the "volksempfänger" was designed to be produced as cheaply as possible, as a consequence they generally lacked shortwave bands and did not follow the practice, common at the time, of marking the approximate dial positions of major european stations on its tuning scale. only german and (after 1938) austrian stations were marked and cheaper models only listed arbitrary numbers. sensitivity was limited to reduce production costs further; so long as the set could receive deutschlandsender and the local reichssender, it was considered sensitive enough, although foreign stations could be received after dark with an external antenna, particularly as stations such as the bbc european service increased transmission power during the course of the war.