For your listening pleasure: two recordings of the pirate radio station, Radio GaGa.
Both of these broadcasts were recorded on 6.925 MHz in the upper side band on February 23rd, 2013; the first one at 12:40 UTC, the second one at 04:10 UTC.
Download the broadcasts from this page, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
(Source: RCI Action)
Canada’s international radio service started officially on February 25, 1945 with an address by Canada’s Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, followed by Justice Minister Louis St-Laurent (in French) and then by Howard B. Chase, chairman of the CBC board of governors[…]
Read the full article and listen to the broadcast on the RCI Action website.
Click here to listen to the first broadcast on the CBC website.
Structure of a Denial of Service attack. (Image: WikiMedia Commons)
No doubt, in publishing this, The SWLing Post will be hit with another barrage of denial-of-service attacks. If you notice the site loading slowly, or completely off-line for periods of time in the near future, you’ll know why…
A few weeks ago I mentioned various upgrades to the SWLing Post web server. Part of this is due to our increased traffic and part is due to the fact that we were moving to a more secure server.
You see, recently I posted an article with a recording of Firedrake along with a follow-up from Post reader, Mark. Two days later, The SWLing Post was hit with denial-of-service attacks from IP addresses, all of which appeared to originate from China. It almost brought the whole server down–however, my intrepid web host, CloudWeb, scrambled to block the offenders, and they did an amazing job. You may note that I had to temporarily remove the Firedrake posts (they’ve since been re-published). I don’t consider this to be a conciliation, but rather a victory: for free speech, and for its power on shortwave radio.
Anyone who follows the SWLing Post with regularity will know that I’m a strong believer in access to and freedom of news and information, so I’m a bit annoyed by the DoS attacks that attempt, however unsuccessfully, to mute our voice in China and throughout the world. No doubt, The SWLing Post is already behind the “great” firewall, anyway.
If our site does go down, follow our updates on Twitter and Facebook.
With that preamble behind me, I owe my thanks to Andy Sennitt for bringing this article to my attention:
(Source: Reuters)
Radio broadcasts in English from the BBC World Service are being jammed in China, the British broadcaster said on Monday, suggesting the Chinese authorities were behind the disruption.
“The BBC strongly condemns this action which is designed to disrupt audiences’ free access to news and information,” the BBC said in a statement.
China, which enforces strict restrictions on its domestic media, has been accused by several prominent foreign media of seeking to stop their news reports reaching Chinese audiences.
“The BBC has received reports that World Service English shortwave frequencies are being jammed in China,” said the London-based public service broadcaster.
“Though it is not possible at this stage to attribute the source of the jamming definitively, the extensive and coordinated efforts are indicative of a well-resourced country such as China.”
A duty officer at China’s foreign ministry had no immediate comment.
[…]”The jamming of shortwave transmissions is being timed to cause maximum disruption to BBC World Service English broadcasts in China,” said Peter Horrocks, director of BBC Global News.
“The deliberate and coordinated efforts by authorities in countries such as China and Iran illustrate the significance and importance of the role the BBC undertakes to provide impartial and accurate information to audiences around the world.”[…]
For more stories like this, follow our tag: Why Shortwave Radio?
For your listening pleasure: two hours of music, and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece.
Recorded on February 24, 2013 at 00:00 UTC on 9.42 MHz.
Click here to download the MP3 of the recording, or listen below:
Frank writes:
Hello Thomas,
This afternoon I came across ‘Bureau Met’ on 5960 [kHz]. I have been listening since 0800Z today, 24th Feb. SNR is a constant 19/20dB (RNZI peaks at about 17 on a good day. ). Content is a speech by Martin Luther King, ‘ one small step for mankind’, a speech by Churchill, more Apollo mission, Bill Clinton apologizing to the nation, and similar stuff repeating about every 40 minutes..
I suspect this is a Radio Australia test tx from their Canberra transmitter.
No station ID on the hour.
Cheers
Frank
Thanks, Frank! Has anyone else caught this DRM broadcast?
More mentions of numbers stations in the popular press, thanks to the new movie, The Numbers Station. Hat tip to SWLing Post reader, HK:
(Source: Reelz.com)
[…]If you ever find yourself wishing your life was filled with a little more mystery, a little more excitement, save up thirty dollars and go buy a shortwave radio and start scanning the airwaves. With a little luck and a lot of patience, you might come across a band carrying the monotone voice of a man reciting military call letters (“Echo — Kilo — Charlie”), the robotic voice of a woman counting in Russian, or one broadcasting a continual string of beeps, chirps or hums. If you manage to tune in to one of these stations, you could very well be listening in on a coded message intended for a spy.
Once thought to be useless for communications purposes because of their high frequencies and short wavelengths, shortwave radio bands were, it was discovered in the 1920’s, ideal for sending messages over extremely long distances. Shortwave signals are broadcast into the sky, where they are reflected or refracted off of the electrically-charged ionosphere layer of the upper atmoshpere and sent back down to Earth as far as a continent away. By the start of the Cold War a few decades later, countless shortwave radio stations were found to be broadcasting strange, seemingly coded, messages using this technique. At the time, these so-called “number stations” (or “numbers stations”) were widely believed to be in use by various government intelligence agencies to broadcast secret messages to spies over great distances, but none of the codes — if, indeed, that’s what the signals were — were ever cracked and no governments ever officially acknowledged their use.
Number stations remained a mystery and were all but forgotten by the general public until the discovery in the ’70s of a station that was broadcasting a powerful signal comprised of the synthesized voice of a British woman speaking a sequence of five numbers. The station came to be known as “The Lincolnshire Poacher” because two bars from the English folk song of that name served as interval signals. The signal from the station was traced back to the Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri, on the island of Cyprus, providing number station enthusiasts with the first “proof” that government organizations like the British Secret Intelligence Service were behind some, if not most, of the number stations.[…]
Read the full article at Reelz.com. Keep track of news on numbers stations and our recordings by following the numbers stations category.
The shortwave Eton Microlink FR160 is one of the noted “specially-designed radios” capable of receiving international broadcasts (like those from the Voice of America) which might compete with state-owned stations.
International broadcasters (and those cutting their budgets) should ask themselves the following question:
If shortwave radio is no longer relevant in today’s high-tech world, why are these radios suddenly being banned in a country controlled by a repressive regime?
The government of Zimbabwe apparently fears the little self-powered shortwave radio you see on the right. —>
Read the Media Institute of Southern Africa’s reaction to the radio ban in the Huffington Post:
(Source: Huffington Post)
Media freedom campaigners said Friday police in Zimbabwe are breaking the law by seizing and banning small radio receivers that can tune in to stations not linked to the state broadcasting monopoly controlled by President Robert Mugabe’s party.
The Media Institute of Southern Africa said Friday no regulations outlaw the hand-cranked, solar powered radios that democracy and election support groups plan to use ahead of a referendum on a new constitution next month and crucial elections later in the year. Police insist the radios and cheap Chinese 3G smartphones with GPS capability are being supplied by “subversive organizations” and pose a security threat surrounding the polling.
[…]”The importance of a radio set cannot be overemphasized as it is a generally affordable legal gadget used for receiving information by the public,” the group said.
Police efforts to “criminalize the distribution and possession of the radio sets” infringed citizens constitutional rights to freedom of expression and basic civil liberties,” it said.
Such radios and other equipment were seized in recent police raids on the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a human rights group that monitors political violence, and the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network.
Police allege those and other groups were planning to mobilize “recruits” with unauthorized communications devices in rural districts across the country, traditionally voting strongholds of Mugabe’s party.
The Elton [Eton, actually] Microlink radio, at a cost of about $30, has channels able to receive Voice of America broadcasts beamed in from neighboring Botswana and shortwave broadcasts on Zimbabwe from Europe.
The state Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corp. has four radio stations fiercely loyal to Mugabe. State and independent newspapers are not commonly found in impoverished rural districts where communities rely for information on radios only receiving state radio and powered by batteries that are often in short supply.
Police warned this week that the activities of some Western-backed non-governmental organizations and rights groups now verged on espionage. People found in remote areas with the cited devices could face arrest.
They said the “specially designed radios are not compatible with state-owned radio stations” and could inflame election tensions by promoting hate speech.[…]