To my surprise, I found Duane at a desk in his basement tuning around on a shortwave radio.

            “Where did you get that radio, Duane?” I asked.

            “Amazon.com on your blog page,” Duane said, turning slightly toward me.  “It’s a Grundig S350 with AM, FM, and shortwave.”

            “What prompted you to get that?”

            “I told Survival Sam I didn’t think having a shortwave radio on hand for preparedness was a good idea in this era of advancing communications technology.”

            “What did he say to that?” I asked.

            “He responded by telling me about a recent article about shortwave listening in the Palm Beach Post by Bill Husted,” Duane said.  “Seems he gets a pile of responses any time he writes about shortwave.”

            Duane turned to a pile of papers near the reading lamp on his desk and picked up a piece of note tablet paper with lots of jottings.  He referred to the notes as he spoke.  “Sam found out about the article through a Radio Netherlands Media Network blog post written by a guy named Andy Sennitt.  It just so happens I’m just getting acquainted with the radio, and I was just tuning in Radio Netherlands now to hear whatever it is they're up to.  Sam says I should check out the Alex Jones show tomorrow in the middle of the day on 12.160 MHz.  The nice thing about this radio is that it’s got a digital frequency readout, even though it’s an analog radio.  That makes finding frequencies easier.”

            “Looks like a really nice radio,” I said.  “I’ll bet it cost a pretty penny.”

            “It was less than a hundred dollars,” Duane said.  “Look at this.”  He turned the radio my direction a bit.  “It’s not small enough to be a carry-around portable, but I can still take it along on a camping trip or something.  It has connection jacks for optional external speakers and an earphone jack.  Notice that the LCD screen displays time, frequency, and the band I’m on.  Shortwave coverage is from 2.3 to 27.4 MHz .  Sam tells me that encompasses everything on shortwave a guy would need.  He called it a general coverage receiver.  And there’s a sleep timer, too, so a guy doesn’t run down the batteries if it’s left on all night.”

            “What size of batteries does it take?”

            “It takes four D batteries, but right now I’m running it from the AC adaptor that came with it.  Reception on this thing is fantastic.  It picks up AM and FM stations better than any radio we’ve got around the house.  There’s a narrow band switch to reduce interference from nearby stations, too.  Sam said this was a good buy and could really come in handy in emergencies.  He said the U.S. State Department hands out portable shortwave radios to overseas staff in case there’s a crisis of some kind.  Can you believe that?”

            “That means they’re not depending on the Internet or satellites, but good old shortwave,” I said.  Duane shook his head in agreement.  “How did you say you got this Grundig S350?”

            “It was easy.  I’ll tell you how I did it, then you can do the same thing.  Just click on the picture of the radio, which took me to the Amazon.com page that has the Grundig S350 radio.  There's more info and you can order from there.  I believe I’m going to have some fun getting acquainted with my Grundig S350.”