I was a shortwave fan many years back. I was always fascinated listening to the 'Atomic Clock' from Fort Collins, BBC, Radio Moscow, VOA broadcast to eastern block countries...it was fun. My shortwave was a little battery operated hand-held Sony and had an antenna that could be extended. No need to hook it up to an external antenna and picked up plenty of stations. You need to learn what frequencies to scan at particular times of day as the sun is a determining factor.

Now I'm hooked on internet radio. I have a Logitech Squeezebox - one of the apps being TuneIn Radio (www.tunein.com). If you can't find something interesting there, well... I think now the iPhones, etc have apps to access Tunein and others. Seems to be the way to go. Of course, you need access to the net. When an EMP takes out the net, a shortwave will be handy though.

R