Category Archives: Guest Posts

More atmospheric phenomena predictions on shortwave

Hi to all the SWLing community worldwide. Imaginary Stations have a couple of programmes on the shortwaves this week for your listening pleasure. The first is on Saturday 26th April 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and then repeated on Sunday 27th April 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz via Shortwave Gold.

It’s another episode of The Weather Channel where we bring you “All weather, all the time”. Expect an avalanche of tunes that feature mentions of atmospheric phenomena all the way from Isobars to Icicles, some classics of a high- and low-pressure nature and some heavy “Weather rock” to play your air barometer to. Tune in and enjoy!

Recently we found some bad news on the internet where it mentioned that “TV test cards are now only rarely seen outside of television studios, post-production, and distribution facilities. They are no longer intended to assist viewers in calibration of television sets”.

That made us feel very sad here at Imaginary Stations, so on Wednesday 30th April 2025 at our new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI we bring you another episode of Test Cards on Radio. We want to bring back the good times where it was all about screen calibration, test tones and adjusting that TV antenna on the roof with a bit of the good old “left a bit, right a bit” technique.

Tune into a golden time when the standard resolution was 525 and 625 lines and bring back some vertical and horizontal hold back into your life.

More on the Weather Channel here:

For more information on all our shows, please write to imaginarystations@gmail.com and check out our old shows at our Mix cloud page here.

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part Five) – Visiting Nahualá

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:


Santo Tomas Church, Chichicastenango, Guatemala (by Lucía García González via Wikimedia Commons)

Don Moore’s Photo Album: 
Guatemala (Part Five) – Visiting Nahualá

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.

After my first attempt to visit La Voz de Atitlán failed in June 1983, I turned my sights northward. The next morning in Panajachel I boarded a bus bound for Guatemala City but got off when the bus reached the main highway at the Los Encuentros intersection. A few minutes later I caught a ride on a ‘chicken bus’ headed north to my first destination of the day – Chichicastenango.

Chichicastenango is not a town that DXers would be familiar with but anyone who has seriously traveled around Guatemala has surely been there at least once. The outdoor markets held on Thursday and Sunday are among the largest in all of Central America. Guatemala has dozens of towns with long names ending in …tenango, meaning “place of.” Chichicastenango is the place of the chichicaste plant, in reference to a thorny bush that grows in the area. Most of the time people just call the town Chichi as it’s common to drop the tenango part from names when speaking.

For over five hundred years, Quiché Mayans from the surrounding area have been coming here twice weekly for the market held in the plaza in front of the Santo Tomás church. The steps to the church are always filled with flower vendors and men swinging containers of incense.

In the early days of the Spanish conquest, Catholic churches were often built on the sites already holy to the Indians. It was a clever way to get the newly forced converts to come to mass. In the case of Santo Tomás, however, they unknowingly picked a location of major spiritual importance in the Mayan religion. As a result many Mayan ceremonies involving nature and natural gods have survived in this area. Some became intertwined with Catholic practices while others were practiced in secret for centuries until it finally became safe to bring them out into the open again.

It was only June but I did my Christmas shopping that day and mailed everything home from Guatemala City a few days later. Guatemala’s post office was very reliable. Everything arrived safely in less than two weeks.

On to Nahualá

With my purchases packed in my now very heavy bag, I got on the next bus heading south and once again got out at Los Encuentros. This time I was looking for any bus heading west. I wasn’t going too far. A few minutes later a bus bound for Quetzaltenango stopped and I got on, telling the driver’s assistant that I wanted to get off at Nahualá.

I knew Nahualá was in the northwest corner of Sololá department a little way off the Pan-American Highway but I was surprised when about an hour later the bus stopped next to a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. I gave the driver’s assistant a puzzled look when he told me this was my stop. He explained that they could leave me off further down the highway where the road to Nahualá branched off. But it would be a long walk from there. From here, the walk was only about ten minutes. There was a well-worn path leading upwards through the cornfield, so I took him at his word. Continue reading

Whatever the weather

Hi to all of the SWLing community worldwide. Imaginary Stations are at it again transmitting over those airwaves this week with a couple of programmes for your listening pleasure. The first is on Saturday 19th April 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and on Sunday 20th April 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz.

The programme (weather permitting of course), features the joys of meteorology. We have all our weather stations at the ready for our transmission that will bring you tunes about the weather, a bit of sunshine and rain and other atmospheric phenomena. So have your weathervane wired up as your antenna and keep a look out for strange cloud formations. If you love the weather, you’ll love The Weather Channel.

On Wednesday 23rd April 2025 at our new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI  we hoist the sails on the pirate ship MV Skybird again and bring you another audio voyage in the Free Radio Skybird series. Tune in and enjoy some “Music, speech and atmospheric effects”.

More on the Weather Channel here:

For more information on all our shows, please write to imaginarystations@gmail.com and check out our old shows at our Mix cloud page here.

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Jim’s travelling on a flying carpet this week

A big hello to the SWLing community far and wide. Here’s what Imaginary Stations are transmitting over the airwaves this weekend. The first is on Saturday 12th April 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and on Sunday 13th April 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz. It’s another James, Jamie, Jimi, Jimmie, Jimmy, Jimbo and Jacob special. Tune in at the allotted time and enjoy KJIM 2.

On Wednesday 16th April 2025 at our new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI  we bring you Flying Carpet Radio. The show is an exotic journey through the skies on what looks like a common floor covering made from thick woven fabric or even on a flying raft made from a collection of carpet tiles (depending on how fast you want to travel). Expect all sorts of exotica and underlaid with some good vibes as ever.

For more information on all our shows, please write to imaginarystations@gmail.com and check out our old shows at our Mix cloud page here.

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Bob’s Radio Corner: Buttons, Knobs, and Switches

Source: The Great International Math on Keys Book, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, Texas, p. 4-7, 1976.

Pressing Buttons. Twirling Knobs and Throwing Switches

By Bob Colegrove

Move along.  Nothing informative to read here, just the wandering of an idle mind scheming with meandering fingers on a keyboard.  On the other hand, if your curiosity can’t be controlled, consider that a significant amount of enjoyment in this hobby is the mere operation of the radio – seeing what all the buttons, knobs, and switches do, both separately and in combination.  It’s always been this way.  Beginning in the Amplifiozoic Epoch there was continual rotation of the knobs.  This occurred before the discovery of ganged capacitors, when each circuit had to be tuned independently to resonate at the proper frequency.  Otherwise, nothing.

It could be quite confounding for a non-radiofile trying to break into the sport.  Just getting some sound out of a two-knob radio could be a challenge.  My late mother solved this problem on all our radios by painting a dab of red nail polish at the points on the dial where each local station came in.

The Complexities of Shortwave

Later, with the humble entry-level shortwave “set” there was conundrum in the way the bandspread interacted with the main tuning control, and the curious effect of the BFO switch.  Even the venerable Hallicrafters Company, which catered to the hams and SWLs of the time, recognized the problem. They tried to solve this by prescribing a default setting in installation and operating procedures for model S-40 receiver, The Hallicrafters Company, Chicago, USA, p. 4, 1946:

“NOTE. – Some of the control markings are in RED. This is an added feature incorporated for the convenience of the listener who is not familiar with radio terminology as an aid in setting the controls most used for the reception of standard broadcast stations.”

That was the nice way of saying it.  After many years, I still chuckle to myself thinking of an old ham radio mentor of mine who insensitively explained that the purpose of these markings was for certain members of the household who could not otherwise make the radio work.  On my S-40B, the “convenience” markings are white dots.

Modern Radios

Modern radios have many buttons, which can work in different ways.  A short press will do one thing while a long press will do something else.  Some buttons do one thing with the radio turned off and another thing with the radio turned on.  On many radios you can lock the buttons and knobs, in which case they won’t do anything.  You must get it right.

Hidden Features

Today, the possibilities with all these variables are boundless, even beyond the control of the manufacturers who incorporate the complex TEF6686 30-pin IC chips in their designs.  Qodosen has set the bar high by making a plethora of user-adjustable functions available on the DX-286.  An uncommonly informative 40-page manual has been included with each radio and is highly recommended as an essential tool to assist with its operation.

In recent years, Tecsun has capitalized on this by incorporating “hidden features” in some of their models; that is, their operation and even their very existence are not revealed in the manual.  In computer gaming parlance, these features are called “Easter eggs” for which one must hunt.  Originally, the inclusion of hidden features may not have been intentional, but with the introduction of the PL-880 in 2013 they became a veritable sensation, as testified by the countless owner postings on the PL-880 Yahoo users’ group of that time.  A prize of unbounded esteem and self-satisfaction went to the intrepid listener who discovered and solved a hidden feature.  This interest went on for several months as Tecsun tweaked the firmware and the “features” migrated somewhat.  But unfortunately, a spoiler has been introduced.  Hidden feature data sheets are now packaged with current models.  In case you are missing any, here is a sampling.

For the Tecsun PL-368 see https://swling.com/blog/2021/08/troys-tecsun-pl-368-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-990 see https://swling.com/blog/2020/10/johns-pl-990-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-880 see https://swling.com/blog/2019/10/40072/

For the Tecsun S-8800 see https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/bill-discovers-a-number-of-tecsun-s-8800-hidden-features/

SDR

The complexity of radio operation is compounded still further by the advent of SDR, wherein combinations of various hardware and software components result in a host of possibilities.  Features and their placement seem endless as they are distributed on multiple menus.  As my personal experience is limited to WebSDR, I leave the pursuit of this point to others.

Manual Power Generation

Finally, the inclusion of some elementary form of leverage and dexterity is present in some radios.  Isn’t the hand-powered crank on today’s emergency radio akin to the vintage treadle-operated transcription machine pictured at the beginning of this posting?  Perhaps we have come full circle.

Conclusion

Today’s radios are a sort of Rubik’s cube which can continually be manipulated to provide many hours of discovery and complement the listening and DXing experiences.  So, the next time you crawl underneath the headset and unconsciously tune to the object frequency, zero beat on the necessary sideband, and adjust the proper bandwidth and volume, reflect on all the time and practice it took you to develop this useful skill.

What’s the recipe today Jim?

A big hello to all the SWLing community everywhere. Imaginary Stations have a couple of interesting programmes going out over the airwaves this week. The first is on Saturday 5th April 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also on Sunday 6th April 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz. It’s called KJIM and it’s a programme dedicated to all people called James, Jamie, Jimi, Jimmie, Jimmy, Jimbo and Jacob. Tune in at the alloted time and enjoy the Jim inspired show.

On Wednesday 9th April 2025 at our new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI  we bring you KFOG. We’re talking about a radio programme from out of the mist and from the depths of the sea. Tune in and enjoy the misty type vibes.

For more information on all our shows, please write to imaginarystations@gmail.com and check out our old shows at our Mixcloud page here.

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Mysteries about the weather

A big hello to all the SWLing community. Imaginary Stations have a couple of great programmes going out on air this week. The first is on Saturday 29th March 2025 at 1100 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and also on Sunday 30th March 2025 at 0900/1300 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and at 2000 UTC on 3975 kHz and 6160 kHz. It’s WMMR – Mystery Mix Radio and it’s one of those “Guess what the theme is?’ specials. Once the show’s over, you send us what you think the theme of the show was and the nearest to the correct answer wins a special eQSL. Tune in and enjoy!

On Wednesday 2nd April 2025 at the new time of 0200 UTC via WRMI  we bring you a meteorology special with The Weather Channel. Expect some areas of low and high pressure on the show, all sorts of weather related tunes and the odd isobar thrown in for good measure. Also if goes well they’ll be a live set from the “weather-rock” pioneers Cirrocumulus. So get that barometer and thermometer at the ready and keep an umbrella at hand just in case and tune in for some forecasting fun.

For more information on all our shows, please write to imaginarystations@gmail.com and check out our old shows at our Mixcloud page here.

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