Monthly Archives: September 2013

Ajit Pai is trying to save AM radio “before it’s lost in the static”

Many thanks to Andrea Borgnino for pointing out this article in today’s New York Times regarding one man’s quest to save AM radio from impending noise (QRM):

The digital age is killing AM radio, an American institution that brought the nation fireside chats, Casey Kasem’s Top 40 and scratchy broadcasts of the World Series. Long surpassed by FM and more recently cast aside by satellite radio and Pandora, AM is now under siege from a new threat: rising interference from smartphones and consumer electronics that reduce many AM stations to little more than static. Its audience has sunk to historical lows.

But at least one man in Washington is tuning in.

Ajit Pai, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, is on a personal if quixotic quest to save AM. After a little more than a year in the job, he is urging the F.C.C. to undertake an overhaul of AM radio, which he calls “the audible core of our national culture.” He sees AM — largely the realm of local news, sports, conservative talk and religious broadcasters — as vital in emergencies and in rural areas.

“AM radio is localism, it is community,” Mr. Pai, 40, said in an interview.”[…]

Continue reading the full article on the New York Times website.

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A photo tour of the VOA radio shack, K3VOA

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Last week, I visited my friend and fellow radio enthusiast, Dr. Kim Elliott, at the Voice of America headquarters in Washington DC. Kim gave me a tour of K3VOA, the ham radio club station of the Voice of America. K3VOA has a full ham shack, QSL card gallery, an SWLing station, some vintage gear and they even run a repeater site. Kim also took me on the roof to view the K3VOA antenna farm; not only is it impressive, but so, too, is the view of the Capitol Building.

Here is a gallery of the photos I took–click on the image to enlarge:

K3VOA shack

Anyone catch the irony here?

At the SWLing desk, they have one of my favorite tabletops, the Drake SW8

They even have a Hallicrafters S-27 UHF receiver

QSL cards from across the globe

K3VOA antenna farm

The Washington Monument in the distance.

View of the Capitol Building from the roof of the Voice of America on 330 Independence Ave., S.W.

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KVOH test broadcasts this weekend

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Ray Robinson, Operations Manager at KVOH (Voice of Hope / Voz de Esperanza) writes:

[W]e would very much appreciate your reception reports (or preferably, recordings) of the tests we will be running on 9975 kHz on Friday and Saturday evenings this week. The exact times are:

Saturday 7th – 0100-0400 UTC

Sunday 8th – 0100-0400 UTC

In North and Central America, that would be this Friday and Saturday evenings, 8-11pm Central, 9pm-12am Eastern. The test program will be similar to last time, but not exactly the same. It will contain segments in both English and Spanish.

The transmitter site is near Los Angeles, and here it is currently getting dark at about 0230 UTC (7:30pm local). Therefore, during the first half of these tests, the transmission path will be increasingly in darkness, and for the last 90 minutes or so will be in complete darkness. Please let us know what reception sounds like at your location as the evening progresses, and also what type of receiver and antenna you are using.

Reception reports may be emailed to “[email protected]” or sent to:

KVOH – Voice of Hope
P.O.Box 102
Los Angeles, CA 90078
United States of America

All correct reports will be verified with our QSL card.

Thank you very much in advance for your assistance with this test!

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VOA Radiogram, 7-8 September 2013: Fldigi, Flmsg, Flamp, RSIDs, MFSK

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(Source: VOA Radiogram)

VOA Radiogram for the weekend of 7-8 September 2013 will include more experiments with RSIDs, the brief signals that automatically switch your decoding software to the correct mode.

For best results, please install Fldigi 3.21.75 from w1hkj.com. When you have 3.21.75 installed, go to Configure > ID > RsID, and adjust Errors to 0 (zero). This will prevent Fldigi from flipping to another mode while decoding our MFSK transmissions. For more information about this, seewww.w1hkj.com/FldigiHelp-3.21/ConfigID.html

Please also download the latest versions of Flmsg and Flamp (2.1.00) from w1hkj.com.

This weekend’s VOA Radiogram will include another transmission in MFSK128. This will be done mainly to see if the RSID works. However, to improve the chances for a successful decode of the very fast MFSK128, it will be in Flamp format. A paragraph will be divided into seven blocks of 64 characters each. And it will be transmitted three times, with the second and third passes filling in any blocks with incorrect checksums. Make sure Flamp is running before the MFSK128 transmission begins; it does not turn on automatically like Flmsg.

The foreign language for the weekend will be Spanish, with brief VOA news items in both plain text and Flmsg formatted. Please turn off and restart Fldigi before each of this weekend’s VOA Radiogram broadcasts to ensure the accented Spanish letters display correctly. You will need the UTF-8 character set. The adjustment can be found via Configure > Colors & Fonts.

In the Flmsg-formatted Spanish news story, you will see several html codes such as í for the accented characters. They might look like decoding errors, but the story should look OK when the web page renders.

To make Flmsg work with Fldigi, in Fldigi: Configure > Misc > NBEMS — Under Reception of flmsg files, check both boxes, and under that indicate where your Flmsg.exe file is located.

Here is the lineup for VOA Radiogram, 7-8 September 2013:

3:55 MFSK16: Program preview

2:09 MFSK32: VOA Spanish news re old iPhones

3:41 MFSK32/Flmsg: VOA Spanish news re new iPhone model

2:29 MFSK64: VOA News re Al Jazeera in Egypt

2:48 MFSK32: YouTube screen capture of Al Jazeera

:50 MFSK32: Introduction to MFSK128 item

1:30 MFSK128/Flamp: Brief description of VOA

:45 MFSK32: Introduction to MFSK64

2:55 MFSK64: VOA News re LADEE moon mission

2:56 MFSK32: Artist’s rendition of LADEE spacecraft

1:11 MFSK16: Closing announcements

:41 MFSK32: VOA Radiogram logo

:20 Surprise mode of the week

Please send reception reports to [email protected].

VOA Radiogram transmission schedule

(all days and times UTC)

Sat 1600-1630 17860 kHz

Sun 0230-0300 5745 kHz

Sun 1300-1330 6095 kHz

Sun 1930-2000 15670 kHz

All via the Edward R. Murrow transmitting station in North Carolina.

There will also be a minute of MFSK32 on The Mighty KBC, via Germany, Saturday at approximately 1130 UTC on 6095 kHz, and Sunday at approximately 0130 UTC on 7375 kHz (Saturday evening 9:30 pm EDT).

Also check out their post: Base64 VOA logo via MFSK128: a few unexpected successes. Fascinating!

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C.Crane’s 30 Days of Giveaways

Pirate Radio Recordings: Radio Casablanca

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Confession time: one of my favorite pirate radio stations is Radio Casablanca.

Why?

For one thing the format is WWII-era music. When I hear Radio Casablanca, I close my eyes and imagine what it must have been like to hear the great bands of the era over the shortwaves…

Radio nostalgia at its best.

The signal strength is always sufficient to be heard in relatively good fidelity here in my radio room, but not so strong as to detract from the perceived distance. I believe the recording you’ll hear below could very well mimic broadcasts over shortwave, heard across borders during WWII as well as listened to on classic console radios in people’s living rooms and front parlors.

When my buddy Mark Coady posted that he was listening to Radio Casablanca Tuesday night on 6940 kHz AM, I immediately rushed outside to hook up my antenna, and started rolling. I didn’t want to miss even one more minute (I came across Mark’s post about twenty minutes into the broadcast). Though regional storms produced some static pops and crashes, overall fidelity is decent. You will hear the filter and side-band sync being adjusted at times as I attempted to eliminate adjacent noises–which, in the end, are all a part of the listening experience.

Click here to download an MP3 of the recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Either way, prepare to go (or at least, send your ears) back in time…

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Shortwave Radio Recordings: Deutsche Welle

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For your listening pleasure: a recording of the Deutsche Welle English service made this morning, September 3rd, starting at 04:00 UTC.

Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below (note about 40 seconds of carrier prior to the beginning of the broadcast):

By the way, if you believe there’s nothing to listen to on shortwave, you should check out our What’s On Shortwave category!

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