I really wrote this article for my brother instead of printing this out to send to him along with my radio, to save a tree.
Welcome to your new shortwave radio!
This radio has a rechargeable battery – just plug it into a USB port and let it charge. It runs forever on 1 charge. They say that this battery is the same one as some super old Nokia phones and are cheaply and readily available just in case.
After much research online and on YouTube, I ordered this radio on Amazon on June 24, 2020.
The built-in antenna is good but I’ve been able to hang up the 23 foot external antenna to pull in some more distant stations. You’ll probably have great reception regardless since some types of radio waves travel over saltwater really easily.
I lost the box and manual that came with the radio but I’ve always found that YouTube or some websites do a better job of explaining the features. I printed out such a website of an amateur radio operator that wrote a good article on the radio.
I’d recommend watching some YouTube videos – just search “RADIWOW R-108”.
Pretty much all shortwave radios are the same and many seem to have identical features and probably made in the same factory.
This one has a lot of features but is missing the (expensive) option of listening to ham radio operators which you probably don’t want to do anyway. If you did, then download an app called Broadcastify which has, amongst other things, ham radio repeaters that you can listen to people talking.
Mostly, I tune around on the different bands and find something interesting – usually in another language.
Other good sites are:
https://swling.com – a lot of information on Short Wave Listening – “SWLing”
https://shortwaveschedule.com – a site where you can punch in the frequency to figure out what you’re listening to – or see what’s on.
If you like books, you might also be interested in the WRTH – World Radio and TV Handbook which has listings for frequencies and what’s broadcasting. It comes out each year but I’m guessing things don’t change much from 1 year to the next.
Beware – I found it pretty addicting listening to airwaves traveling half way around the world so I ended up buying a RTL-SDR to plug into my computer – their website is
https://www.rtl-sdr.com
and started listening to all kinds of other signals – from airplanes, temperature sensors, local ham radio operators, boats, trains, etc. Unfortunately most of the software for that kind of stuff is on Windows.
And then I got interested in being able to transmit so I got an amateur radio license and a small hand-held ham radio. Then I got a higher-class license and a radio that could transmit over the ocean, and then the highest class amateur radio license you can in the US which gives you slightly more bandwidth and a few other privileges like being able to remotely control a ham radio in another country using your US license to be able to talk to people that are very, very distant. If you find yourself getting into that then I have some more books if you want to study for your license, which I thought you’d have had already as an ET in the Navy.
Anyway, despite my ham radio license, I still enjoy the challenge of being able to put up my antenna and pull in a station that is broadcasting from thousands of miles away with no intervening thing like the internet, etc.
See ya!
