Oleg, you'll be my hero forever if you can do this:
 

Way back, when I was in flight school, we had to fly a set number of hours in C-172RG's. It took no time at all to become proficient in the required maneuvers, so I became fond of climbing above the mayhem that was our practice area, tuning in an oldies station that played big band music on the ADF, and swinging that fat old Cessna around the sky in time to Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller while the setting sun turned the Oklahoma summer haze to gold. Good times man, good times.

So I was thinking it would be maximum cool if we could tune the DF (in aircraft so equipped) to commercial broadcast and get period music, news, speeches, etc. It would be sooo cool if an announcer would break in to announce air raids as they happened. It would be extra very cool if what was on the radio was what was actually playing on that date and time. It would rock to tune in and catch Churchill addressing the nation, or hear ol' grumpypants himself working himself into a lather. German stations playing Lil' Marlene... Burma Shave commercials...
Immersion, anyone?

That would be kind of fun - I've listened to long wave stations on the ADF myself. Perhaps there might just be an option to add some samples/mp3s into the ADF identifier directory.

W.

Silent Hunter 4 had radio stations like you describe, with broadcasts on the correct day (but not exactly the correct hours - due to the difficulty of hanging around checking the radio all the time). It was like you two say, big boost to immersion and enjoyment. I downloaded additional tons of broadcasts but the system was not designed to play them back in a practical way. Hour long programs and everything often, and could not skip any of them so it it did not quite work out so well. I put them on winamp in the background so I could control them better.

Oleg described recently that their objects, like lighthouses and other stuff, can be programmed to transmit stuff on the simulated radio as well as flashing morse code with lights, for us to listen in on, and even navigate from. So technically this can be done, and, if not from release, modders will collect broadcasts and make them play when they should.

Not entirely sure those old aircraft radios could listen to public radio however..

The DF equipment should be able to receive commercial AM broadcast, no trouble at all. It's good to hear that it's doable in SOW, and been done already!
It should be easy, then, for Oleg to achieve hero forever status!

You should check out DCS: Black Shark.

You can even add you own radio-files and stations. ;)

Immersion...

Everything back then was short wave and AM at best. Then all the static and background noise distorted everything. The only decent place to hear anything was on clear nights/days on land.

In the aircraft you definitely couldn't hear the sounds of Lille Marlene >>>

Immersion is engine and wind noise and the occasional sounds of bullets hitting your six.

Then of course, even funnier... literally we are a generation of experiencers.

We want to experience everything all the time in mass quantity, cell phones, ipods, laptops, ear phones, etc. The immersion is how we immerse ourselves up to our eyeballs constantly. Difficult to carry on a conversation with another human most of the time.

So, yeah.. we are an immersed generation. We have a buttkicker for our chair, earphones for our ears, TrackIR our visuals, Forcefeedback for our stick, a lighted keyboard, a programmable controller, a camcorder to share our reactions, and so on. Afterall, if it can be done we can immerse ourselves in it.

Sorry, I really don't care about the above. I just think sometimes it is too funny how far we will go to entertain ourselves.

Radiostations are nice. It added indeed lots of immersion to SH4. But the files to download in order to get some stations that cover say 2-3 years are HUGE. I downloaded them...gigabytes over gigabytes. Not a a thing everyone wants to do I think.

I suppose that you don't have to turn it on, Nearmiss. Different strokes. However, you most certainly can hear voice, music, and morse, over DF equipment in an airplane in flight. It's not Dolby noise reduced surround sound, certainly, but it's good enough. Modern (?) ADF recievers do a nice job of it, and the DF of the day would have been at least as good.

I really do care less about it, but I don't mind if you have it.

During WW2 there was no FM radio, if there was it was miniscule.

Radio transmissions were on shortwave bands, with some AM.

There is no way you would have heard entertainment radio in the air during WW2. If you did it would have been very rare.

Even today you cannot hear AM when you go under overpass. The largest AM stations prior to FM transmitted 50,000 watts, WLS in Chicago.

So when people mention immersive my thinking pertains to things that were actually available and were part of the period of time discussed.

Again, I have no problem with any part of your request. I'm just saying if you are thinking historically immersive... I'm not in agreement with that.

Here is a link to a bunch of old Wartime music, interviews and such http://www.stelzriede.com/ms/html/sub/mshws.htm#ww2

It might be fun to have a thread with old WW2 music and broadcasts. Members could stop by share and enjoy some of the broadcasts.

Kinda help us all think on the reality of the times and events.

You start it... I'll contribute

@nearmiss
"There is no way you would have heard entertainment radio in the air during WW2."

Thats is not so, especially in flight it is easy to receive am radio-stations over a few 100 km.
This was used for navigation in ww2! I.e. "Soldatensender Belgrad" BBC London and quite a few Radio Stations where online during the war and where received with adf equipment in Bombers and other planes equipped with adf receivers.