Shortwave Radio schedule browsing Application

Ok, I have too many interests. One of them is listening to shortwave radio. I guess in many ways I'm a news junky. Also, I'm working on my Spanish so, listening to shortwave gives me vast listening resources. I know, I know, "can't you stream the feeds over the web" Yes, many of them, but it's just nice to get away from the computer and tinker with something completely different, a radio and hear the whistling and the drift, etc.

One problem though with shortwave is knowing what is on and when and where to find it. There are books out there and massive text files for this, but recently I found a great program (written in java it appears) that can help make some sense of those text file listening guides that you find. It's called Radio Explorer and gives a nice interface of programs, times, frequencies, broadcast locations, languages of broadcast, etc. with a good way to search and a few more advanced features. There is one catch and that is you need to find data for it online. (A built in "get so and so's listening guide" would have been nice....) But, their website does link to several sources of data. The one I like is probably the biggest list out there. It is, Eike Bierwirth's Comprehensive Schedule it includes information about shortwave, mediumwave and longwave broadcasting, and is available free at the EiBi home page. I have a link above to the current (summer 2005 A04) broadcasting schedule.

The Radio Explorer interface makes it MUCH easier to look and see "what's broadcasting now", as well as say, look for ALL BBC broadcasts targetted for North, South and Central America. Still listening can be hit or miss depending on electrical interference, poor signal propagation, etc. So don't expect to be able to pick up EVERYTHING that you see listed.

This is one what used to be a rare occurance that I can suggest the same piece of software that runs on Linux, or Windows and if you're interested in shortwave listening it can be useful to keep track of what's on when and where.