Monthly Archives: October 2010

New Digital Radio Mondiale channel for South Asia

(Source: BBC World Service International Publicity)

BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle (DW) are launching a new Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) digital radio channel for South Asia.

The channel will carry a four-hour daily broadcast that includes the best international programmes in English and Hindi from BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle. It will also bring to the audience all the advantages of DRM digital radio including near-FM quality audio, text messages, Journaline and an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG).

This joint initiative between BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle has been launched using two transmitters in the region and will cover much of South Asia. The signal covers the majority of the Indian sub-continent and may reach as far as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and other neighbouring countries.

The new transmission starts on 31 October 2010 and will be broadcast from 1400–1800 GMT each day. Listeners will find the new programme stream on 13590 and 5845 kHz (SW) and additionally on 1548 kHz (MW) between 1700–1800 GMT.

Ruxandra Obreja, DRM Chairman, says: “Digital radio is as much about technology as it is about content. Through DRM we hope to increase the digital radio offer to South Asia giving people access to audio and multimedia content, which should in turn convince manufacturers that digital radio brings something new worth investing in.”

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The Alinco DX-R8T – a new shortwave tabletop

UPDATE -> 02 September 2011: Please click here to read our full review of the Alinco DX-R8T. 

Universal Radio has announced the Alinco DX-R8T with an estimated delivery date of December 28th. All of the data and specs they mention are subject to change, but this looks like it could be a receiver worth consideration.

The Alinco DX-R8T tabletop shortwave radio.

Notable features include:

  • Frequency coverage: 150-30,000 kHz
  • 500 Hz CW Audio Filter
  • 600 Alpha Memories
  • 10 Hz Display
  • IF Shift
  • RIT
  • Squelch
  • Dual VFOs
  • Attenuator

Will the Alinco DX-R8T perform as well as the Icom IC-R75 or the Palstar R30A? We’ll let you know.

We can say that this is most likely a stripped-down version of their amateur transceiver, the Alinco DX-SR8T–probably a good thing. The DX-SR8T gets good marks for receiver sensitivity and selectivity (for a transceiver in its price range). In fact, eham reviewers give it an average of 4.5 stars out of 5.

Regarding price, I imagine it will be in the $500-600 US range (especially based on the pricing for the DX-R8 by Nevada in the UK and the $645US price point of the DX-SR8T transceiver). Universal has not yet announced a price (listed T.B.A.).

Check back for updates–we will post them as soon as they become available.

Please click here to read our full review of the Alinco DX-R8T. 

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War of the Worlds on your shortwave radio – October 30th

On October 30, 2010 at 0100UTC on 9955khz, PCJ Radio will present a special broadcast of HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds as it was originally broadcast on CBS Radio.

PCJ is also giving away 3 copies of this program. If you would like a chance to win one send them an email at: [email protected].

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In an Internet World, Radio Lives

Thank you to Radio World for publishing this:

A teacher with an ETOW radio in Bor County, Southern Sudan. Courtesy Project Education Sudan

For as long as I can remember I’ve been passionate about radio.

From my earliest childhood memories in the 1980s during those final fading days of the Cold War — of my dad tuning in WWV in Fort Collins, Colo., on his dad’s vintage RCA 6K3; of falling asleep listening to my then-old-fashioned AM transistor radio; and of drinking in all those mysterious DX stations I heard over shortwave and medium-wave … I was the sort of kid (a throwback to a former generation, one might say) who couldn’t get enough of radio.

In those days when cable TV and video games and the first PCs upstaged and supplanted radio in nearly every American household, even in the blue collar town in which I grew up, it was nonetheless radio that captured my imagination, and taught me early on that everyone has a story. Radio taught me, too, that each voice is different in his or her consideration of what’s meaningful or newsworthy. I learned to understand or at least appreciate the diverse perspectives I heard in my vicarious radio journeys, and from these sprang my own opinions, hopes, beliefs. Radio became my teacher—a teacher who gave me, in my formative years, a global perspective.

I would have to say that radio has shaped my life. I suppose that’s why radio recently has become a mission for me…

…Today, I am the founder and director of Ears to Our World, a grassroots charitable organization with a simple objective: distributing self-powered world-band radios to schools and communities in the third world, so that kids, not to mention those who teach them, can learn about their world, too.

I want others –– children and young people, especially –– who lack reliable access to information, to have the world of radio within their reach.

Click here to read the full article.

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NPR’s Bob Boilen on radio listening

I like Bob’s contemporary take on radio listening. Embrace old and new technologies:

Here’s the thing. I have radios that pick up FM, AM and short wave signals, but I also have an IP, or internet radio, that picks up signals that are broadcast from various sources. So while I’m cooking in my suburban Maryland kitchen, I can listen to WFUV originating from the Bronx, or The Current from Minneapolis or KEXP in Seattle. These are traditional radio signals but they are no longer bound by geography. Before finishing the meal I whipped up, I could also potentially hear a homemade folk music show from Norway, some classical Hindi music, a tech show and so much more.

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Myke Weiskopf on American Public Media’s “The Story”

Myke Weiskopf, lifelong shortwave radio listener and archivist, shares his passion for shortwave radio on APM’s “The Story”:

Myke Weiskopf wrote to us to say: “I’m an old-school radio man, sound-gatherer, and old-world obsessive. I’ve been lucky enough to take my shortwave all over the world … I’ve posted recordings from broadcasts in Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan…” (His list goes on … and these are just the A’s!) This past summer, Myke went to Bulgaria and had a chance to meet the woman who started it all: the very first Bulgarian woman he heard singing on the radio whose voice has haunted him ever since.

Myke’s interview closes out this episode of “The Story”–you can listen to it online by clicking here.

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