Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who writes:
Kyodo News is a Japanese news agency, the only one in the world that still transmits news via radiofax to Japanese vessels, on shortwave frequency of 16971 kHz USB. The international radiofax transmission standard is 120 lines per minute, but the Kyodo News standard is 60 lines per minute.
However, the retransmission of the bulletin in English is done at a cadence of 120 lpm. I’m using an Android application called HF Weather Fax with which I’m decoding the radio signal coming from Japan and received in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The receiver is the Xhdata D-808 and the antenna is a magnetic loop. The image arrived this morning in Porto Alegre, at 4:10 am local time, quite noisy and with a lot of effort I managed to decipher some headlines.
This was No. 6340 of the English Edition:
https://kyodonewsradiofax.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/kyodo-news-english-6340/
I never cease to be amazed at the nice results Carlos gets with such a simple setup.
CT7AVH – Marcelo has a description of an antenna he calls “Loop Blindada” on his web pages:
https://ct7avh.com/2020/06/04/antena-loop-blindada-2/
That description has great potential for improvement. Using a JFET for A little amplification and impedance matching should give a big gain in results.
Thanks for sharing Carlos!
73’s Egil – LA2PJ
Much appreciated, Egil.
Nice intercept Carlos. Thanks for sharing.
Grazie, Mario
Very interesting, Carlos. Which loop antenna are you using?
as far as i know, Carlos is using a loop antenna, brazilian made. I’t simply called “Loop Blindada”. I believe its a simple passive magnetic loop with a metal variable capacitor.
Right on, buddy
Hi William,
You can look my antenna here:
https://swling.com/blog/2023/08/typhoon-khanun-carlos-radiofax-decodes-using-an-xhdata-d-808-and-mag-loop-antenna/
interesting, too bad the facsimile was not good enough to read the text, i used an application called FLDIGI for a weather fax station that transmitted on 8502 Khz, its a good app that handles lots of digital modes
Hello Kenny,
When I had a laptop, I used to decode the signal with MixW and results were excellent.
I don’t have a computar anymore, so I use HF Weather Fax app for Android, and results are not that good.