For those of you readers who often feel you’re alone in your enthusiasm for radio, I highly encourage you to attend the NASWA-sponsored Winter SWL Festival in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania this year. This will be my sixth year attending, and I have eagerly awaited the arrival of the ‘Fest. It is jam-packed with radio-related information and forums (indeed, yours truly will present again this year) and attended by many radio kindred spirits.

If you register early, By February 1, you’ll not only save a little money, but you’ll be entered to win a portable shortwave radio in a special raffle. Exclusive hotel rates are also available to fest attendees.

Want to know what the SWLfest is like? read the outline of the 2014 Winter SWL Festival below and check out this overview from last year:

(Source: NASWA press release)

NASWA, the North American Shortwave Association, has announced preliminary program details for its 27th Annual Winter SWL Festival to be held at the Doubletree Suites Hotel in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania on March 14 and 15, 2014. The Winter SWL Fest is the largest and longest-running annual meeting of shortwave radio enthusiasts and hobbyists in the Western Hemisphere. Beyond the opportunity to renew old friendships and make new contacts, the conference serves as a forum for discussion of radio-related matters of interest and import to the attendees, which have numbered in excess of 200 in some recent years. This year’s program of forums features two presentations by Australian Mark Fahey, who has travelled North Korea extensively in recent years. Over four successive trips to each province of the country, he has smuggled in and out monitoring and recording equipment enabling the capture and analysis of hundreds of hours of domestic radio and television broadcasting. Scheduled for successive afternoons on Friday and Saturday, Behind the Curtain: North Korean Broadcasting and Propaganda, will extensively discuss and feature audio and video examples of North Korean internal and external broadcasting, international and clandestine broadcasters that manage to penetrate through the regime’s jamming, as well as descriptions and photographs of the media infrastructure used by the North Korean regime as the prime instrument of control over the population. In addition to the ever-popular annual forums on scanning and unlicensed broadcasting (otherwise known as pirate radio), the 2014 Fest program also will feature the following sessions and presenters (subject to revision): Radio Broadcasting: The Earliest Years – Dr. Harold Cones

Navigating a Future for the Radio Hobby – Sheldon Harvey, President of the Canadian International DX Club

Internet Radio 2.0 – Rob DeSantos

A Practical Guide to Loop Antennas – Jef Eichner

Developing a Shortwave Radio Archive – Thomas Witherspoon, President of Ears to Our World

Whatever Happened to Digital Radio? – Mark Phillips

Ionosounders and Other Real Time Propagation Aids – Tracy Wood

Ham Radio Tools for SWLs – Skip Arey There’s also David Goren’s Friday night Shortwave Shindig radio studio party, as well as brief talks by Paul Ladd on World Christian Broadcasting’s shortwave transmitter projects, Allen Loudell of WDEL radio on trends in U.S. commercial radio, especially news/talk radio; and Sheldon Harvey’s annual tribute to those who departed us for a “higher station” over the last year. Not to mention: the Saturday night banquet and Grande Raffle! Why not join us at the 27th Annual Winter SWL Fest? Details on location, registration, meals and lodging are available from the official web site: swlfest.com.

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