Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
SWLing Post contributor, Robert Gulley (AK3Q), recently published a post on his blog discussing the edges of radio reception and his pursuit of DX in all forms. I think this article speaks to many of us.
Radio on the Edges can mean a number of different things, depending on one’s perspective. For me, at the moment, it means distance. It means reaching the edges of where a signal can go.
One of the more intriguing aspects of radio is just how far a signal will travel. I have been a DX chaser for years, starting with AM Broadcast signals when I was a kid. The further the station, the cooler the signal in those days.
Then of course there was Shortwave radio. Now that was cool! That was real DX! Hearing countries from around the world was just the best! Well, that it, the best until I became an amateur radio operator and could send signals around the world! Whoo-Hoo! Hot Dog! Oh yeah, baby!!
Still to do on my DX list is to bounce a signal off the moon. Technically my signals have already gone into space, to the ISS and to orbiting satellites. But the moon so far has eluded me. Well at least, confirmation of bouncing off the moon back to myself or to another amateur has so far eluded me.
But Radio on the Edges also means a different kind of DX.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares the following guest post:
In these days of declining activity on the shortwave bands, we don’t often enjoy the experience of hearing what we might still call “rare” stations. The new year brought an exception.
On January 1st, 2019 I was tuning around the 48 meter band, which is largely populated by European pirate stations, utilities, and weather stations, when I heard a station on 6,210.20 khz. It was very distinct in that it sounded like an African station — music, with a male DJ/MC and religious songs.
What immediately came to mind was the religious station calling itself Radio Kahuzi, which is in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
The station has been heard by DX’ers in a number of countries since the mid-2000’s and because it’s management is based in the U.S. it is possible to obtain a QSL verification.
On January 1st, RK was heard from about 1730 to 1747 UTC when it shut down, playing what Richard McDonald, one of the station’s founders, says were musical pieces that are specific to RK.
On January 2nd, 2019 the station was heard again via Europe-based SDRs, signing off at approximately 1811 UTC.
Here is McDonald’s response to my report (which included an mp3) from January 1st, in which he notes that he even went so far as to give the main station announcer, Gregoire, my name and asked him to mention me in the station’s broadcast:
“I just shared with Gregoire that you had sent a recording of the last minutes of his closing musical sign-off if Radio Kahuzi and he agreed to greet you by name this evening and several days in several languages including English.
You got him saying his name at 5:54 into your recording yesterday,and the ID sign off Mountain Blue-Grass Music was unique to Best Radio Kahuzi in Bukavu!
Barbara Smith will be happy to send the QSL Card and info about us and our National Director and his family situation in case you have any suggestions
Powering off here! Our power cuts off with SNEL often — I just lost a longer reply to you !
But Keep Looking UP ! And Keep On Keeping ON !
Richard & Kathy McDonald”
By the way, according to Wikipedia, SNEL stands for Société nationale d’électricité “the national electricity company of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its head office building is located in the district of La Gombe in the capital city, Kinshasa. SNEL operates the Inga Dam facility on the Congo River, and also operates thermal power plants.”
A very interesting page containing the history of Radio Kahuzi, with information about the McDonalds, is at: http://www.besi.org/
As of the time of this writing, it’s unclear to me whether the extended broadcast times of Radio Kahuzi will be continued or if this was a one shot deal linked to the new year — we may have some clarification on this in coming days.
Here’s a video of my January 1st, 2019 reception of Radio Kahuzi:
For now, I am quite pleased to join the group of about 63 DX’ers around the world (that number comes from a link on the RK website called “Shortwave Listeners” that lists SWLs who have heard and contacted the station).
Though it is highly unlikely that Radio Kahuzi will be heard anytime soon in the United States (the station’s schedules shows it being active from 8 AM to 8 PM Bukavu time) at least using U.S.-based radios, whether SDR or traditional receivers, it’s nice to know that there is still a station out there (with 800 watts!) that is a real DX target!
Wow! What a fantastic catch, Dan! Thank you for sharing your catch and, especially, shedding light on this rare DX.
Post Readers: Please comment if you’ve logged and/or confirmed Radio Kahuzi.
I recently received an email from SWLing Post friend, contributor and Patron, Mark Fahey, who is currently enjoying a fascinating DXpedition.
Many thanks to Mark who has allowed me to share a few of his notes from the trip. Mark writes:
I am at Susut, in the Bangli Regency, on the Indonesian island of Bali.
This treehouse is at the base region of Mt Agung, an active volcano, so the earth rumbles a few time each day.
For the next week and a half, I am alone in the Indonesian jungle with my WinRadio Excalibur a collection of loops and wire antennas and lots of storage for spectrum recording. No QRM, I am running on DC, but charge my gear during the day from an AC mains supply.
DX is fantastic – best today being CNR in DRM locked solid!
But the big disappointment is just like Malaysia, MW in most of Indonesia is now just white noise, nothing at all – and hardly any RRI (Radio Republik Indonesia) on the tropical bands now.
But FM jam-packed, I expect many are community pirate stations as well. I came all setup for FM capture as well.
Wow! What a brilliant DXpedition location, Mark! It appears you’ve truly removed all other distractions being in such a remote area.
Sign me up! I’m ready for some Indonesian tree house DXing!
Thanks for sharing, Mark! [And by the way, I’m not at all envious. Okay, maybe just a little. Or a lot.]
Post readers: Have you ever been on a DXpedition in an exotic or unique location? Please comment!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, John C, who writes:
I wanted to inform your readers and you of a really cool SWDX contest that’s free of charge and lasts throughout the month of December.
The attached website has all the contest rules. I participated last year and enjoyed it very much. They sent a really nice certificate suitable for framing for participating. Hopefully you will post this info on SWLing and maybe some SWDXers will participate. Thanks so much in advance, and 73!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bruce Atchison (VE6XTC), who shares the following notes from a DXpedition over 30 years years ago. Bruce writes, “While going through some old blog posts, I found this one about a DXpedition I took in 1984.”
HUNTING FOR RARE GAME.
In past posts, I’ve mentioned my passion for radio. It began with my discovery of distant stations on my dad’s car radio when I was ten years old and continues to this day. Because my memoirs deal with subjects other than distant signal reception, referred to by radio aficionados as DX, I haven’t been able to write much about this infatuation.
One aspect of hunting for DX is travelling to remote locations that are free of man-made interference. When I learned that my cousin Wayne, was going hunting near Lodgepole in October of 1984, I begged a ride with him.
In a clearing along a cut line, I erected a seventy-foot-long wire antenna and connected it to my general coverage receiver which I powered with a car battery. While Wayne hunted moose, I tracked down exotic stations. Just as the fresh autumn air invigorated me, so did the crystal-clear reception of stations which I could barely hear back home.
At our makeshift camp site, I often let my cousin listen to the radio. This occasionally led to some strange situations. As we ate breakfast early one morning, I tuned in a station from Papua New Guinea. To my astonishment, the announcer began playing country music. There we were, two Canadians in the Alberta wilderness, listening to American country tunes from a station on the other side of the Pacific ocean.
Another memorable radio moment happened one night when I picked up a coast guard station in contact with a ship somewhere in the Pacific. Somebody on board it was hurt and needed a doctor. The radio man could barely speak English and the American on shore could barely understand the sailor’s accent. If it wasn’t a serious situation, it would have been comical.
My uncle Bob, who hunted in a different part of the forest, met us one evening as we relaxed by the fire. When he asked what I was doing with that fancy radio, I showed him by tuning in Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster.
Uncle Bob gawked at the set and listened in awestruck silence for a minute. “I can understand that,” he exclaimed as a news announcer droned on in German. “I can understand everything he’s saying. How can you pick up a signal all the way from Germany?” he marvelled.
I couldn’t even begin to explain the intricacies of F2 radio wave propagation to him so I said, “Signals like that always come in like that on the short wave bands.”
I felt sad at the end of the week when we packed up and drove toward Edmonton. Though Wayne came back empty-handed, I had the fulfilling experience of listening to far away stations free of annoying buzzes from TV sets and power lines.
Thank you for sharing those wonderful memories, Bruce!
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.[…]
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Lilian Putina, who shares the following message from NHK World-Japan:
Dear Listeners of NHK WORLD-JAPAN Radio services,
Thank you very much for listening to NHK WORLD-JAPAN Radio services.
We are writing to notify you that the NHK WORLD-JAPAN e-mail address (nhkworld@nhk.jp) will be unavailable from October 20. Replies to this e-mail address will not be received/reviewed.
Hereafter, please send your reception reports/messages via “Contact us” form on each language website.
