"may be an excellent means of disaster communications over vast areas, encompassing oceans and continents."

Only this year? What rock have they been living under?

vast communications. I continue to keep my gear. I know, of course, if there's a signal out there I can likely receive it. What always bothers me is censorship. In many ways the internet, cell phones and all are, of course, quite fragile. Often I wonder just where the political landscape of the US is headed over the next decade, etc. And, with these natural disasters anymore, SW can always get through.

Short wave can be monitored. Just ask the FCC.

I also don't think the blogger understands 'market penetration'.

if the infrastructure failed in a big way, it would be the best bet??? Peer to peer communications are interesting, but I have no idea where all of that is at.

Stations, nations, all over the bands. Unless the ionosphere was being a major pain, you could find something besides Radio Habana or Sky Daddy radio (which is about all that is left nowadays).

I remember listening to Radio Moscow and being blown away by the creeping capitalism, as they started running what where in effect infomercials for joint ventures in place of the usual "America sucks!" fare. I listened during the fall of the Berlin wall, the coup, and the victory of Yeltsin. Holland, Albania, China, Australia, Israel...I was learning about other lands, other cultures, other perspectives as well as the physics of intercontinental radio propagation.

As the internet grew faster and more widespread, the broadcasters faded out and went to streaming. They either quit beaming to North America, making reception more challenging, or they just went silent as both their audience and budgets shrank.

At the same time, the electronic buzzing and blooping became louder and more widespread. Analog utility stations went to digital and/or satellite. It just got too boring for me.

There is still Amateur Radio and a few SSB utility stations remaining. But to me, shortwave radio is but a mere wispy shadow of its glory days.

For the reasons you cited, I hope it can recover.

blasting down their transmission towers. A little bit of me died with that.

Last I tried there was not much on here at all. I got bored with it too, very few stations and lots of utilities interference. Then, my scanners went dead as many state agencies starting putting everything on proprietary channels with encryption. It used to be fun listening to the police, etc.

I still have them, in waiting for whatever, but I rather think it's a lost cause. ... but who knows, they certainly can be useful in the right situations.

as well as Radio Belgium...
I listened to SW during the Iraq War crap...I pulled in the BBC Africa, Radio Australia at wake-up time here (Mountain Time), even got a
card from Radio Turkey. Pulled in Egypt, too. Of course, I listened to the "Listener's Garden" from China and actually won a gift, a gorgeous linen table cover!
And, then there was Arnie Corno and Radio Havana....they would read from the U.S. State Dept. plans on what to do with Cuba when it was "freed." Fearful that the 98% literacy rate would go down the tubes, etc. as the U.S. infested the place...of course, it may happen now.

And, North Korea...what can I say? What a great chance to listen to the creepy brainwashing out of North Korea!!

My radios are little used now...miss listening so much....

However, check out WRN at http://www.wrn.org/listeners/#home-listeners
Radio Prague is on right now!!!!!!!

I used to get a quarterly magazine sent directly from Germany from WRN, but that stopped after a few issues.

Glenn Hauser still has his show about SW broadcasting on WRN...it's on the North American schedule at 1730 ...

"WRN Broadcast refocuses World Radio Network services

On 21 November 2013 WRN Broadcast announced that as part of the company's continued growth strategy it will be refocusing its seven international radio networks to concentrate on the core service regions.

David Treadway, CEO, WRN Broadcast, said: "As a business we're in fantastic shape, with significant growth year-on-year from our comprehensive range of services across TV, Radio and Digital, but as a longstanding broadcast service company we are always evolving services to better meet the needs of our clients. With this development of The Networks, we're future-proofing the service for all of the international listening community and our broadcast partners. We look forward to continuing our working relationship with all those existing network broadcasters as well as the clients in our core areas of broadcast distribution and managed services."

The World Radio Network was created to aggregate news and current affairs from leading worldwide public and private broadcasters and content producers, including NHK, VoR and KBS. The network developed to include Arabic, Russian, French, and German whilst evolving the original English network into 3 specific networks covering Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Both the French and German services will cease broadcasting as part of this development.

The move will increase partner opportunities for the network of channels and allow further development of key areas of business growth, which centre around the company's first-class broadcast distribution and managed services across TV, Radio and Digital.

The WRN French and German Networks will cease broadcasting from midnight 31 December 2013, with the web-based radio on-demand and podcasting service terminating on 16 December 2013. "

I used to listen to SW all the time. But it seems most of the English-language content beamed at North America is gone.

quackery over sw. They had a pill for everything in the world.

When "peak everything" means microcomputers can no longer be manufactured, we'll have to go back to low-tech, low-energy basics.

Both shortwave broadcasting and ham radio use what is commonly referred to as the HF (high frequency) part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Ham radio consists of hobbyists who communicate with each other on the HF, as well as LF (low frequency), VHF (very high frequency), UHF (ultra high frequency), and microwave frequencies. Except for a small number of reasons, broadcasting is prohibited.

One major aspect of amateur radio is providing emergency communications when standard communications media is down or overloaded.

BTW, here's an interesting read! http://www.facepunch.com/threads/879713-Super-Creepy-Unexplained-Broadcasts-Megathread

is important however I fear that not enough young people are getting involved and the average age of tbe current SW radio operators is increasing every single day.

communication systems easily blocked, taken down by whomever and/or destroyed by weather catastrophes, etc. Much as with hurricane Katrina many were surprised their cell phones did not work, like DUH!

Is there some sort of formal organization of SW radio operators that mobilize when their services are needed for natural disasters?

I am aware of ARRL but had a momentary memory lapse. I used to know a few SW operators, a couple of them had early call signs but their all gone now. (I realize that makes me sound old, but I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, maybe that is getting old)

I think a much shorter range would be a major drawback.

I know of a collection of DSL cards from a Minnesota-based operator. There were cards from all over the world. The most interesting one I recall is a card from 1968 in Cambodia. The operator had the only SW set (not owned by the government) in the entire country.

far as I know.

It's an interesting technology, here is more on it ... http://www.drm.org/

And some technical detail ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Radio_Mondiale

I have not been able to locate the range, but when I was interested in it I learned the range was far shorter than traditional sw.

In SW radio, but I was in commercial radio broadcasting in various capacities for many years. When I was still a teen, I worked for an FM station and one week, we got calls from both Boston and San Francisco requesting letters acknowledging their reception of our station. (I've met a few DXers too.) If course that was due to sunspots.

WGBH. I had my set tuned to a preset, I had lived in Boston, was listening to it, then realized it was WGBH FM, a skip transmission. Next night it was gone.

Here's something interesting. Someone/group is certainly pouring a lot of money into the future of digital radio transmissions.

http://www.ampegon.com/files/broschuere_transmissionsystems_uc_lo.pdf

http://www.ampegon.com/news/?id=29

Today, there's little to hear on the normal broadcast bands, though. All of the big players have shut down, pretty much. I don't see that changing but, rather, getting worse. I still have SW radios, but they aren't on much any more. There's just nothing worth listening to any longer.

The Internet has made such broadcasts obsolete. We won't see a recovery in SW broadcasting, I'm sure. Too bad.

so I could receive SW. As I recall it was in Popular Science. Yep, when the large broadcasters quit that pretty much brought it all down IMO too.

It had multiple bands. Then, I got my own communications receiver, put up a longwire antenna, complete with lightning arrestor, at my father's insistence. I sent reception reports to all sorts of places and got back a nice collection of QSL cards and a great deal of assorted literature from various countries.

Once I was on my own, I sort of stopped doing it, and when I made an attempt a few years ago, I discovered that the SW broadcast bands were empty, pretty much. Very disappointing. I can't see it coming back. Transmitters and antennae with enough power to actually reach a large area are extremely costly. Fewer and fewer radios with SW bands are being manufactured, and most people don't have the patience needed to tune in distant stations or the room to install a proper SW antenna.

I'm just not seeing it recovering, really. I think that era is done.

it was far more efficient to use the internet than the cost of powering and maintaining huge transmitting rigs. I've explored DRM just a bit, it's interesting, no idea of the details in what is current, but it was interesting. Here are some links. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6459002

would have to be (I guess) DRM repeaters and all ... as vulnerable IMO as cell towers. Where I lived before some stations were transmitting in stereo AM. It was incredible. My hunch is we'll see a lot of interesting technologies come along. Hang onto that 1940's Zenith! LOL!

I had a long wire antenna as a kid about 100' long, ran it into my bedroom window. One night during a large thunderstorm I awoke to some lightning snapping around the lead-in, seriously. Next day I was off to find a good spark gap lightning arrester and had that antenna setup well grounded by the next evening.

Don't know if you saw this pdf or not. Looks like someone/group is pouring some serious money into DRM. I had no idea.

http://www.ampegon.com/files/broschuere_transmissionsystems_uc_lo.pdf

It seemed like magic to be able to talk to someone on the other side of the world.

I don't think it will ever die out. Too much fun to tinker with.

Sure, SW has a past, present and future. It does not seem to offer the freedom speech it once did in the early 90's when the list of English speaking programs came from both the left and right. More recently, I hear religious and right wing fascist crap.

I still have one that runs on batteries that I charge myself, or alternative electric outlet.

I'd have to rely on it in the event of a power outage or other emergency, so it most definitely has a future, just a limited following in all the languages you can think of.

It was fascinating to listen to news from across the Atlantic, then later around the world. Even back in the 70's, I noticed a difference between domestic news and foreign sources. It opened me up before I began travelling. I still listened to short wave until I moved into my current flat. Awful reception here. So I'm forced to listen via the internet.

I also mourn the passing of Radio Nederlands. It was an old friend for decades.