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Many thanks to Jeff White, at Radio Miami International, who writes with the following update:
Florida Power & Light Company has announced that most customers in our part of Florida should have electricity restored by the end of this coming weekend — that is by Sunday, September 17. So we hope to be back on the air here at WRMI by that date or before.
Meantime, we have one frequency on the air at very low power using our generator: 9395 kHz. This will be on 24 hours a day with regular programming.
We are making repairs in the antenna field so that by the time electricity returns, we will be ready to resume our full schedule of operations.
Jeff White
Thanks for the update, Jeff! We’re all so happy the WRMI crew made it through Hurricane Irma safely and happy to hear you may have power as early as this weekend.
We’ll publish all of Jeff’s updates here on the SWLing Post.
Yesterday evening, Hurricane Irma passed very close to Okeechobee, and tropical storm force winds hit our transmitter site. I’m happy to say that the transmitter building and the transmitters themselves survived with no major problems. In the antenna field, one of our 44-degree antennas beaming up the East Coast of North America and over to Europe and the Middle East was knocked down, and may not be repairable. Fortunately, we have four other antennas beaming in the same direction, so we can continue those transmissions when the power comes back on. There are also about 20 telephone poles holding our transmission lines that are down or leaning, and they need to be repaired.
WRMI transmitter building with windows and doors boarded up in anticipation of the arrival of Hurricane Irma.
At this point, Florida Power & Light has no estimate of when power will be restored to our site. It could take days, or possibly even weeks. But we should have a better idea about this within the next few days. In the meantime, all transmitters are off the air, although our webstream with the 9955 kHz programming is operating. You can find it on our webpage, www.wrmi.net. There is an audio player in the lower right corner which you can click on to hear the programming. This stream is also carried by TuneIn, Streema, Radio Garden and other similar services. So please continue to upload your programs to our FTP servers as usual.
For WRMI clients, please be assured that we will put a credit on your next invoice for any of your programs that do not air on shortwave.
We do have a generator at our transmitter site which powers our control room, offices, lights and computers. Unfortunately it is not powerful enough to operate our fourteen 100,000-watt transmitters.
All of our staff are safe. Half of them were at the station during the storm (with some of their pets as well; we had two dogs, a bird and a turtle), and the others stayed in their own homes throughout the area.
I want to thank everyone who has called, e-mailed and sent messages with their prayers, best wishes and offers of assistance. We greatly appreciate all of them, and I will attempt to answer all of these messages personally in the coming days. The hurricane has dealt us a serious blow, but we will recover quickly and we’ll continue to broadcast your programs to shortwave listeners around the world. Thanks for your confidence in WRMI, and I will update you when we have more news.
Jeff White
General Manager
Jeff, we’re all wishing you the best as you work to put WRMI back on the air!
Hurricane Irma has done extensive damage at WRMI in Okeechobee, Florida.
Two antenna towers are down and many poles holding transmission lines are also down.
Power went out at around 2030 UTC Sunday, and it may not be restored for days.
Meanwhile, all transmitters are off the air. Our Internet service is also down, which means that our live stream is down as well. All of our staff are OK. We’ll try to provide more information later today here on Facebook. Thanks for all of your messages of support.
Dan Robinson is a seasoned reporter and former White House correspondent for the Voice of America.
During my career in the news business for Voice of America, Google Reader became a key tool I used to track breaking news. In fact, I was frequently able to be ahead of Twitter by using the numerous RSS links I maintained.
When Reader went away, Feedly sprang up to take its place and I was lucky to obtain a lifetime subscription of the Pro level of Feedly, which I highly recommend.
But there are other options obviously. RSS capability is built in to a number of major browsers.
When it comes to keeping track of Shortwave news, RSS feeds are extremely useful. I have dozens of RSS links in my Feedly account, including SWLing Post and the feeds of major stations such as BBC and others.
And of course, Feedly and others are usable with mobile phones which enables us to keep track of things on the go.
The most challenging aspect of using RSS is keeping track of which feeds go dark, at any point. This is the case for several shortwave-related RSS feeds and it does take some time to make sure your feed list is up-to-date.
The article Dan refers to makes the case very clear for RSS feeds: you are the news curator and the one in control of the news stream. They note:
“[W]hen you follow the news via social media, you’re relying on other people bringing you the news, unless you’re following individual news stories. RSS is like getting your newspaper of choice delivered to the front door rather than relying on heading down to the local bar to listen in on what everyone’s shouting about.
With only one page to visit rather than dozens to catch up on, you can spend less time aimlessly drifting around and more time catching up on the posts that matter.
[…]News is the primary driver behind RSS and most of your feeds are going to be populated with dozens of new articles a day, but the technology also proves its worth for keeping track of other stuff you’d typically miss on social media. Maybe that might be new wallpapers on your favorite art site, or an obscure blog you don’t want to miss a post from.”
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Fahey, who writes:
A message to contacts in North Asia (Japan / Korea etc)…
North Korea is currently (right now 1430UTC) broadcasting in DRM format on 3560KHz. Listening to remote receivers in Japan I can see the signal is very strong in the Tokyo and Yokohama areas – I assume it will be strong in other parts of Japan as well. I have NOT been able to decode the DRM successfully, I have tried piping the audio to me here in my Australian location and demodulating it with a software DRM decoder – I just can’t get a lock on the signal. Do you have a DRM receiver – could you please try? If you do manage to receive the signal please don’t forget to record it!
I’m particularly interested to know if the transmissions are relays of KCBS Pyongyang, Pyongyang Pangsong or some other service. If you get a demodulated signal could you check to see if the program is parallel to KCBS Pyongyang on 2850KHz or Pyongyang Pangsong on 6400KHz.
I have a WinRadio Excalibur with DRM here in Australia, but the signal is very weak here – far too weak to lock.
NOTE: Same frequency and bitrate as the 2012 broadcasts so this may represent “Chinese assistance”. Can anyone confirm DRM equipment in Kujang?
20170902 Update: I have received anonymous details that indicate that at least the content server is of Chinese origin. Still no word on actual transmit location. Several other Japanese (and Terje in Japan) have successfully decoded these transmissions.
Being a North Korean propaganda specialist, Mark added:
At the Freeman’s Reach monitoring station the bandwidth and microwave paths in are really being tested this afternoon with the full on activity.
All plans for the afternoon and evening now cancelled! YTN (South Korea) via Intelsat, KCTV Pyongyang via Thaicom, CNN International via Foxtel, CNN USA Domestic via Sling, Korean Central Radio and Pyongyang Pansong via KiwiSDRs – Busy!
All spectrum being captured, tonight the servers will be working hard, it will keep this place warm!
Post readers: please comment if you’re able to decode any of these North Korean DRM transmissions, and/or if you have further information about these DRM broadcasts from North Korea.
UPDATE: Mark has at least confirmed that the DRM signal is a relay of the KCBS Pyongyang national service (domestic) broadcast.
KBS World Radio English Service is carrying out a major frequency and time adjustment on shortwave as we expand our programming as of September 4.
First of all, we will start a new two-and-a-half hour broadcast on 9.770Mhz at 0800h UTC toward Southeast Asia. The one-hour broadcast on 9.515Mhz toward Europe will expand to two hours, and will start at 1500h UTC. Our broadcast toward India will be on 9.785Mhz instead of the current 9.880Mhz and expand to three hours, starting at 1400h UTC.
Unfortunately, as we add more hours and programs to several frequencies, we will no longer be broadcasting on 9.690Mhz, 6.095Mhz and 7.275Mhz.
For more information on the frequency adjustment and program schedule, please visit our website at world.kbs.co.kr.
A new transmitter will be launched in Lithuania this week for broadcasting the Russian and Belarusian-language services of the US Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) aimed at countering Russian propaganda, reports LETA/BNS.
It will replace a 52-year-old transmitter in Sitkunai, close to Kaunas, that has been transmitting programs for listeners in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova at a lower quality.
The medium wave (AM) transmitter was manufactured some five years ago and was used by the US Defense Department in Western Germany to broadcast a radio program for American troops stationed abroad.
The transmitting power of the new device is set at 75 kilowatts, the same as that of the old one, but it can be increased up to 300 kilowatts if needed, Rimantas Pleikys, the owner of Radio Baltic Waves International, said.[…]
