Yearly Archives: 2018

Channel292 broadcast tests this weekend on 7440 kHz

1 Reply

(Source: Southgate ARC via Eric McFadden)

Channel292 tests

The Amateur owned and run AM Short-wave broadcast station CHANNEL292 will be starting testing on their new 41 metre broadcast band frequency of 7440 kHz from this weekend onwards.

Rainer Ebeling DB8QC who owns and operates the station from near Ingolstadt in the state of Bavaria in southern Germany would appreciate all signal reports which can be sent simply via the form on the channel292.de website at http://www.channel292.de/deutsch/kontakt/
or
http://tinyurl.com/y78etubo in Google translated English.

Don’t forget the existing frequency of 6070 kHz in the 49m broadcast band will still carry Channel292’s existing programs. The planned programs for both frequencies are available on the Channel292.de website.

73  Ed  DD5LP

Spread the radio love

Radio Exterior de España: Shortwave expansion to include English language service

3 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Tracy Wood (K7UO), who

I just listened to REE’s 30-minute English broadcast for this Friday with Alison Hughes and Justin Coe…! (REE is relayed on Hispasat so audio quality is superb.)

Big news! Engliish is coming back to shortwave starting 29 October along with the other foreign languages..

The podcast of Friday’s show with the formal announcement (and frequencies) has yet to be posted but it will be here: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/audios/emision-en-ingles/

Tonight’s show was very celebratory with lots of old shortwave audio clips, well worth a listen in its own right.

Many thanks for the tip, Tracy!  These are exciting times for REE shortwave listeners. Click here to read our previous post about the REE shortwave expansion.

Listen to this show via the embedded player below:

Do you enjoy the SWLing Post?

Please consider supporting us via Patreon or our Coffee Fund!

Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Spread the radio love

The gorgeous Zenith Model R-7000-2 Trans-Oceanic

6 Replies

Tuesday night, I attended a local radio club meeting with buddy Vlado (N3CZ).

Neither of us had ever attended this particular club, although we both knew a number of the members.

What was the first thing I spotted when I entered the meeting room? A pristine Zenith Model R-7000-2 Trans-Oceanic! Talk about a good omen!

Turns out there are no less than two Trans-Oceanic collectors in this group of about two dozen ham radio operators. The owner of this Model R-7000-2 told me that he has every Trans-Oceanic including the coveted Clipper and Bomber models.

I’m not sure I had ever seen the Model R-7000-2 in person. It’s a striking radio and the last in the line of the Trans-Oceanic sets–this model was produced in 1981.

Of course, I had to snap a few photos of this beauty.

Speaking of beauties, this Zenith enthusiast also brought his copy of the John H. Bryant and Harold N. Cones seminal volume: The Zenith Trans-Oceanic, the Royalty of Radios. (A book I highly recommend.) On one of the pages I rediscovered an image of my favorite 1930s/40s actress, Myrna Loy:

I first fell in love with Myrna Loy watching the classic film series: The Thin Man. I’m a massive fan of Loy/Powell films. Here’s the trailer from the first of the Thin Man series:

Any Post readers own the Trans-Oceanic Model R-7000-2?  Any one else in love with Myrna Loy? Please comment!

Spread the radio love

SSTV Special Event from the International Space Station on Saturday, October 27

Leave a reply

(Source: ARRL News)

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) has scheduled a slow-scan television (SSTV) event to begin on Saturday, October 27, at about 1000 UTC. NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Department will support the event. SCaN manages NASA’s three most important communications networks — The Space Network (SN), Near-Earth Network (NEN), and the Deep Space Network (DSN). Participants in the SSTV event can qualify for a special endorsement for NASA on the Air (NOTA), celebrating the space agency’s 60th anniversary.

As during past ARISS SSTV events, 12 images will be transmitted. Six will feature SCaN educational activities, while the other six images will commemorate  major NASA anniversaries, including the establishment of NASA and the moon landing. Transmissions are expected to take place on 145.800 MHz using PD-120 SSTV mode. Received images can be posted and viewed online. The event is dependent on other ISS activities, schedules, and crew responsibilities, and the schedule is subject to change at any time.

More information be posted to the AMSAT and ARISS websites as well as to the ARISS-BB, to the ARISS Facebook page, and via Twitter (@ARISS_status).

Click here to read the full article at the ARRL News.

Spread the radio love

Vatican Radio notes shortwave frequency changes

1 Reply

Vintage Vatican Radio QSL

(Source: Vatican Radio via Mike Hansgen)

Shortwave Frequency Changes for the English Africa Service starting on 28 October 2018 to March/April 2019

Daylight saving time in Rome
We wish to inform listeners that with the end of Daylight Saving Time in Rome on Sunday 28th October, there will be changes in the time and broadcast frequencies of the English Africa Service.

The programme will be going on air one hour earlier at 16.30 UTC (GMT) on the following shortwave frequencies: 11625 kHz (25mb) and 13830 kHz (21mb)

It will be repeated at 20.00 hours UTC on 6010 kHz (49mb) and the 7365 kHz (40 mb).

Listeners in Rome
For listeners in Rome and the Vatican who have a digital radio receiver, the ‘English Africa Programme’ can be heard on Vatican News’ World Channel on digital radio DAB+ at 17.30 Rome time and the repeat broadcast at 21.00 hours Rome time.

Listen to and download our daily Podcast from anywhere in the world
To listen to the Podcast of our programme throughout the day, just log on to our websitewww.vaticannews.va, click on English and then from right hand side of the page; click on “listen to our podcasts” and choose ‘English for Africa’.

Catholic Radio Stations in Africa retransmit our daily programme
On the continent, the main outlet for our daily English Africa programmes will continue to be through the re-transmission of our daily broadcasts by several Catholic radio stations.

Most of these radio stations are owned by various African Catholic dioceses, parishes, religious congregations and some by the Radio Maria network.

We thank you all for this important collaboration.

For further information kindly contact the English Africa Service through email: [email protected] or by phone: (+39) 06 69883892.

Spread the radio love

Peter Tannenwald asks, “Are we really ‘revitalizing’ AM?”

8 Replies

(Source: RadioWorld via Bill Patalon)

On AM revitalization, Peter Tannenwald asks, Are we really “revitalizing” AM, or are we walking around in circles?

Late on Friday, October 5, the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) released a Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in a five-year ongoing effort to “revitalize” the AM radio broadcast service. The new proposals continue a trend toward allowing higher power operation by smaller stations, by reducing nighttime signal protection for some 60 Class A AM stations located in the continental United States and 16 stations in Alaska. The end result would be less wide area coverage and more local radio service to the public.

To understand why the FCC is considering this action, it helps to understand a bit of the science behind AM signal propagation. AM radio signals travel through both the ground and through the air. At night, the airborne signal component (“skywave”) is reflected back to the earth from the ionosphere — a layer of the atmosphere extending from about 50 to 600 miles above the earth’s surface. The reflected signals may come back down to earth hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from a station’s transmitter. Class A AM stations — formerly known as “clear channel” stations (no relation to Clear Channel/now iHeartMedia) — are powerhouses, transmitting with 50 kilowatts of power 24 hours a day – 200 or more times the power of the smallest AM stations.

[…]Signal reflection doesn’t work so well during the day, so the FCC has allowed other stations to occupy the Class A frequencies in other markets. But those stations have to curtail power during “critical hours” (two hours before sunrise and after sunset) and often have to reduce power to nearly nothing or shut down altogether at night. In today’s 24-hour-a-day, nonstop world, not being able to reach an audience at night is a losing proposition; so the FCC has yielded to constant pressure over the years to allow more power and longer hours of operation by those “other” stations, at the expense of long distance reception of Class A signals.

Now the FCC is proposing to go further, rolling back some previous restrictions on non-Class A AM stations and perhaps eliminating whatever remains (and it’s not much) of the protection of far-away reception. Under the proposals, which are sufficiently complicated that you should talk to your engineer if you really want to understand the details, Class A AM stations would be protected only within a higher strength signal contour (and so within a smaller area) than they are now; at least some, if not all, skywave protection would be eliminated.[…]

Click here to read the full article at RadioWorld.

Spread the radio love

Radio Exterior de España expands shortwave broadcasts

11 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed (K4CWM), who notes that Radio Exterior de España have announced they’re expanding their shortwave broadcast schedule. Ed has kindly translated the press release into English (click here to read the original in Spanish):

Radio Exterior de España to increase its short wave broadcast schedule

Radio Exterior de España, the international channel of RNE will broadcast eight hours a day from Monday to Sunday on short wave starting on October 28th . It is an increase of four hours in the transmission that was previously made from Monday to Friday.

With this increase, Radio Exterior of Spain sets a new stage that reinforces its programming with new features of its own production. This will augment public service and promote and disseminate Spanish culture and language. In short, it strives to place Spain on the global horizon of the time in which we live.

“En clave turismo“, “A golpe de bit“, “Without a doubt“, “Said with music” and “Tiempo flamenco” are incorporated into a consolidated program along with features such as “Españoles en la mar“, “Marca España” , “Punto de enlace“, “Mundo solidario“, “Artesfera“, “Open Europe“, “America today“, “Africa today” and “Asia today“. Programs to which is added the emblematic “A language without borders”, in-keeping with its mission to take Spanish culture to all corners of the world.

From a technical point of view, Radio Exterior de España will broadcast its programming from Monday to Friday, for West Africa and the South Atlantic, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and Gran Sol, from 16:00 to 24:00 UTC.

The emission frequencies:

  • West Africa and South Atlantic, 11,685 KHz, 25 meter band.
  • Middle East, Indian Ocean and Gran Sol, 12,030 KHz, 25 meter band .

For North and South America, Radio Exterior de España will broadcast short-wave, from Monday to Friday, from 19:00 to 03:00 UTC.

The emission frequencies:

  • South America, 11,940 KHz, 25 meter band.
  • North America and Greenland, 9,690 KHz, 31 meter band .

On Saturdays and Sundays, the RNE International Channel will transmit its signal from 15:00 to 23:00 UTC. The emission frequencies and the coverage areas are the following:

  • West Africa and South Atlantic, 11,685 KHz, 25 meter band .
  • South America, 11,940 KHz, 25 meter band .
  • North America and Greenland, 9,690 KHz, 31-meter band.
  • Middle East, Indian Ocean and Gran Sol, 12,030 KHz, 25 meter band.

In addition to eight hours per day of shortwave transmission, Radio Exterior de España broadcasts its 24 hour uninterrupted programming through the Internet, DTT, mobile applications and satellite:

  • Ses Astras 1M: frequency 11.626.5 MHz. Vertical polarization.
  • Hispasat 1E: frequency 12,052 MHz. Vertical polarization.
  • Asiasat 5: frequency 3,700 MHz. Vertical polarization.
  • Eutelsat 5 West A: frequency 3,727 MHz. Right circular polarization.
  • Intelsat Galaxy-23: frequency 4,191.35 MHz. Vertical polarization.

The changes in programming and frequencies are effective from October 28, 2018 to March 31, 2019.

Many thanks for the tip, Ed!

Spread the radio love