Radio Overseas

antodeco

Hi all,
Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I am going to be doing a lot of travelling this year, and I was wondering what the best radio would be, for international stations (a requirement would be BBC Radio Five live for F1 when Im travelling). It cant be internet based, because there will be very little available wifi where I will be. Is this a feasable thing to do, or will I be confined to stored music?

Thanks

Quaderno

antodeco wrote: »

Hi all,
Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I am going to be doing a lot of travelling this year, and I was wondering what the best radio would be, for international stations (a requirement would be BBC Radio Five live for F1 when Im travelling). It cant be internet based, because there will be very little available wifi where I will be. Is this a feasable thing to do, or will I be confined to stored music?

Thanks

No need to apologize, I think you are at the right place for your question.

There is no clear answer, but maybe I can point you in the right direction. I checked the frequencies that would be of interest and according to http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/info/frequencies.shtml BBC Radio 5 are transmitting on 693 and 909kHz in the medium wave spectrum. Whether or not you would have a chance to reliably receive their signal would depend on your location and the time of the day. During daylight hours you wouldn't have much luck listening from outside europe, but at night this could be different, depending on where you are.
More on the theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MW_DX#Propagation

Apart from that, there is a lot going on especially on the shortwave bands - so there is always more on offer than just your owned stored music.
If you are in the market for a travel radio I would look at something like the Tecsun PL-660 or similar with the whole LW/MW/SW range, FM for local stations, AM for air traffic radio and SSB for "decoding" ham radio. This will give you endless hours of fun

dxhound2005

antodeco wrote: »

Hi all,
Apologies if this is in the wrong forum. I am going to be doing a lot of travelling this year, and I was wondering what the best radio would be, for international stations (a requirement would be BBC Radio Five live for F1 when Im travelling). It cant be internet based, because there will be very little available wifi where I will be. Is this a feasable thing to do, or will I be confined to stored music?

Thanks

International stations are those intended to be heard overseas like the BBC World Service and are generally on Shortwave. Domestic stations like Five Live are intended for the home audience. Because Five Live is on Medium Wave it will have a certain overspill into Europe but don't expect any sort of reliable reception. You will also hear BBC Radio 4 on 198 kHz Longwave in parts of Western Europe, probably better then Five. Long and medium wave frequencies are shared so there will be interference on the frequencies. Our own RTE Radio One on 252 kHz is obliterated on the continent by Algeria on the same frequency. Some cities like Berlin will have relays of the BBC World Service on local FM transmitters.

Outside of Western Europe you will have to listen to local stations or international stations on Shortwave. It will be an advantage being away from urban areas because the biggest enemy of good Long/Medium/Short wave reception is all the electrical "smog" in cities and towns. If you want to get a flavour of what reception is like in Holland you can tune this actual receiver. Medium wave starts at 531 kHz and goes up in 9 kHz channels. You will see international Shorwave bands like 49 meters and 31 meters where the station separation is 5 kHz. Use the AM mode.
http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

Like Quaderno says get a decent travel portable and see what you can hear as you travel around.

watty

UK MW will of course beat LW into Europe for range at night. The biggest issue is a nearer station on same frequency. A 0.4m to 1m 20 to 10 turn tuned loop makes a huge difference.

Shortwave band to use depends on time of day/night, location of you & transmitter and even season.

A second hand Sony ICF2001D or similar is good.

Some high end valve sets that have bandspread and RF preamp can beat modern cheap models like Tesun etc. Actually some basic Valve sets without RF preamp and bandspread beat a lot of Transistor sets, especially on LW & MW, if they have a large enough built in loop aerial.

Avoid the cheap world band alarm clock radio sets which only have up/down seek and memories. They are only use for local radio.

GekkePrutser

I know you said no streaming because you will have no WiFi, but did you consider 3g? Some countries have really cheap options on prepay. I do this a lot because I travel a lot for work and a lot of hotels don't have great WiFi.

If you're often going to the same places or for a longer time, it may be worthwhile to buy a local sim with a prepaid data plan.

A lot of places have excellent deals available. As an example, in Holland I always use the '*bliep' network which offers unlimited data for 50 cents a day and you can turn off the service if you're not using it. Most countries have a good option like this.

This site is a good resource for the options in each country for prepaid mobile data.

watty

Streaming Radio on 3G can cost about as much as payTV.
It also only works if hardly anyone does it!

Better to buy a real Radio.