Category Archives: Nostalgia

Radio Waves: Wartime Radio Hub Linked to Scharnhorst Up For Sale, Thousands protest in Prague, and CAB Joins Radio Ready Auto Coalition

Radio Waves: Stories Making Waves in the World of Radio

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 David Iurescia and Dennis Dura for the following tips:

Wartime radio hub linked to sinking of German battleship Scharnhorst selling for almost £500k (BBC)

One of Britain’s key wartime radio stations is up for sale for nearly half a million pounds.

Criggion Radio Station in Powys was used not only to transmit messages to warships and submarines during World War Two and the Cold War, but to connect Britain to the world before satellite communication.

Part of the station, named Shortwave A, is now on the market for £495,000 – though neither the original radio equipment nor the station’s distinctive 600ft (182.9m) towers remain.

Robert Pearce, a retired Royal Air Force radio engineer who owns another part of the former station, said: “It’s very, very sad we’ve lost it. We were the absolute leaders in technology.”

[Continue reading…]

Thousands protest in Prague against plans to abolish public media fees (Radio Prague International)

Thousands of people gathered in Prague’s Old Town Square on Sunday afternoon to protest against plans to abolish television and radio licence fees and transfer funding for Czech Television (?T) and Czech Radio (?Ro) to the state budget.

The demonstration, titled Hands Off the Media, was organised by the Million Moments for Democracy association.

Around 4,000 people gathered in central Brno on Saturday to show their support for public service media.

[Continue reading…]

Canada’s CAB Joins the Radio Ready Auto Coalition – Radio World (Radio World)

The Canadian Association of Broadcasters is now the latest industry group to join Radio Ready, the coalition advocating for the prominence of terrestrial radio in connected car dashboards.

CAB joins 40 Radio Ready members representing approximately 10,000 radio stations worldwide, a Tuesday announcement said.

The move follows the addition of the U.S.-based National Association of Broadcasters in July, as Radio World reported, expanding the coalition’s North American representation.

Radio Ready hopes to build momentum as automakers consider radio’s presence within vehicle dashboards.

[Continue reading…]

Do you enjoy the SWLing Post?

Please consider supporting us via Patreon or our Coffee Fund!

Your support makes articles like this one possible. Thank you!

FEBC, Manila, Philippines – Then and Now

1 Reply

by Dan Greenall

The Far East Broadcasting Company in Manila is currently celebrating 80 years on shortwave, while at the same time, planning to close down in March 2027.

I first heard them from my listening post in southern Ontario, Canada back in 1972, and received this colourful QSL from them.

They used to broadcast a number of their programs in unusual dialects, but many were in English, as can be seen from this page from the 1972 World Radio TV Handbook.

Their interval signal came from the hymn “We have heard the Joyful Sound.” Two versions of it can be found on Jerry Johnston’s website of shortwave interval signals, one from 1993, and another from 2005 (which is the same version they use today in 2026). Find Jerry’s recordings here: https://www.iaswww.com/swmp3/intervalsignals/simple_is.php

The SWLing Post recently received news from contributor Paul Walker that the FEBC would be shutting down its shortwave service in March 2027. https://swling.com/blog/2026/08/febc-philippines-plans-to-close-march-2027/

The good news is, there is still time to log this station before they are gone forever. Listen to a couple of recent recordings made using a KiwiSDR in northern Thailand.

#1 – Interval signal followed by sign on in Mongolian. Recorded October 4, 2026 at 1114 UTC on 15330 kHz

#2 – Sign off in Japanese followed by interval signal. Recorded October 3, 2026 at 1426 UTC on 15620 kHz

#3 – Made April 17, 2025 around 0013 hours UTC, they are supposedly switching from Lu to Lahu. If you listen carefully, you can pick out “FEBC” around the 2:11 mark. The frequency of this broadcast was 12055 kHz and I was using a remote SDR receiver located in northern Thailand.

#4 – Made July 6, 2025 beginning at 2257 hours UTC, you will hear the interval signal they have been using for many years, “We Have Heard the Joyful Sound.” While the Asian language used for this broadcast on 12055 kHz is unknown, you will again hear a clear “FEBC” around the 3:03 mark of this recording.

They are currently using 100 kW transmitters in Bocaue and Iba, Philippines. Programs are aired in many languages I have never heard of, but none are in English. You can have a look at their broadcast schedule here: https://shortwave.live/freq?station=FEBC+Manila&language=&target=&band=&hour=17&minute=45

Radio Time Travel: Eifeler Radiotage Returns to Shortwave October 16, 2026

Shortwave Memories — Richard E. Wood

6 Replies

by Karl D. Forth

Richard E. Wood may have been the best-known DXer ever.

I first met him briefly at a radio convention in the mid-1970s; it may have been Columbus or Atlanta. A friend, Robert Kramer, had met him earlier and hadn’t enjoyed his first encounter. Rob had asked Richard to autograph his copy of the book “How to Listen to the World,” and apparently Richard, the closest thing to a celebrity in the hobby, had for some reason refused.

A few years later, Richard was teaching languages at Southeast Missouri State University. With fellow DXers Rob Kramer (who had forgiven the earlier snub) and Jeff Roberts, we traveled from our college, Southern Illinois University, to visit Richard.

We were recruited to erect a television antenna on the roof of his house in Cape Girardeau so he could TV DX. There was moderate, persistent rain, and the roof was a bit slippery. Richard supervised our efforts but didn’t join us on the roof. Our own 1970s interest in television DX led us to understand the urgency of the antenna raising. (We also bought Coors beer that was then unavailable east of the Mississippi River.)

That day, I asked Dr. Wood which languages he was studying, and he said he was brushing up on his Albanian, producing a German-Albanian dictionary to support this claim.

Richard, originally from Newcastle, England, was a regular contributor to all of the DX clubs, providing important updates and useful information. He had taught in Indiana, Baton Rouge, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Hawaii, and other locations. Hawaii was his favorite location, and he showed that you could receive most of the world on mediumwave from those islands.

He was very intelligent and rubbed some people the wrong way.

He was also a prolific writer, authoring Shortwave Voices of the World (the Finnish version outsold the English), How to Listen to the World, and the Communications Handbook magazine in the 1970s.

Richard also developed a language recognition course, and studied and wrote about propagation and other subjects.

My last visit with Richard was in early 2007, when my wife and I were vacationing on the Big Island, and we rented a house for a week not far from Richard’s base in the Hawaiian Paradise Park development, southeast of Hilo. We visited Richard several times in Hilo, where he sold local coffee at a space in the market, and we went to his source of Kona coffee farther south on Hawaii Island. For the rest of the trip, the rental car had the rich aroma of the Kona coffee cargo. Richard and I talked about DXing, especially mediumwave DXing from Hawaii, which was his current focus. With my portable radio on that trip I had received two California local channel stations at a distance of 2300 miles. My wife observed that our conversation about DXing was like listening to two people speak another language.

Richard died of a heart attack in Hawaii at the age of 67 in September 2007.

Karl D. Forth has been interested in radio and DXing for more than 50 years. This story was included in the book Radio Nights and Distant Signals.

Please note: all Amazon links are affiliate links that support the SWLing Post at no cost to you.

ELWA Monrovia, Liberia – Then and Now

1 Reply

by Dan Greenall

Radio ELWA (Eternal Love Winning Africa) is a Christian ministry station that has been on the air from Monrovia, Liberia since 1954. When I first heard them in the 1970’s from my listening post in Ontario, Canada, they were using 10 and 50 kw transmitters to broadcast their programs to targets in most parts of the African continent and the Middle East. A couple of old recordings I made captured their interval signal and a station ID in Arabic: https://archive.org/details/elwa-monrovia-liberia-1970

They sent me this attractive QSL card in 1970.

The 1971 Communications Handbook profiled the station on page 14.

From 1989 to 2003, Liberia was embroiled in a couple of lengthy civil wars, and ELWA was forced off the air at least a couple of times. This simple folded paper QSL, that included their program schedule, was issued during this period for reception in 1994.

The station also endured a major Ebola outbreak and the Covid 19 pandemic as described in this link: https://www.elwaministries.org/radio/

Today, ELWA broadcasts programs primarily to the city of Monrovia on 94.5 FM. However, these programs are simulcast with one kilowatt on 6050 kHz shortwave for the rest of the country. They can be tricky to hear in other parts of the world. In recent months, a co-channel Chinese station made reception difficult, even through the use of remote KiwiSDR’s. However, this past week, I have found them in the clear (in English!) for up to 2 hours before 2230 UTC sign off, using a KiwiSDR in the Azores Islands.

Five separate recordings made between September 17 and 20 can be found at this link and embedded below:

ELWA 1

ELWA 2

ELWA 3

ELWA 4

ELWA Sign-Off

I have also been able to hear their signal recently using SDR’s in Cape Cod, MA and Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles.

You can listen to ELWA 94.5 FM online at: https://radio.galcom.org/?station=ELWARadio

Reader Research Request: WBW Burrwood, Louisiana

2 Replies

SWLing Post reader Nathan Woodruff is researching his late grandfather, a US Navy radio operator in WWII who later worked as a maritime radio operator for the United Fruit Company.

Family photos suggest his grandfather spent roughly six months, around 1947, working at the WBW coastal radio station in Burrwood, Louisiana — the former Tropical Radio Telegraph Company station that, according to most records, ceased operations decades earlier when United Fruit consolidated its coastal network.

Nathan’s key question: how long did WBW actually operate as a relay station? If WBW shut down in the 1920s or ’30s as records suggest, then either the family timeline is off, or a smaller facility carried on under that call sign (or a related one) into the post-war years. If you have any information about WBW, Burrwood, or Gulf Coast coastal stations operating into the 1940s, please leave a comment below. I’ll pass along anything useful to Nathan — and I’ve included the photo of the station from his grandfather’s album above.

A Glimpse of Korean War Clandestine Radio in Operation Chromite

1 Reply

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Mark Hirst, who writes:

Thomas,

I spotted a movie in a local charity shop recently called “Operation Chromite”, a Korean production featuring Liam Neeson as General MacArthur.

A fictionalised depiction of the true story behind preparations for the Incheon landings during the Korean War, much of the film follows members of a military intelligence unit known as the Korea Liaison Office (KLO). Their task is to secure information about the mine defences, which posed a significant danger to the already audacious plan to land UN troops against the North Korean army.

Clandestine radio communications between the KLO and General MacArthur’s staff appear regularly in the film. One such scene which I enclose [above], shows a female KLO operator receiving crucial last-minute orders from the UN forces.

Mark