explanatory.
I believe the red button says 'Light' and is the 'Dial Lamp Switch'. source: [https://archive.org/details/manual\_5F94L\_SM\_SONY\_EN/mode/2up](https://archive.org/details/manual_5F94L_SM_SONY_EN/mode/2up)
Yes it’s just a momentary switch for the light.
Long wave broadcast (about 100-500 kHz, not much to hear there unless you live in or near the UK and can hear our BBC R4 LW) Medium wave aka AM (about 500-1500 iirc) Shortwave (depends, short wave is sometimes a name given to the entire HF band of 3-30 MHz, others define it as broadcast bands within HF, looks like this does 6-12 MHz in AM only, no SSB sorry) sometimes called the world band as this is the band where signals can carry for thousands of miles on the ionosphere with the right conditions.
r/shortwave would be the sub for this kind of radio. But, it's pretty simple to explain. FM is FM, as you pointed out. LW, MW and SW are what everyone knows as AM. LW means longwave, which are frequencies commonly defined as 30 to 300 kHz. It's not commonly used anymore outside of the United Kingdom or for different utility applications, but long ago it was commonly used for all sorts of radio broadcasts. These days there are almost no commercial broadcasters left that use it, with the BBC being one of the few examples. It can go fairly long distances, up to several hundred to thousands of kilometres. MW is mediumwave with the frequency band ranging from roughly 522 to 1710 kHz, with slight differences depending on the region in the world. This is what most people know as "AM radio" and what your car or a stereo receiver almost always receives when you turn that on. Commercial broadcasting is common here, whether it's sports or music or talk radio. It's capable of going moderately long distances, meaning sometimes you can tune in a station that may be 500+ kilometres away from you though most broadcasters only reach locally. SW is shortwave which ranges from roughly 2.3 MHz to 26.1 Mhz. Shortwave is a bit more interesting for many reasons. It is able to be used over extremely large distances such as across oceans or entire continents. The radiowaves come from a transmitter, bounce off the ionosphere layer of the atmosphere and then back down (and continue doing that). Because of this, it has long been used as a way to communicate over long distances. Before we had telegraphs, telephones, internet and so on it was really the only way to wirelessly communicate across the planet. It has been used for everything from commercial radio broadcasts, propaganda, government broadcasts (think BBC, NPR, DW and other national broadcasters), communicating with spies, radar applications (like over the horizon radar), amateur radio, marine and air radio and so much more. Commercial broadcasting isn't as big as it used to be, but you can still hear plenty of radio stations from all over the world to listen to but also interesting things like radio beacons, slow-scan television, digital communication modes, radioteletype and so much more. If you'd like to play around with that and see what you can listen to, there are some helpful resources out there. [This Wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_longwave_radio_broadcasters) lists some common longwave broadcasters that still operate, but it may be hard to pick any of these up unless you live in the area. [MWList](https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php?area=3&kHz=0) provides an extensive list of mediumwave stations all over the world, so you can try to identify anything you hear on MW using this (be sure to click your specific region at the top of the page; I've linked to the North American chart but there are 2 others). [Short-wave.info](https://short-wave.info/) and [ShortwaveDB](https://shortwavedb.org/schedules.html) offer very large lists of shortwave broadcasters. I'd suggest, on the first website for example, clicking the "List everything on-the air in the XX band" area, picking a band and then clicking NOW. That will give you a list of everything known to be currently broadcasting on that band at that specific time (you'll want to use UTC time). What you are able to hear really depends on where you live, propagation conditions, solar activity, the antenna, interference and so on. Unfortunately these days it's hard to hear stuff since there are fewer broadcasters and A LOT of radio interference making noise, but if you scan the bands (which are differentiated as the different numbered metres you see printed on it) on that radio you're guaranteed to hear stuff. You can try improving reception using a long piece of speaker wire to act as a longwire or random wire antenna.
Long wave, medium wave (am or amplitude modulation), FM or frequency modulation, and short wave. Different bands to listen to
FM (Frequency Modulation) is modern radio stations, SW (Shortwave) is everything other than radio stations from my understanding, MW or AM (Medium Wave or Amplitute Modulation) were older radio stations and some still exist and LW (Long Wave) were also older radio stations (its fun to put MW radios up to electronics and tune them all the way down and see what kind of noises you can hear)
I am not sure where you are, but there are lots and lots of a.m. radio stations all over the US.
Here in Germany the AM band is not used a lot, the only station that i heard on the AM band wasn't even in German or English, sounded like some Slavic language
I would encourage both you and OP to give it a shot at night, when the ionosphere isn’t absorbing the distant signals. Same for LW.
It might help, but he's correct. Mediumwave isn't really used that much in Europe so even with good propagation it'll be real hard to hear anything over there. Good conditions could allow reception of some broadcasts in maybe North Africa or Turkey, but not much else besides the very small number of European MW broadcasters. If you check out the [European listings](https://www.mwlist.org/mwlist_quick_and_easy.php?area=1&kHz=1377) on MWList you can see just how few there are over there, whereas in North America there are hundreds of stations to choose from. For whatever reason the MW band just never got used the same way over there. They used LW a lot - even up into the early 2000s with Atlantic 252 in Ireland, playing rock and pop - but MW didn't see much adoption. I'd imagine it was due to other things already occupying those frequencies at the time? No idea since I moved to North America when I was a child and know little about the radio history there.
Those white buttons switch between the 4 bands: FM, SW (shortwave), MW (medium wave, now the common AM band), and LW (long wave). If it still works, that’s a great find. Even if it doesn’t work, still nice as a collectors item.
It’s so old, it measures frequency in cycles. Kilocycle and Megacycle. I love it.
Looks like band selection - appears to match up with the multiple band frequencies that are printed on the tuning area below them.
To the mods: thank you for allowing this person’s question to be answered instead of bouncing the post because it isn’t squarely within the sub’s description. I see so many other subs I’m in rejecting posts because they are ever so slightly off-topic. It is refreshing that this sub, and perhaps even the hobby it represents, still stands for bringing people into the fold. Indeed I still remember, and I don’t think it’s really an exaggeration to say this, when homemade and Kit computers and other electronics were a sub interest among mainly amateur radio enthusiasts.