Yearly Archives: 2013

Shortwave Radio Recordings: Voice of Greece

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greeceLately, the Voice of Greece has been playing very long sets of music; and not all of it Greek. I assume the break in format has to do with the reorganization of Greek national broadcasting.

I believe VoG could be cut without notice. With heavy budget cuts being dealt to national broadcasting, I doubt investment in shortwave radio will continue since they no longer even have an English language service. This is one of the reasons I’ve devoted a lot of recording time to VoG as of late. Admittedly, I certainly hope I’m wrong about my prediction.

On September 1st, I recorded over five hours of VoG, starting around 22:00 UTC. After about an hour of Greek commentary, you’ll hear music ranging from contemporary to classical.

Click here to download the full recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below.

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It’s hard to say goodbye: my Alinco DX-R8T lands on eBay

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ALinco 021Alas–! It’s time to bid a fond farewell to my trusty Alinco DX-R8T. I’m only selling it to raise money to purchase hard drive storage for spectrum recordings and more review radios, which fuel this site.

Needless to say, it’s in great shape and reviews most favorably. Indeed, the sensitivity is so good, I’m a little reluctant to sell it…But sacrifices must be made; there are some 4TB SATA drives with my name on them (plus, admittedly, I still have five other tabletop receivers for consolation).

Click here to view the listing of my Alinco DX-R8T on eBay.

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Pirate Radio Station BOCHF (Boards of Canada HF) back on air

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QSL from BOCHF

QSL from BOCHF

Again this morning at 2:20 UTC–and last night, during a very active night of pirate radio activity–BOCHF crept onto the airwaves, this time on 6,920 kHz USB.

Yesterday, BOCHF played the Boards of Canada album Tomorrow’s Harvest; this morning, they played their album In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country.

And how did it sound?  Combining the music of the Boards of Canada with the sonic texture of the shortwave ether is a winning combination, in my opinion. Thanks, BOCHF!  But don’t take my word for it: take a listen yourself.

Click here to download the full broadcast as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

By the way, I recorded several other pirate stations last night–look for them in upcoming posts!

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Pirate Radio Recordings: BOCHF Radio (Boards of Canada HF)

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(Source: HF Underground)

(Source: HF Underground)

Just last night, I came across a new shortwave pirate radio station: BOCHF.

BOCHF started broadcasting around 23:10 UTC on 6,925 kHz USB, and after about a twenty-five minute set, took a five minute break, then returned with a  forty-two minute set, ending with an SSTV QSL. The signal, as you can hear below, is fairly strong, but interference was also strong at times; especially from SSB pescadores (fishermen) and the usual summer static crashes.

The entire mix consisted of Boards of Canada music from Tomorrow’s Harvest. There were no vocal ID’s, but there were messages in CW (Morse code) which clearly identifies this pirate as BOCHF.

The artists Boards of Canada have always had an affinity with shortwave radio, so I find a shortwave pirate station playing their music to be an appropriate tribute. Due to sound card problems, I was unable to decode the SSTV QSL, but thankfully a great copy was posted on HF Underground’s pirate radio forum (see above) by forum contributor, Chris Smolinski.

Click here to download MP3s of Part One and Part Two from the full broadcast last night or simply listen via the embedded audio players below:

BOCHF Part One:

BOCHF Part Two:

As I mentioned yesterday, Labor Day weekend is a great weekend to catch a few pirate stations on shortwave. Happy listening!

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RTÉ Radio to broadcast GAA finals via shortwave radio

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(Photo: RTE Radio)

(Photo: RTE Radio)

RTÉ Radio has announced that it will broadcast the GAA All Ireland Hurling Final on Sunday 8 September and the All Ireland Football Final on Sunday 22 September via multiple sources including shortwave radio (frequencies and times below).

RTÉ Radio explains:

“In Africa, where many Irish people live and work, often in relative isolation with poor communications, RTÉ is providing special transmissions on shortwave radio.

[…]These services are part of RTÉ’s continued commitment to Irish people overseas and, over the years, has proven especially popular with those in geographically or technically isolated areas.”

Of course, RTÉ will broadcast both finals via the Internet, local radio and television.

On shortwave, RTÉ will broadcast on multiple frequencies–attempting to target most regions of Africa–so there’s a very good chance you could hear one.

Shortwave frequencies for Africa–September 8 and 22, 2013

Both Finals throw in at 3:30 pm Irish Time (14:30 UTC)

  • Southern Africa – 7405 kHz (2pm to 6pm)
  • East Africa – 17725 kHz (2pm to 5pm)
  • East Africa -11620 kHz (5pm to 6pm)
  • West Africa – 7505 kHz (2pm to 6pm)
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VOA Radiogram 31 August/1 September 2013 includes Vietnamese and Russian

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VOARadioGram(Source: VOA Radiogram)

This weekend’s VOA Radiogram will include sample text in Vietnamese and Russian. Vietnamese has all sorts of diacritics, and Russian uses a Cyrillic alphabet, so this will be a real workout for your decoding software. Your character set should be UTF-8. In Fldigi, this adjustment is via Configure > Colors & Fonts.

The program will also attempt to improve the performance of RSID (Reed-Solomon Identification), the brief signal at the beginning of a digital mode transmission that automatically switches decoding software to the correct mode and audio frequency. I produced the program using Fldigi 3.21.74AB. You will need Fldigi 3.21.73 or newer for the MFSK64 and MFSK128 RSIDs to work correctly. If you have a previous version of Fldigi, or another decoding software, I have provided time for the mode to be changed manually.

Here is the lineup for VOA Radiogram, 31 August/September 1 2013:

2:55  MFSK16: Program preview

3:10  MFSK32: Vietnamese and Russian text samples

2:58  MFSK32: Discussion of RSIDs

1:50  MFSK64/Flmsg: VOA News re dung beetles*

:56  MFSK32: Image of dung beetle

3:07  MFSK128/Flmsg/Base64: VOA blue logo*

2:16  MFSK64: VOA News re China hack attack

2:38  MFSK32: VOA Khmer radio photo contest

2:31  MFSK32: Image of submitted radio photo

1:10  MFSK16: Closing announcements

:15  Surprise mode of the week

*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.

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.

Please send reception reports to radiogram (at) voanews.com

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