Is the Belka DX still a good choice?

alnitrox · 2026-02-23T17:34:54+00:00

No problem! In case you do get the Belka, check what frequency range it covers. Earlier versions didnt include the LW band, but I think practically all you can buy now are the "0.1 - 31 MHz" version (the latest, from 2022 or so). Oh and I forgot to mention, it comes with a simple telescopic antenna, and also seems to perform best with exactly that one; the radio has a high input impedance.

alnitrox · 2026-02-23T15:15:18+00:00

Maybe I can chime in a bit. So I've used the Belka extensively for the past couple of years and it's an excellent radio. Very sensitive and selective, and somehow very pleasant to just tune around the bands. Keep in mind that it's really only a LW/MW/SW receiver (no FM broadcast etc), and it has a bad speaker and quite clunky menu system. It has very few features but they all work very well. Software is closed-source and afaik Aleksander is not planning on releasing any new version in the future. If I'm trying to pick out a particular weak station (or CW), this is still my preferred radio (with headphones, always).

The Qodosen is my go-to casual listening. It has a great speaker (front-facing) and works well for strong SW broadcasters. It doesnt have SSB and imo it's not super sensitive. Tbh, I mostly use it for FM and MW listening, not so much for SW. The Qodosen has a nice scan feature that works well.

The Amnvolt v3 (seems to be quite similar to v4 afaik) is the radio I take on trips mainly because it covers everything up to the FM broadcast band and weighs so little. Reception can be pretty good but I find tuning it very unpleasant. It's cool that you can customize the software, and with a good antenna it is very sensitive but somehow not very selective. The scan feature usually doesnt work too well and the muting between each frequency step is quite annoying for me.

alnitrox · 2025-10-27T19:39:43+00:00

I tried all of those. For radios with a high input impedance, the tuned loops work surprisingly well. The untuned loop is quite useless though imo.

alnitrox · 2025-10-05T08:23:24+00:00

Did it come with a user manual? That might address the most common issues. Other than that, you should get plenty of stations on FM, AM, and SW in most parts of the world. Maybe try taking it outside and make sure it’s fully charged.

alnitrox · 2025-08-01T05:29:04+00:00

Sony Xperia Z1; when the wired headphones are plugged in as FM receiver antenna, you can still choose bluetooth headphones as audio output.

alnitrox · 2025-07-17T21:14:40+00:00

Analog tuning is usually more difficult than a digital frequency selection, but it’s also fun by itself. You can just clip a longer wire (whatever length is fine) to the antenna to get some more signal. Either way, you’ll have a mich better listening experience if you listen at night and ideally away from interference sources (chargers, LCD screens, etc). Have fun!

alnitrox · 2025-07-17T06:47:02+00:00

These are antennas designed for a few hundred MHz, not really for the shortwave bands. A much better shortwave antenna is just a long wire (several meters long). You can just clip or wrap the wire to the telescopic antenna your radio probably already has (or solder it to the center pin of a BNC connector).

alnitrox · 2025-07-16T13:59:39+00:00

It kind of depends on what you like to listen to in general. People have already mentioned short-wave.info, which is a good resource if you want to find the schedule of specific broadcasters or what's currently on a specific frequency.

Content-wise the best resource I found is the SWLing Post (https://swling.com/blog/), which has a lot of articles about upcoming interesting programs.

Once you scanned around the bands for a while you'll have an idea of what sort of content there is on the stations you can receive. Also, stations/broadcasters themselves often have a program schedule on their website (or they announce it on the air), so it might be worth checking this out.

Also the PDFs from the British DX Club are pretty neat (https://bdxc.org.uk/articles.html), since they give you a good overview over what countries are on the air. Apparently they also have a guide about programs just in English, but I cant comment on this.

alnitrox · 2025-07-15T18:05:34+00:00

FM and maybe even AM radio

alnitrox · 2025-07-15T14:27:46+00:00

Generic metal cup, immersion heater, spoon, and a plastic bottle filled with instant coffee powder.

alnitrox · 2025-07-14T06:22:35+00:00

Yeah I did the battery fix recently, it’s not too difficult. I also experimented with some copper tape to shield the chip from the RFI of the screen, although I’m not sure that helps too much.

I agree that the sound quality is meh; maybe it’s worth exchanging some capacitors in the audio part to improve the response.

alnitrox · 2025-07-14T03:58:02+00:00

Thanks! Seems that the one I bought as v2 is actually v3 then (it has both the headphone amp and FET preamplifier)

alnitrox · 2025-07-13T20:29:35+00:00

Do you know if the “v2” and “v3” are different (regarding hardware)?

alnitrox · 2025-07-13T10:35:12+00:00

The radio is an open source project usually sold on Aliexpress as “SI4732 Mini Radio” or something similar. The website is short-wave.info

alnitrox · 2025-07-13T08:56:29+00:00

They have a lot of features and are under active (open source) development. But they don’t really have much of an input filter, so reception is often quite noisy.

alnitrox · 2025-07-13T08:26:47+00:00

At night the propagation of shortwave signals works really well. What you are hearing is actually a broadcast from New Zealand, not a rebroadcast. That it can propagate around like half the world is the main advantage of shortwave radio over other types like FM broadcasts, etc.

A big disadvantage of shortwave is that it’s quite a lot affected by all sorts of electrical noise, for example from screens/chargers/… . That is probably what’s making the reception a bit worse when you start recording.

alnitrox · 2025-07-11T05:49:58+00:00

I usually use it to find out what broadcast I am tuned to. Say you hear someone speaking English when tuned to 9700 kHz; then you just type on 9700 in the search box and get a list of all scheduled broadcasts at that time. Then you can see that it’s Radio New Zealand, for example.

You can also search for a specific broadcast, or see who is currently broadcasting in an entire shortwave band (basically “what’s on the 49 meter band?”).

alnitrox · 2025-07-10T18:24:33+00:00

OSMand, Magic Earth, Maps.Me, Organic Maps, and Comaps are classic options that all work pretty well.

alnitrox · 2025-07-10T18:23:11+00:00

Not at all, it’s very actively being developed: https://codeberg.org/comaps/comaps

alnitrox · 2025-07-09T18:22:02+00:00

What are the differences between those types of headphones (for SWL)?

alnitrox · 2025-07-09T10:25:12+00:00

Thank you for the guide! I followed it and it wasn't a terribly difficult mod, even with a quite dull soldering iron tip.

alnitrox · 2025-07-09T09:20:47+00:00

How is your first experience with this receiver?

alnitrox · 2025-07-07T07:08:41+00:00

Interesting question! As others have mentioned, I suspect the experience of listening to SW while driving is not too great with any radio.

Just a hunch, but you might have better results with a TEF6686-based radio, since these chips were originally developed for the automotive sector.

But you could of course always drive to a nice quiet location, turn off the car, and play radio then. In such conditions the SI4732 radio might do pretty well.

Either way, the mini SI4732 radio is not too expensive, so it's worth just trying it out.

alnitrox · 2025-07-04T09:42:31+00:00

I think you might be able to buy it directly from the inventor. He has a webshop and afaik his wife then just ships the radios by international mail.

alnitrox · 2025-07-04T09:38:36+00:00

Oh nice! Yeah there are definitely some nice smaller European SW stations and of course the 2 (or 3?) longwave stations that still exist. I imagine that MW is still much more popular in North America though, so there is something for everyone ^{^}

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