I was thinking about getting a radio receiver lately (probably the Icom PCR1500) and I stumbled onto a couple of neat sites.

The first one is called “HamSphere”, and it’s an interesting program that turns your computer into a Ham Radio without any extra hardware. You could also think about it as being a kind of simulator. While it doesn’t transmit any RF (what’s the fun in that, you might ask?) I still think it’s pretty cool in that you can talk with other Hams and using all the lingo that you’re supposed to, with real shortwave propagation simulation.

It is a java program, meaning it will work on Windows, Linux, and Mac. You don’t need to have a Ham license to use this radio.

The next thing I found was also pretty neat – it’s called Globaltuners and it allows you to not only listen, but actively change settings on other peoples’ radios around the world. You can, for example, listen to air traffic in England or a radio station in Australia – all you need to know is the frequency you want (and make sure no one else is listening in at the moment). Unfortunately, there are only a small number of radio stations that you can tune yourself (13 at the moment). But the idea is pretty cool!