is a short wave radio better or worse in terms of local reception?

Answer 1

With the proper antenna it is better and you can pick up stations from around the world, if, you on a mountain and weather conditions are correct. If, you down in a valley, you may not receive from far away. AM receives better from what called "Skip" but, it more noise prone. FM is line of sight, when there is more Sun Spot activity it can really transmit a long distance, not sure why, but, it does. Plus with shortwave you can get more of the Ham Radios to listen too. It fun, I have a little Bell & Howell Shortwave Radio and late at night listen to other countries.
For an antenna try a "Yagi" it the type you see most on houses, sort of V shaped. It is more directional so you need to turn it in the direction from which you want to recieve, but, it has good gain for the money (Reception with volume, so, to say).

Answer 2

Depends on the shortwave receiver. I've had a Grundig Yacht Boy 400 for several years and local reception is probably the same on it as any other non-shortwave receiver. When you get up into the more expensive shortwaves like Icoms and JRCs, they may have more sensitive AM and FM circuits. Maybe. But poor local reception is seldom the fault of the radio, especially on AM. AM doesn't like to go through walls like FM will. It's mostly the fault of the transmitter. Not enough power and a short antennae. I live in Arizona and when I was a kid I used to pick up CKLW out of Chicago. And the Juarez station with Wolfman Jack was at least a 50,000 Watt blowtorch. You could here that baby in Canada. These were AM stations. FM travels farther. A lot of local stations are something like 500 Watts and have a radius of a few miles. There are some AM and FM antennaes out there that really work well. Pull in weak signals. Might want to invest in one of those before buying an expensive radio. There's a guy that advertises on Art Bell that sells a killer antennae. Check Art's website.

Answer 3

Not really better unless it has a larger antenna for local reception. The SW bands function on a different circuit than FM/AM so unless the antenna has more coverage, it will probably be the same. Think about it, local stations are pretty close to home so a $2 radio versus say a $100 SW/FM/AM radio will do the same job.

Answer 4

better