To be honest, I cannot put my finger on when my interest for radio came to be. Maybe it was from me seeing the radiotext from an FM station in my mom's car and wondering how exactly it got there. Maybe it was from me mindlessly tuning around on an AM radio and seeing what I could pick up. Maybe it was from when a shortwave station called UVB-76 caught my attention on YouTube. I cannot tell. What I do know is that my interest became more evident in the middle of 2023. Around that time, I got myself a Raddy RF20 for like 20 dollars. It was by no means state-of-the-art. It could only tune in AM mode on shortwave, which I was most interested in. It could only tune in increments of 5 kHz, which wasn't great either. However, it did get me something to use that was my own for radio, not relying on a WebSDR. I tried a lot of makeshift antennas with it. I remember that I hooked a copper wire to a piece of my metal shelf with the paint scraped off and used that as an antenna. Don't worry, my designs are better now. Speaking of now...
Today, my radio setup has improved substantially from what it was in 2023-early 2024. I now use an RTL-SDR V4 for shortwave listening. The antenna is a longwire antenna. One side of it, the main side, is probably about 40 meters. The other side is about 5-10 meters. I don't know, I haven't measured it yet. The reception is pretty good, in my opinion. I have picked up stations from across the world. Australia, Japan, Spain, Romania, Madagascar, Brazil - you name it. It is also pretty good for AM/MW broadcast, too. Alongside shortwave listening, I also do stuff with higher frequencies. For example, I have an ADS-B receiver set up for tracking planes. I dabble in a little bit of FM DX-ing, which is receiving stations from far distances. I am also now a licensed amateur radio operator. I did my general exam, but I'm still a technician since I'm waiting on the confirmation of my license upgrade. For now, most of the stuff I do with ham radio is just talking on the local repeater. For this, I use an AnyTone AT-D878UVII+ radio. Bit of a mouthfull, isn't it? I also do police scanning, my main scanner being a Uniden BC-125AT. I ordered a new antenna for it. It should come tomorrow. 1.2 meters! Booyah!