Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following audio of Radio Romania International recorded on 9,740 kHz in Brazil on Saturday, December 24, 2022:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following audio of Radio Romania International recorded on 9,740 kHz in Brazil on Saturday, December 24, 2022:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Matt Blaze, for the following guest post:
by Matt Blaze
You may recall that back in April, I dragged eight of my favorite receivers up to the roof, hooked them up to a portable antenna, and compared their abilities to demodulate various signals at the same time. For the most part, the similarities between radios were more striking than their differences. I hinted that there’d be a second installment to come, including more receivers and more challenging signals, to further expose and highlight the practical real-world performance differences between the radios we use.
So, as promised, here we are with Round Two of my Rooftop Receiver Shootout.
This time around, I used approximately the same setup, but with a total of fifteen different radios. And once again, I took advantage of nice weather and brought a multitude of receivers, recording gear, cables, and an antenna up to my roof to listen to and record shortwave signals under the open sky.
Our fifteen receivers included everything from “dream radios” from the 1980’s to current-production desktop models to less expensive modern portables to high-performance bench-top lab measurement gear. I tried to curate samples of a wide range of radios you may be familiar with as well as some you probably aren’t.
You may remember the above radios from Round One back in April. The new radios this time were:
The antenna was my portable “signal sweeper” Wellbrook FLX-1530 on a rotatable tripod, using a power splitter and a pair of Stridsberg Engineering 8-port HF distribution amplifiers to feed the fifteen radios. So every radio was getting pretty close to exactly the same signal at its RF input. Continue reading
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a BBC World Service broadcast to Ukraine and Russia in English.
BBC, 5875 kHz, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, March 19, 2022, 21h32 (UTC).
Part of news bulletin: Russian missiles hit military base in Ukraine, killing soldiers.
BBC announced it’s broadcasting news to war-ravaged Ukraine and parts of Russia…in English!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares two shortwave reception illustrations and recordings of The Voice of Korea:
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 9650 kHz, broadcasting in Spanish from Kujang, North Korea.
From the news bulletin, the North Korean government announces two more missile tests, which took place on January 25 and 27.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Voice of Korea, 9650 kHz, broadcasting in Spanish from Kujang, North Korea.
At the end of the news bulletin, the North Korean government accuses Japan of promoting a policy of aggression and territorial expansionism by sending a combat ship to the Gulf of Aden to fight Somali pirates.
Signal captured in Porto Alegre, 01/28/2022, 19:22, local time.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares two shortwave reception illustrations and recordings of The Voice of Korea:
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 11910 kHz, broadcasting in English from Kujang, North Korea.
Final part of the news bulletin, January 14, 2022 saw the launch of another North Korean ballistic missile, this time transported by rail.
Click here to listen on YouTube.
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 9650 kHz, broadcasting in Japanese from Kujang, North Korea.
Final excerpt of the newsletter, January 17 saw another North Korean ballistic missile launch.
Signal captured in Rio de Janeiro, 01/18/2022, 05:08, local time.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark (AE2EA) with the AWA, who writes:
Your loyal followers might be interested in this video of airchecks
recorded on aluminum discs in England of US broadcast stations in late
1933, from the Antique Wireless Museum.
From the AWA description:
These audio clips were recorded on aluminum discs using more of an embossing than cutting action. Reading an AWA Facebook post that the AWA doesn’t have the equipment or experience to digitize the very fragile audio information on these discs, [email protected] volunteered to do so. He did a great job is highly recommended for your consideration as a service for archival digitization and restoration.
The discs were in Peter R. Testan’s collection because they included recordings of station WBBC in Brooklyn, NY that his dad, Peter J, started. As well as being a broadcast owner and engineer, Peter J. Testan was also a ham operator. Pictures of his ham shack were featured in a recent issue of the AWA Journal.
While the calls are identifiable, the other programming in these recordings is difficult to listen to. The Creative Director of a New York City radio station remarked after listening: “”It’s so funny because I have DXers sending me EXACTLY the same quality audio as on these discs. Nothing has changed in nearly 100 years!!!”
The audio quality in this video has been enhanced from the original aluminum disc recordings through the use of bandpass filtering, noise reduction and compression, with the goal of removing some of the artifacts of the recording process.
The Wikipedia entry for aluminum discs is pretty succinct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_disc
If you enjoyed this video, consider becoming a member of the Antique Wireless Association at https://antiquewireless.org/homepage/membership/
Absolutely mazing! Thank you so much for sharing this, Mark!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Rawdon, who shares the following:
[This is] a recording of a story featured on HCJB’s DX Party Line hosted by Clayton Howard. As far as I remember it was recorded in December 1974. It’s a short story from SPEEDX about the reception of Tristan Da Cunha and St Helena.
SPEEDX ran from 1971 until a declining membership forced its closure in 1995 archived copies of its monthly bulletin can be found here: https://worldradiohistory.com/Speedx.htm
Happy Christmas.
Wow! What a timely contribution! Thank you, Paul and Merry Christmas!