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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Fred Waterer, who shares the following fascinating video from the CBC and notes:
“The Listeners” Members of the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Corps monitored the airwaves for German U-Boat traffic. Their participation was secret for decades.”
This is such an amazing story, Fred, and the CBC did a fine job putting it together. Thanks so much for sharing.
Editor’s note regarding WWII history: Regular SWLing Post readers know that I’m an avid WWII history buff, in that I read, view, and especially listen to many accounts of the Second World War era, the glory days of radio. I’ve traveled and lived in several of the countries that were, at that time, among the Axis Powers, some of my close friends are from or reside in these countries now, and feel much as I do about this history: that this was a devastating war which we must not forget or romanticize, and from which we can learn about ourselves as human beings, hopefully with the view of preventing such chilling events from ever being repeated. As we have readers and contributors from all over the world in this radio community, I sincerely hope that WWII-related articles are regarded in this light of understanding. The takeaway? Times have changed. I firmly believe that a deep understanding of our shared history makes us all better people.
Soldiers coming ashore in Normandy, France. (Photo: National Archives)
Today, as many know, is the 75th anniversary of the World War II battle in Normandy, France, known to history as D-Day. “Operation Overlord,” as D-Day was code named, without doubt, was one of the key turning points of World War II.
But many may not know that D-Day was also one of the first events that brought continuous news coverage via radio on the home front.
“In addition to what it meant as a great turning point in world history, D-Day is also unique in how it was broadcast by American radio networks, as CBS, NBC, and what would become ABC pooled their reporters, engineers and other resources, and cooperated closely with military officials to present, for the first time, what would now be called “wall-to-wall” coverage of a developing major international news event for American audiences.
It’s something we take for granted now in the age of the internet and cable news, but this kind of media coverage can be traced back to D-Day.”
But the widely-covered event was originally top secret. So secret, in fact, that news agencies in the US first learned about Operation Overlord via not Allied news, but Axis news sources. Thus the information was delivered with caution, since the source wasn’t the War Department of Allied Forces.
A little after 3:30 AM (Eastern War Time), the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London produced Communiqué #1, a short statement read twice by Colonel R. Ernest Dupuy, confirming that Allied naval forces, with the support of the air forces, and under the command of General Eisenhower, began landing Allied armies that morning on the northern coast of France.
Here is the actual recording via the Miller Center at UVA:
Click here to listen to a full broadcast set starting at 0250 Eastern War Time. I’ve also embedded an Internet Archive player below that will play the full recording playlist in chronological order:
CBS coverage
CBS’ confirmed report of D-Day begins at 49:25 in the following recording:
Screenshot of katsu’s tweet with translation by Google.
Shortly thereafter, another image was shared featuring the Tecsun PL-990:
To put this in perspective: there hasn’t been a new product announcement like this from Tecsun since the appearance of the S-8800nearly four years ago–!
This buzz created a flurry of emails to me in only a few hours.
Readers wanted more information and details about the new radios and, frankly, I wanted to confirm what details we could infer from the photos. I only knew that there would be a “high-performance” receiver introduced this year, but knew very little other than that–I certainly didn’t expect two radios in the works.
So I reached out to a trusted source and now have some solid information I’ll share below:
The Tecsun PL-990
Yes, the Tecsun PL-990 is real. The image above is a correct representation of the working prototype.
There is no official launch date yet, but if all goes well with production and testing, the export version will become available in December 2019 at the earliest. It’s highly unlikely it will ship prior to December–it’s more likely it could ship sometime in early 2020.
The Tecsun “S-9900”
There is a new model in development, but the anticipated design and model number are not as shown in the picture above. When @katsu3_uc corrected his initial post and clarified that the radio in the photo was only a prototype, this was correct. I believe this was one from many years ago.
There are few details about this radio as it is in the early stages of design/development.
Production, availability, and other product details are simply not available yet. I get the impression the chance of it shipping this year are very low.
Stay tuned…
As I learn more about these two Tecsun receivers, I’ll post updates here on the SWLing Post. I’ll tag updates with model numbers (Tecsun PL-990 and Tecsun S-9900) so posts can be read in chronological order. Note that even though “S-9900” will not be the model number of the second receiver, I’ll use it until we have the new model number.
Of course, I’ll review both radios as soon as they’re ready for evaluation!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares the following image originally posted in the Shortwave Radio Listener Appreciation Facebook group:
This looks like a solid iteration of the venerable Tecsun PL-880.
I will try to gather more information about these designs and if one or both might come to fruition this year. I’ll post PL-990 updates with the tag: Tecsun PL-990.
[Update: Also see this post that includes an image of a Tecsun PL-990. I will try to confirm if one or both of these radios may indeed be produced this year.]
Shortly after publishing this photo, Katsu added the following message (this translation via Google Translate):
“I apologize apparently I have put a photo of the prototype stage. However, it seems that there will be no doubt that a new model will be released from TECSUN at the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, so we will tweet from time to time if there is final information.”
I’ve known for some time that Tecsun has been working on a “high-performance” shortwave receiver and that it would be released by end of year. If this is it, they’re ahead of schedule!
Rest assured, I’ll be checking out this receiver as soon as it’s available! Check out @katsu3_uc on Twitter and, of course, we’ll post updates here on the SWLing Post. Simply follow/bookmark the tag: Tecsun S-9900
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ron, who shares the following article via the BBC News:
Police have raided the Sydney headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corp (ABC), in a second day of searches targeting journalists.
Officers arrived at the public broadcaster with search warrants naming two reporters and the news director. The ABC has protested over the raid.
The police action is related to articles about alleged misconduct by Australian forces in Afghanistan.
On Tuesday police searched the home of a News Corp journalist, sparking alarm.
The leading journalists’ union said the two raids represented a “disturbing pattern of assaults on Australian press freedom”. Other unions and human rights groups also condemned the actions.
According to the ABC, Wednesday’s search is about the 2017 investigative series known as The Afghan Files which “revealed allegations of unlawful killings and misconduct by Australian special forces in Afghanistan”.
The broadcaster said the series was “based off hundreds of pages of secret Defence documents leaked to the ABC”.
The Australian Federal Police said the warrant was in relation to “allegations of publishing classified material” and that it “relates to a referral received on 11 July 2017 from the Chief of the Defence Force and the then-Acting Secretary for Defence”.
The Afghan Files were published by the ABC on 10 July 2017.
The police said Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s raids were not connected, adding: “Both however relate to separate allegations of publishing classified material, contrary to provisions of the Crimes Act 1914, which is an extremely serious matter that has the potential to undermine Australia’s national security.”
It defended its actions, saying they had “been independent and impartial at all times”.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Roseanna, who shares the following guest post originally published on her blog, The Girl with the Radio:
Unexpected FM madness!
I would like tho share with you a once in a lifetime Sporadic-E event that happened to me today along with videos of the catches I received during it.
It was about 12:00 UTC (1PM local time) and I was listening to NRJ on my personal FM transmitter (106.3MHz) when all of a sudden my pop music fuzzed and turned into classical music. It was then that I knew something was happening and I didn’t want to miss it!
I jumped up, got out my phone camera and started scanning around trying to find distant FM stations and my goodness did I get some amazing catches!
There was no tropo forecast for my area nor some of the places I heard and I wasn’t prepared in the slightest so I ask for your forgiveness on the shaky unprofessional footage and I hope you enjoy watching the following catches that I received!
For those interested my setup is a Sony ST-SE570 with a “bunny ear” telescopic aerial with the ground positioned vertically and the feed positioned horizontally. I put the feed to be facing at 90 degrees East to West.
Disclaimer: the order in which these stations were received has been altered to make this blog post more fun, the times in UTC are in the video titles for those of you interested in the chronological order in which I received these stations!
And this catch …. I have no words to describe my sheer amazement, surprise, shock and excitement hearing a station from Romania (Over 1800km / 1100 miles away) that is broadcasting at only 2kW. It is on the same frequency as France Musique broadcasting at 160kW which is much much closer; I still can’t believe I heard this at all!
After all that excitement we now stop over in Slovakia!
This is a much less insane catch compared to the last few but it is still awesome! Disclaimer: I skipped a load of fading in the recording where it fades.
And here is SRo 1 again, however this time a much lower powered transmitter compared to the last one and yet the signal is still really good and most of the RDS data was decode-able!
This is Retro Rádió a 50kW station in Hungary. It was broadcasting over BBC Radio Wiltshire and I even got RDS!
I hope you all enjoyed going on this radio tour of Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia with me, I certainly did!
Thank you ever so much for reading and watching and I hope to see you around for my next adventure!
And thank you, Roseanna, for taking us on your FM travels! Isn’t RDS an amazing tool for grabbing station IDs during these FM DX openings–? Well played! Again, many thanks as I enjoyed your FM tour of eastern Europe.
