Bought my shortwave radio today, the Grundig G6

Okay, today was the day I plunged for a shortwave radio. Having read threads on shortwave lately, I was anxious to get a shortwave radio again, just like I had 20 years ago. I still remember most of my morse code from working with the government, and the idea of perhaps copying some morse code again reminded me of younger days. Believe it not, I used to get paid to copy morse code signals when worked for “No Such Agency”… or NSA for short. But that was 25 years ago.

The choices were down to two models, Grundig S350-Deluxe or the Grundig G6, both sold at Radio Shack. I didn’t consider the internet an option because I like to touch something before I buy it. And I did my homework, reading every review of these two receivers all over the web & comparing features.

So I go into Radio Shack today and see these units in person and to help out the economy by buying one of them. I first see the 350 Deluxe. Now, this is the shortwave radio I remember. Large in size with big buttons that looked cool. It had a large tuning knob that just begs to be turned. And the tuning knob actually had another tuning knob that could slow down the turning to a crawl, making it easier to zero in on tough stations. Although it did have a digital frequency readout, the unit is actually an analog dial tune unit with a frequency counter. This unit was just crying out “buy me”.

But then, I started to play with the unit and honestly it felt cheaply made. The buttons weren’t that solid and the tuning button was very loose and wouldn’t stick in position. Perhaps this is from the 1,000s of other schmuks who played around with it also. So looked at the other model, the G6.

Going by physical looks, the G6 looks lame compared to the 350. It looked like GEO Metro next to a Lincoln. The G6 is 1/4 the size. But looking at the features most closely, it’s far the superior radio. It’s a real digital radio, and has the capability to tune into sideband. Sideband is what amateurs and people talking to each other directly generally use. If you are listening without a radio that can get in sideband, it sounds like the grown ups do on Peanuts cartoons, it makes no sense. It also has longwave (150khz to 283khz) bands, which I hope to copy some morse code beacons. Also I could maybe get lucky and get a longwave radio station from Europe one night. Despite the small size, the radio has easy to press buttons, an antenna outlet, 700 preset memories (who is going to remember all 700 of them), and most important, a bright orange light to light the dial. Yea, a bright orange color. That sold me.

So I plunk down 99 dollars for the unit and after buying some stuff for my family for Christmas, I drive home waiting to play with my new toy.




The pictures above show the unit and the size of the unit next to a police scanner. Click on images for larger size.

So I get this ripped open, put in some batteries, read the manual, and fire the unit up. Then I had to read the manual again to figure out how to tune this. It’s not really that hard but you will have to actually read the manual to work all the features.

I first tune it to AM and a frequency here that comes in weak or non-existent where I live, AM 580 WGAC out of Augusta. I was happy at how well that station came in, better than all of my other radios. No frequency drift. The tuner dialed smooth and had no muting in it as I went up to 1710khz.

I decided to try longwave reception below 540khz. Didn’t pick up a thing. Not a thing. Not surprised though, nothing is in longwave these days. But I didn’t even pick up a morse beacon. I remember when I had a shortwave 25 years ago, I could pick up morse code beacons. But I also lived by an airport when I was younger. The nearest real airport from here is 30 miles away. Of course the whip antenna doesn’t work for AM and LW, it uses an internal ferrite antenna instead. Just like 99 percent of other portable radios. So far so good.

Next was FM. The radio was able to pick up 96.5 from 96.7 FM so that was a good sign. However on the strongest freq around here, 97.5, was picked up on 97.3 and 97.7 although weakly. Other FM frequencies came in good, and the Channel 6 out of Augusta showed up at 87.5mhz, which was expected. The sound was okay, about what you expect out of a tiny radio. Putting in the headphones gave a good stereo quality listen.

Then I try shortwave using a 50 foot speaker wire as an antenna. Around 3:00pm eastern, I had no problem picking up the time signal on 15000mhz and weakly picked up the ones on 10000 and 20000. I picked up both the Hawaii time signal (female voice saying the time) and the Fort Collins, CO time signal (male voice). As the sun went down, the 15000 faded to noise and the 5000khz and 10000khz time signals came in fine. The 10000 signal was real strong. I then surfed just a little bit on the dial. A slew of signals, most of the English signals were preachers. Out of the clear stations, Spanish seemed to be the preferred language.

The reason I used the speaker wire as an antenna are twofold. First, the whip antenna with the G6 is crap. Doesn’t pick up anything but real strong shortwave signals. Taking a wire to the antenna and running it out to my back yard and up the shed made a megafold difference. There’s all sorts of homemade antennas you can make, and I’ll be playing around to see which one works best for me. It’s part of the fun of playing with shortwave. The other reason is I am too cheap (or too poor) to buy a shortwave antenna.

Now on the downside of shortwave. First of all, the reception rarely is great, listening can really test your patience. This is regardless of what antenna or receiver you have, shortwave always has been frustrating. Then count the changing of the frequencies, random atmosphere conditions, jamming from other countries and signals…. Also the international broadcasters have pretty much stopped targeting North America for English reception. The BBC, Radio Netherlands, and many others have ceased direct transmissions to America. They state (and correctly so) that their audience here listens on the internet or domestic FM stations. You can still pick up the BBC and those broadcast on shortwave but it’s harder now. Of course, none of this is the fault of the G6.

But I didn’t buy a shortwave radio to listen to the BBC. I bought it to play around with, to listen to unique music, try to pick up distant broadcast, and even listen to the nutty preachers on shortwave. I think the propaganda from Cuba continues though. To that I am looking forward to.

I’ll be documenting on this blog and on rec.radio.shortwave by adventures on this radio & reception reports.

So far, I am happy with the Grundig G6