[G6Tanuki]

The 1155 is indeed 'iconic' but you need to appreciate the context in which it was designed/built; a WWII-bomber carrying an 1154/1155 radio installation typically had a 'lifespan' of something like six weeks; the radio installation was therefore very much built without the intention of ever being serviced - and now 70+ years later this presents plenty of problems with leaky waxed-paper-capacitors, drifty carbon-resistors and coil-windings subject to 'green spot' failings.

So you need to consider any 1155 receiver as 'needing work, probably significant work' before it is reliable/safe to use.

To answer your questions:


[1] Yes an 1155 can still receive a number of commercial [and amateur] stations on shortwave. Whether these will be entertaining to you is a matter of personal preference. There are quite a few free-radio stations active between 6.2 and 6.3MHz on Sunday mornings if you want to re-live the pirate-radio days of the 60s, and on the amateur-radio 5, 7 and 14MHz bands you can hear people talking around most of Europe. [Note: these days such stations are using single-sideband whereas the 1155 was desighned for double-sideband-full-carrier AM: plenty of 1155s have been modified to incorporate a 'product detector' to better receive SSB]

[2] Plenty of us have restored/reworked 1155s to be usable, and indluded upgrades to make them better suitable to modern radio conditions. Yopu can go for "originality" but lose-out on usability, or the other way - including 'period' modifications as applied by radio-amateurs in the 50s/60s to make the receiver work better, but at the cost of cosmetics.

[3] With a decent long-wire antenna [50 feet of wire strung up outside] you'll be able to receive plenty of shortwave broadcast stations. Not so many as in decades-past, and the content is usually pretty dire [unless you consider Chinese State media as 'entertainment']. There's lots of amateur-radio activity still on the lower HF bands [5, 7 and 14MHz]

[4]You need an appropriate power-supply; There are plenty of designs for these around on the Web; typically 250V DC at 100mA and 6.3v at 4 Amps. Many such designs also include an audio-amplifier stage featuring the likes of the 6V6 valve; without such an 'outboard' audio-amp an 1155 can't drive a loudspeaker.

[5] Just be careful when buying an 1155: there are plenty of people out there with inflated ideas as to the value of their mutch-hacked-about piece of history.