Article July 1, 1991 Issue

Notices

Listeners in many parts of the world, such as the United States, aren't as familiar with shortwave radio and its frequencies as are people who live in places where shortwave listening is much more common.

Usually, AM and FM radio stations are located in one's local community, but listeners to shortwave frequencies are often listening to programs from transmitters located hundreds and even thousands of miles away from where they live. With a little practice, one can learn how to use a shortwave receiver and find programming just as easily as he can tune in to local radio programming.

Two things will need to be taken into consideration. First, because of atmospheric conditions and broadcasting regulations, the frequencies (where you can find a program on your shortwave dial or digital readout) change from time to time. A second thing to remember is that the transmitter that is sending shortwave programs broadcasts across many time zones, all over the world. Therefore a universal time standard is used called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT); it is sometimes designated as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).

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