Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Robert Richmond, who writes:
Hi Tom,
Ricardo (PC2CLR) recently published an excellent firmware update for the SI473x kit-based receivers flooding AliExpress, eBay, etc.
I purchased a preassembled SI473x model, and it has a much better user interface following the update IMO. Other changes include being able to tweak or disable soft mute, finer grained attenuation, and a few options being moved to the encoder instead of multiple button presses.
The update including directions and a list of features can be found here:
I still have my RCI Shortwave Club certificate issued in 1965 when I was only 14 years old!
In those days you had to monitor their broadcasts regularly and send listening reports on (if I remember correctly) green airmail reception forms every month.
Hope the attached may give other readers some memories.
73
John G3VUO
Wow! Thank you for sharing this, John. Those were, indeed, the halcyon days of shortwave radio listening!
Post readers: Please comment if you’ve also received a certificate from RCI!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bill Hemphill, who writes:
I ran across a reference to Radio Delta International Shortwave, a Hollands station on 6020 kHz. The reference was to a song that was recorded for them by Silvia Swart en het Radio Delta lied. Which (according to Google) translates to The Radio Delta Song. It’s on YouTube and I like the sound of it even thought I don’t know Dutch.
I learned that his store carries Pirate Music as well as the usual Dutch and other stuff a record store would normally carry. Now I understand her interest in radio.
One last song I found that she recorded with her group, The Greenlights:
Mijn opa is een zendpiraat
Which translate to: My grandfather is a radio pirate
Maybe one of the forum members can give us a quick translation/summary of the songs.
73
Bill Hemphill
WD9EQD
Thank you for sharing this, Bill! Any fans of Silvia Swart out there? Please comment!
A ceremony has been held to mark 80 years since the start of radio service at Japan’s only station broadcasting programs overseas on shortwave bands.
The KDDI Yamata Transmitting Station in Koga City in Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, is used by NHK World Radio Japan.
About 50 officials from NHK, KDDI and other entities took part in the ceremony on Wednesday.
The chief of the communications ministry’s Kanto Bureau of Telecommunications, Tsubaki Yasufumi, said remotely at the event that he honors the station’s 80 years of stable operations. He also said he hopes for continued efforts so that programs from Japan can be broadcast overseas.
Terada Kenji of the NHK Engineering Administration Department said shortwave broadcasting served as a lifeline on many occasions such as the 2014 coup in Thailand. He said he wants to express gratitude to all the people involved in shortwave broadcasting.
After the ceremony, the head of the station, Saito Toshimitsu, said it plays an important role in providing information from Japan. He added that he will keep working hard so that the station will be passed down to younger generations.
“Testing the good old Sony CRF-320 after many years not in use. It works flawlessly in all bands”
EA4HGN’s photo, above, reminds me that the Sony CRF-320 sports one of the best designs I’ve ever seen in a portable radio. A proper Apollo era aesthetic!
Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio
Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’sRadio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Dennis Dura and Dan Robinson for the following tips:
On July 4th, 1976, as Americans celebrated the country’s bicentennial with beer and bottle rockets, a strong signal began disrupting shortwave, maritime, aeronautical, and telecommunications signals all over the world. The signal was a rapid 10 Hz tapping that sounded like a woodpecker or a helicopter thup-thupping on the roof. It had a wide bandwidth of 40 kHz and sometimes exceeded 10 MW.
This was during the Cold War, and plenty of people rushed to the conclusion that it was some sort of Soviet mind control scheme or weather control experiment. But amateur radio operators traced the mysterious signal to an over-the-horizon radar antenna near Chernobyl, Ukraine (then part of the USSR) and they named it the Russian Woodpecker. Here’s a clip of the sound.
The frequency-hopping Woodpecker signal was so strong that it made communication impossible on certain channels and could even be heard across telephone lines when conditions were right. Several countries filed official complaints with the USSR through the UN, but there was no stopping the Russian Woodpecker. Russia wouldn’t even own up to the signal’s existence, which has since been traced to an immense antenna structure that is nearly half a mile long and at 490 feet, stands slightly taller than the Great Pyramid at Giza.[…]
‘The intelligence coup of the century’. The extraordinary story of the longest running and most successful secret intelligence operation of the 20th Century.
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company, Swiss-based Crypto AG, to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was owned for over 20 Cold War years by the CIA in partnership with the BND, the German Intelligence Service. The machines that many customers bought had deliberately weakened security – a window through which the CIA and BND could read the diplomatic traffic between their embassies, their trade negotiators and their own spies.
The BND sold out its share in 1993 for a tidy profit while the CIA continued until the company was broken up in 2018.
Crypto AG’s own secret was only cracked last year in a combined investigation by German ZDF television, Swiss SRF and the Washington Post following the discovery of a secret history, Operation Rubicon, that had been assembled by some of the operatives who had been involved in the deception.
A Spy in Every Embassy is the story of the story, presented by German intelligence journalist Peter F Muller, who produced last year’s television programme for ZDF, and British journalist David Ridd.
It gives the chronology of the manoeuvrings, arguments, successes and deceptions of the partnership that remained secret for a quarter of a century. Its revelations offer a new perspective on some of the landmark events of those decades – the Falklands War, the US bombing of Libya from British airfields, the negotiations that lead to the Camp David Accords and the Iranian Hostage crisis, as well as the daily churn of intelligence information from around the world about both friends and opponents.
The programme considers the collateral damage of deception on a grand scale. Most employees of Crypto AG knew nothing of the built-in weaknesses of the machinery they were building or trying to sell to governments in some very dangerous parts of the world.
Extracts read by Lanna Joffrey, Annette Kossow, Blanca Belenguer, Mike Christofferson and Thilo Buergel.
Archive by kind permission of ZDF Television, Crypto Museum, Harry S Truman Library, National Security Agency Archive and Bletchley Park podcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w499