29 Mar 2018

ISWL?

When I was first interested in amateur radio and shortwave listening the International Shortwave League (ISWL) was a strong and important organisation. I left at the end of the 1960s when I was a poor student but re-joined years later. I wrote quite a few articles for their monthly journal "Monitor" and submitted reports most months.  Some years ago I left again as it was no longer for me.

At the end, when I left, I think there was just a core membership of a few hundred. When I left, I heard nothing - no sadness I was leaving, no thanks for being an active member - nothing. This surprised me.

I wonder how the ISWL is today? Unless they have managed to attract and keep a lot of new, younger, members I suspect this is now, mainly, an OAP club of dying old men. This would be sad as it was once vibrant and very international.

1 comment:

Steve McDonald said...

Roger, I don't know about the ISWL but there are still several very active and interesting groups on the web devoted to International SW listening. There are also some terrific blogs as well as Facebook groups. Surprisingly there are still some nice challenges to be had tuning the SW broadcast bands. I got the old urge back again to do some listening there and purchased this year's World Radio-TV Handbook and have been enjoying rediscovering these bands.
Things are so much different now and any news regarding frequencies and schedules can be updated instantly, not like the old days of slow, mailed-out bulletins, not that it wasn't pretty exciting back then as well. A surprising number of stations still respond to reports with a real QSL card too, but the majority have gone to e-QSLs which just doesn't seem at all the same. What does one do with an e-QSL!

You might enjoy giving these bands a toss once again maybe?

73, Steve VE7SL