Solid State Shortwave Receivers For Beginners - The Listeners Guide

a much better chance of obtaining good results from his or her receiver.
For example, searching the 160 Metre amateur band for distant (DX)
stations using a simple receiver would be a waste of time, whereas searching
the 20 Metre band for such signals would almost certainly be much
more fruitful.
A table giving the frequency limits of the S.W. amateur bands is
shown below.
l60 Metre Band 1.8 to 2.0 MHZ
80 Metre Band 3.5 to 3.8 MHZ
40 Metre Band 7.0 to 7.1 MHZ
20 Metre Band 14.0 to 14.35 MHZ
15 Metre Band 21.0 to 21.45 MHZ
10 Metre Band 28.0 to 29.7 MHZ
The 160 Metre band is shared with maritime stations, and the
maximum permissible transmitter input power for licensed amateur
stations is only some 10 Watts in this country. Therefore most of the
stations received on this band will be within a radius of about 50 miles
from the receiving location. On in frequent evenings conditions are
such that reception over distances of a few hundred miles or even more
is possible.
80 Metres is suitable for both local and DX reception, the more
distant stations being received mainly during the late evening and the
small hours of the morning. This makes 80 Metres one of the most
interesting of the bands.
The qualities of the 40 Metre band, are similar to those of 80
Metres, but theoretically DX reception should be better on 40 Metres.
This is probably rarely the case in practice as this band is only 100 kHZ
wide and has the 41 Metre broadcast band lying just off its high frequency
end. This tends to make reception rather difficult on this band,
particularly so after dark when the situation is exacerbated
by the frequency encroachment of powerful broadcast stations onto
the band. This has led to the 40 Metre band being one of the least
popular bands among both transmitting amateurs and S.W. listeners.
160, 80 and 40 Metres are collectively known as the ‘Low
Frequency’ (L.F.) bands.
Undoubtedly the best band for amateur DX reception Is 20 Metres,
and this band can usually be relied upon to provide a number of
interesting transmissions. The 10 and 15 Metre bands are also usually
associated with DX reception, but these bands, particularly 10 Metres,
are greatly affected by propagation conditions that vary considerably
with changes in the upper atmosphere.
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