Category Archives: Clandestine

Radio Waves: Skyworks Acquires Silicon Labs, DRM Response to RW Article, CNN finds Radio Biafra, and Free Online Foundation Course

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’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Troy Riedel, Dan Robinson, and the Southgate ARC for the following tips:

Skyworks completes acquisition of the infrastructure & automotive business of Silicon Labs (Skyworks)

IRVINE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jul. 26, 2021– Skyworks Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: SWKS), an innovator of high-performance analog semiconductors connecting people, places and things, today announced that it has completed its acquisition of the Infrastructure & Automotive business of Silicon Laboratories Inc. (Nasdaq: SLAB) in an all-cash asset transaction valued at $2.75 billion.

“On behalf of the entire Skyworks organization, I want to welcome the Infrastructure & Automotive team,” said Liam K. Griffin, chairman, chief executive officer and president of Skyworks. “In addition to a strong legacy of innovation and execution, the I&A business brings a highly diversified customer base that will enable our continued expansion into strategic end markets. Together, we will accelerate profitable growth in key industry segments, including electric and hybrid vehicles, industrial and motor control, power supply, 5G wireless infrastructure, optical data communications and data center.” Continue reading →

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Mystery Ugandan Clandestine On Shortwave

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Hi everyone! Paul Walker here, some of you may know me through various hobby circles via email and Facebook groups. I used to post quite regularly when I lived in Galena Alaska back in 2016 and 2017. I’m back in Alaska again, working as the Program Director for KSKO 89.5 and it’s half a dozen or so repeaters in the interior.

Back on Monday May 10th at 0601UTC here in McGrath, Alaska I ran across an unknown station on 15220kHz. The man was talking in African accented English but would randomly start talking in another language, which I at the time thought may have been French but very well could’ve been Swahili or some other language spoken in Uganda, I’m not a language expert. (audio below)

The man was going on and on about Uganda, “our brothers, our struggle, the government”. The audio cut out a few times for several seconds a time, seemingly because this was a live broadcast being fed live over the internet from whatever studio location he was at to whatever transmitter site was being used.

Around 0623UTC, the host sounded like he put his phone up to the microphone and played a Ugandan song of some sort from his phone. After that was over, two studio quality songs played.. The Spice Girls “2 Become 1” and Gabriel Kelly’s “Faith”. Those songs sounded like they were being played out from the transmitter site, not from a computer over the internet. They were clear with no audio hiccups. The transmitter went off around 0629/0630UTC.

A friend I was chatting with as we tried to figure out what this was said he had a decent signal on a Kuwaiti SDR and based on some triangulation work using other SDR, it seemed this was coming from Europe, suggesting Nauen or Lampertheim.

The man reappeared on 15170kHz at 1500UTC on Friday May 14th. I haven’t even been able to try and figure out a schedule. Evenings one day and mornings the next. I pretty regularly scan the dials and have only noticed him these two times, with thanks to Mauno Ritola in the WRTH Facebook group for the spotting of him on 15170khz.

I do have audio of the 15220 broadcast at this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J54RGCb00mIAHQ96O86f31T0l0GH0wNG/view?usp=sharing

I would love to know who this is, what transmitter site they’re broadcasting from and any contact information. A google search using the phrase “Uganda Clandestine Shortwave” came up with one hit, Radio Lead Africa and someone in the ODXA email group suggested Radio Munansi.

For anyone wondering, I’m using a Tecsun PL880 with a 8D battery powered DXE PreAmp and 2 Doxytronics tunable loops.. The cross that supports the antenna is sitting a few inches into 5 foot tall 2 inch wide PVC pipe which is then put in a trash can and tote container and filled with sand. Gotta use what I have on hand here in rural Alaska.

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Platja de Pals: Once a Cold War “front line” for Radio Liberty

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(Source: CNN via Tracy Wood)

(CNN) — It’s March 23, 1959. The radio waves crackle and broadcast begins: “Govorit Radio Svoboda” (??????? ????? ??????? – “This is Radio Liberty speaking…”)
From the other side of the Iron Curtain, the radio broadcasts of US-funded Radio Liberty reached deep inside the Soviet Union. This was an opening line destined to enter Cold War folklore.

What most of those clandestinely tuning in could not possible imagine is the unlikely location those broadcasts were coming from.

This quiet beach resort of Platja de Pals, Spain, tucked between the Mediterranean Sea and the greenery of pine groves and rice paddies, makes for an unlikely Cold War front line, but this is exactly the role it played for nearly half a century.

At this spot, some 150 kilometers north of Barcelona, Catalonia’s rugged Costa Brava opens up into a large bay lined by a long sandy beach, the perfect location for what was to be one of the most powerful broadcasting stations in the world.

Strategic location

In the mid-1950s, and after nearly two decades of international isolation for Francisco Franco’s Spanish dictatorship, the increasing tensions of the Cold War provided the background for a rapprochement between Spain and the United States.

In this new Cold War context, Washington took an interest in Spain’s strategic location. General Franco, himself a staunch anti-communist, was happy to oblige. In a landmark deal, the United States was provided with a string of bases on Spanish soil, while Franco’s dictatorship would see its relations with the West restored.

The setup of Radio Liberty’s broadcast station in Pals was a side effect of this new geostrategic reality.

From 1959 to 2006, this beach was home to 13 massive antennas (the largest of them 168 meters high, or more than half the size of the Eiffel Tower). This spot was favored not only because of the availability of space — the antennas were laid out in a mile-long line parallel to the shore — but also because it provided direct, unimpeded access to the sea. A physical phenomenon called tropospheric propagation makes it possible for radio waves to travel further over water.[…]

Click here to continue reading at CNN.

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Radio Venceremos: A Salvadoran Civil War underground station

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Radio Venceremos (Image source: Biblioteca UTEC)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bruce Atchison, who who shares this short video from the early 1980s showing a glimpse inside Radio Venceremos:

Click here to view on YouTube.

From Wikipedia:

Radio Venceremos (Spanish; in English, “‘We Shall Overcome’ Radio”) was an ‘underground’ radio network of the anti-government Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the Salvadoran Civil War. The station “specialized in ideological propaganda, acerbic commentary, and pointed ridicule of the government”. The radio station was founded by Carlos Henríquez Consalvi (Santiago).

Despite the end of the war in 1992, the network continues to broadcast. The war years of the station and its national and international influence were documented in the Spanish-language book Las mil y una historias de radio Venceremos and its English translation, Rebel radio: the story of El Salvador’s Radio Venceremos, by the author José Ignacio López Vigil (translator: Mark Fried), a book recorded by the American Library of Congress. An exhibit honoring Radio Venceremos, including a studio room with original equipment, forms a prominent part of the Museum of the Revolution in Perquín, Morazán, El Salvador.

I also found this film on YouTube (The Radio Venceremos Story) which sheds a little more light on the station. The recording is low-resolution, but the subtitles are legible:

Click here to view on YouTube.

Have any DXers logged and confirmed Radio Venceremos? Please comment!

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“The dream of Biafra lives on in underground Nigerian radio broadcasts”

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(Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Ed, who shares the following story about Radio Biafra from the LA Times:

Every evening as 5 o’clock approaches, the clogged, perpetually dusty streets of this industrial city in southeastern Nigeria begin to empty.

Groups of men just off work go inside, shut their doors and tune their radios to 102.1 FM.

Then an anthem begins to play, and a voice says “Kedu” “how are you” in the Igbo language to welcome listeners to the daily broadcast of Radio Biafra.

For the next 90 minutes, hosts and various guests proselytize for the revival of an old dream: the creation of an independent state called Biafra.

The broadcasts, conducted live from an undisclosed location in Nigeria, are illegal, and the group behind them the Indigenous People of Biafra, or IPOB has been classified by the government as a terrorist organization since 2017. Its leaders say they eschew violence and want a peaceful settlement of the issue through a national referendum.

Activists say people caught listening to the station have been arrested or beaten. But many residents here say they are willing to take the risk.

Radio Biafra is a daily reminder of the bloody civil war that ravaged Nigeria between 1967 and 1970. The conflict started when a Nigerian military general, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared an independent state of Biafra. It ended after more than a million deaths, mostly from starvation after the government imposed a food blockade on the region.

Ultimately, the rebels surrendered and the area was reintegrated into Nigeria under the government motto “No victor, no vanquished.”

But the memory of the brutal war looms large in Aba, feeding enthusiasm for the broadcasts despite extremely long odds that Biafra will ever come to be.[…]

Click here to read the full story at the LA Times.

Radio Biafra has also been elusive and rare DX for radio listeners. Click here to read more Radio Biafra posts in our archive.

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Despite crackdown, North Koreans seek foreign radio broadcasts

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(Source: DailyNK via Andrea Borgnino)

North Koreans continue to seek out foreign radio despite crackdown

Police in North Korea have recently focused their attention on cracking down on listeners of South Korean radio broadcasts in another sign of the government’s dual-approach to warming ties with the South, according to a source inside the country.

Speaking from Ryanggang Province on April 24, a source told Daily NK that “police have begun inspections of households possessing radios,” explaining that one method used to restrict radio usage includes applying stickers to the tuning buttons to prevent users from finding foreign broadcasts.

State-approved radios in North Korea are fixed to prevent tuning to non-official stations, but the authorities have used additional methods in recent times to handle the increasing amount of personal radios in the country. In addition to radio controls, authorities also place heavy restrictions on DVD players, phones, televisions, and other media devices.[…]

Continue reading the full article at the DailyNK.

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Going By the Numbers

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For those who follow numbers stations or, like me, enjoy seeing articles about numbers stations, below are a few paragraphs from a recent article in Radio World by author James Careless:

“6-7-9-2-6. 5-6-9-9-0.” Tune across the shortwave bands (above AM/MW), and chances are you will come across a “numbers station.” There’s no programming to speak of; just a mechanical-sounding voice (male or female) methodically announcing seemingly random groups of single digit numbers for minutes on end.

Congratulations! You are now officially a spy-catcher, to the extent that you may have tuned into a spy agency’s “numbers station” transmitting one-way instructions to their minions worldwide.

Numbers stations are unidentified radio broadcasts that consist usually of a mechanical voice “reading out strings of seemingly random numbers,” explained Lewis Bush, author of “Shadows of the State” a new history of numbers stations and the spies who run them. “These are sometimes accompanied by music, tones or other sound effects.” He said. “There are also related stations broadcasting in Morse Code and digital modes.”

The article goes into some of the history of numbers stations, but also talks about modern stations from all over the world. A worthwhile read for those so interested!

Do Shortwave ‘Numbers Stations’ Really Instruct Spies?

Cheers! Robert AK3Q

Robert Gulley, AK3Q, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Robert also blogs at All Things Radio.

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