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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part One) – The East

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

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Guatemala (Part One) – The East

by Don Moore

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.

I’ve wanted to do a feature on Guatemala ever since starting this series a few years ago. From a cultural perspective it’s one of the most fascinating countries in Latin America. About half the population are indigenous, primarily Mayan, and most of them still speak their own languages. For several decades Guatemala’s religious broadcasters – Roman Catholic and Evangelical Protestant – used many of those languages on shortwave where we DXers were able to hear them.

I made five visits to Guatemala from 1982 to 1984 while in the Peace Corps in Honduras and returned in December 1987 while in graduate school. I spent enough time in Guatemala that there’s an entire section of my Vagabond DXer book filled with stories of my travels and station visits. In this seven-part series you get to see the pictures.

The map below shows the country, minus the sparsely populated northern department of Petén. We’re going to start in the least interesting part of Guatemala, the east. There’s very little indigenous culture left in that region nor much else of interest to the visitor. But you do have to pass through it to get from Honduras to the rest of Guatemala … and there were some radio stations to visit.

The main border crossing between Honduras and Guatemala has always been near Esquipulas in southern Chiquimula department. (That’s where the header photo comes from). But about 40 kilometers to the north is a secondary crossing near the town of Jocotán. In the 1980s, the road was rough and unpaved and the best mode of transportation was hitching a ride in the back of a passing pickup truck. The border consisted of just two wooden shacks, one on each side, minded by bored soldiers. That’s where I entered Guatemala on my second visit in June 1983. Jocotán had a radio station that I wanted to visit.

Eastern Guatemala may not have had much of interest, but the large Mayan ruins of Copán are just across the border in Honduras. The most direct route there from Guatemala City is via Jocotán so typically a few backpackers pass through town every day. I found a room at the Pension Ramirez. At $1.50 a night it was the perfect place for Peace Corps Volunteers, backpackers, and others at the very bottom end of the budget travel scale. I got a bed with sheets that may have been washed within the past week, a table, a chair, and a dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The shared bathroom was down the hall. Cold water only. But the Pension Ramirez had one thing that I never encountered at any other such lodging. The owner had a business card.

Jocotán was home to Radio Chortís, a Roman Catholic broadcaster that mostly ministered to the Chortí Indians who lives in the region. As most of the Chortí had assimilated into the dominant Spanish culture the station primarily broadcast in Spanish with just a few hours in the Chortí language each week. Radio Chortís used to put a strong signal into North America on 3380 kHz. The station was part of a mission funded by donations from Belgian and West German Catholics. The studios and offices were in a large complex that also included vocational training facilities and a print shop for the church. That explained why the back of their QSL letters always had a colorful station graphic.

Radio Chortís, 3380 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania 30 December 1979 at 1152 UTC:

Audio Player

On to Cobán

Early the next morning, I took a bus to Chiquimula, the departmental capital. DXers may recognize the town as the location of Radio Verdad, the last active shortwave broadcast station in Central America. It came on the air long after my time there so I never got to visit the station. In Chiquimula I switched to a bus bound for Guatemala City, but that wasn’t my final destination. I got off at a little crossroads just before the town of El Progreso and then boarded the next bus heading north to Cobán, capital of Alta Verapaz.

In Cobán I planned to visit another Catholic broadcaster, but one with a rather unusual name for a religious station. In the 1520s, the Spanish conquistadores quickly overran most of Guatemala but the Kekchi Indians in their mountainous homeland proved impossible to defeat. The Spanish dubbed the region Tezulutlán from an archaic Spanish phrase that meant “Land of War.”

In the 1540s, the Spanish tried another method to subdue the region, this time allowing Dominican friars under Bartolomé de las Casas to attempt to convert the Kekchi to Catholicism. Where the soldiers had failed the padres succeeded and the newly pacified region was renamed Verapaz, or Land of True Peace. Bartolomé de las Casas was a good man who left a legacy of trying to protect the rights of the Indians in a time of brutal conquest. But he was just one man in a time of boundless greed. He left the region a few years later and the Kekchi were forced into peonage just as the Mayans elsewhere in Guatemala had been.

And so four centuries later when the Roman Catholic diocese in Verapaz, the land of true peace, set up a radio station they named it Radio Tezulutlán, after the land of war. Someone had a keen sense of irony. But maybe there is something symbolic there as well. The Kekchi, after all, have survived as a people with their own language intact. Today they number over half-a-million, or almost eight percent of the Guatemalan people. That Radio Tezulutlán broadcasts primarily in Kekchi, not Spanish, might just be a final victory for the Kekchi.

The next few pictures show the Radio Tezulutlán building and studio from 1983 and the QSL card and pennant that I picked up on my visit. The QSL was for their little-used frequency of 3370 kHz. They mostly used 4835 kHz.

Radio Tezulutlán, 4835 kHz, as heard in Pennsylvania on 24 December 1979 at 1153 UTC:

Audio Player

More Broadcasters in Verapaz

In Santa Bárbara, Honduras, where I was living in 1983, one of the best heard Guatemalan medium wave stations was Cobán’s Radio Norte on 680 kHz. I stopped by in the evening hoping to pick up a QSL but the only person there was a lone announcer who was too busy to help me. I may not have gotten the QSL but I did pick up something that I’ve since come to see as even more valuable.

In my book, I explain how one of the primary sources of income for small town radio stations in that era was reading personal announcements and greetings on the air. The Radio Norte announcer had a stack of forms that listeners had filled out with messages to be read on the air. He was throwing away some that had already been read, so I took one.

The form could be either mailed to the station or hand-delivered, as this one apparently was. The message is a birthday greeting from Imelda to her son Mario Agusto. At the top, the date the message is to be read is listed and the place is listed as San Juan Chamelco. This is important as the announcer would first say something like “Atención! San Juan Chamelco!” to get the attention of listeners in that town. At the bottom are instructions as to when the announcement should be read – the 18:30 marimba music show. The form is a very unique radio station souvenir. I only wish I had taken the entire pile out of the trashcan.

Radio Norte, 680 kHz, recorded in Cobán during my June 1983 visit:

Audio Player

I also made a side trip to the neighboring town of San Pedro Carchá where I got a sort-of-QSL from Radio Imperial on 925 kHz. If you’ve read my book you know that a picture of the secretary would be a lot more interesting than this one of the front door.

A New Shortwave Station

For thirteen years the Roman Catholic church and Radio Tezulutlán had the Kekchi language airwaves all to themselves. But Evangelical Protestantism had been gaining ground in Guatemala for several decades and in 1988 the Evangelical station Radio Kekchi began broadcasting on the shortwave frequency of 4845 kHz. Radio Kekchi must have had friends at the Ministry of Communication as that assigned frequency was just 10 kHz above Radio Tezulutlán’s 4835 kHz. That certainly made it easier to poach listeners from the competition.

In one more bit of strangeness, Radio Kekchi was located sixty-five kilometers northeast of Cobán in the town of Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. So the Evangelical radio station was put in a place named after the priest who originally converted the Kekchi to Catholicism. Maybe the region should be renamed The Land of Irony.

Radio Kekchí, 4845 kHz, as heard in Ohio on 5 September 1988:

Audio Player

Language or Dialect?

In much of the common literature about Guatemala it says that the indigenous people speak Mayan dialects. And back in the day when these stations were active on shortwave, DXers’ loggings often referred to hearing Mayan dialects. But I called Chortí and Kekchi languages, not dialects. What’s the difference?

Linguistically, a dialect is a regional variation of a language. The different dialects of a language are always mutually intelligible. American and Britons speak different dialects of English but have no trouble understanding one another except for the occasional confusion over a word or phrase. Speakers of Spanish and Portuguese can understand one another a little bit but not enough to have a real conversation. Those are distinct languages.

On the other hand, Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes have no trouble carrying on a conversation with each speaking their own language. That’s because linguistically they are speaking dialects of the same language. So why are Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish considered different languages? Linguist Max Weinrich once explained “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.” He might have added an economy, a government, and international respect.

Languages spoken by people who are held in low prestige are often called dialects not for any linguistic reason but simply out of prejudice. It’s a subtle way of indicating these people and their culture are of less importance. This is true not only of Guatemala’s indigenous languages but of many others around the world. Chortí, Kekchi, Quiché, Cakchiquel, and all the other two dozen indigenous languages of Guatemala are just as distinct from one another as are Spanish, French, and Italian. So show them some respect. Call them languages, not dialects.

A DX Oddity

Let’s end part one of this series with an unusual bit of radio history. Aeronautical beacons are stations that broadcast a short morse code identifier over and over. Pilots use them for direction finding in lining up with the runway during bad weather. Today these are only found in the longwave band but there used to be a handful of Latin American beacons on frequencies just above the old top of the medium wave band. One of those was RAB on 1613 kHz at Rabinal, about 45 kilometers south of Cobán. It used to be an easy catch all over North America, but here’s a recording I made of it in nearby Honduras.

Beacon RAB, 1613 kHz, as heard in Santa Bárbara, Honduras, on 12 November 1982 at 0508 UTC:

Audio Player

Next: Part Two – Guatemala City

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From NDBs to TIS: A DXer’s Journey Across 1610-1700 kHz

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who shares the following guest post and asks, “Wonder who can add to this list?“:

A Look Back – DXing between 1610 and 1700 kHz

by Dan Greenall

1. The Caribbean Beacon, Anguilla West Indies 1610 kHz (1985 QSL)

2. NDB stations (non-directional beacons)

  • transmitted call letters on CW, mostly from airports, heard in the 1970’s
  • examples: MDE Medellin, Colombia 1690 kHz and RAB Rabinal, Guatemala 1613 kHz

3. U.S. Army Broadcasting Service KTRK 1670 Fort Meade, MD Feb 1996          articles and recordings

https://www.radioheritage.com/ktrk-k-truck-1670-khz/

4. FCC Part 15 Radio Stations

Example:    WDKW 1630 “the Klaw” Dundalk High School near Baltimore, MD

Audio Player

Link to my recording made at a DX camp in Coe Hill, Ontario, Canada on April 20, 1997: https://archive.org/details/wdkw-the-klaw-1630

An internet search revealed the following;

Part 15 of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules allows some low-powered radio devices to operate without a license on the AM and FM radio broadcast bands. These devices are subject to certain restrictions, including:

  • Range: On FM frequencies, the effective service range is limited to about 200 feet (61 meters).
  • Field strength: The field strength should not exceed 250 ?V/m (48db) at 3 meters.
  • Detachable antennas: Part 15 rules prohibit detachable antennas on all Part 15 transmitters.

Some examples of Part 15 radio stations include:

  • Microbroadcasting

Often used by hobbyists, drive-in theaters, or on college or high school campuses.

  • Talking roadsigns, talking houses, or talking billboards

These transmitters air a repeating loop of information, such as traffic or highway construction. They typically operate on empty channels on the AM broadcast band.

  • InfOspot

A custom product that can include special audio systems, USB / internet connectivity, cabinets, and antenna mounting styles.

  • Free-radiate AM radio stations

Educational institutions can use a transmitter without a license if the signal coverage is limited to their property.

5. TIS (Travellers Information Stations)

1610 kHz with low power, usually around 10 watts, such as the one I hear near the Blue Water Bridge between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan

6. Expanded AM broadcast band 

Over a quarter century ago, these frequencies began to be used in the U.S. by BCB stations.  I still have recordings of a half dozen of these from the early days.

WTDY 1670:

Audio Player

WNML 1670:

Audio Player

WMDM 1690:

Audio Player

KCNZ 1650:

Audio Player

KCJJ 1630:

Audio Player

KBGG 1700:

Audio Player

Also, here is a link to a column in Popular Communications magazine from February 1998.

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Popular-Communications/90s/Popular-Communications-1998-02.pdf

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Don Moore’s Photo Album: Albania Part One

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

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Albania – Part One

Finding Radio Tirana

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. Don visited Albania in March 2024. 

Of all the places that I’ve been to but wouldn’t have imagined visiting forty years ago, Albania is definitely at the top of the list. Yet here I am wandering around in Tirana’s coolest and most trendy neighborhood. I walk by an Argentine steak house, several Italian trattorias, a Texas cowboy-themed hamburger restaurant, and several sports bars with huge TVs tuned to football games (or soccer if you prefer). Boutique hotels, fashionable clothing stores, and shiny office buildings complete the scene. It’s just another upscale neighborhood in the global village. And it’s in Albania.

I hadn’t planned on getting an afternoon drink until the Radio Bar Tirana popped up on Google Maps. How could I not stop by a place with a name like that? The shelves behind the bar are filled with bottles of imported gin, whisky, tequila, and cognac, but I order a glass of raki, Albania’s version of the cheap firewater that every culture seems to have. It’s strong and burns my throat. No wonder Albanians have survived all that they have been through over the past six centuries. You have to be tough and resilient to drink this stuff. Or maybe it’s drinking raki that made Albanians tough and resilient.

The bar is staffed by two hipsters. I tell them about how decades ago (long before they were born) I used to listen to Radio Tirana on shortwave in the United States. They had never heard of Radio Tirana’s shortwave broadcasts and were amazed to know it was heard in the United States. I think they were also amazed that someone from outside Albania would have wanted to listen to the station during those terrible times. The bar, they explain, has nothing to do with any radio station but takes its name from the many old radios that line the walls. And it’s clear that I fit in better with the dusty wall décor than with the young bartenders or the chic patrons.

The back of the bar opens onto a large, covered patio filled with Albania’s version of smartly dressed young professionals. Late afternoon is the time to drink and to network. But the day is warm and sunny and no one wants to be inside. The main room is empty except for the bartenders and a man in the corner trying to work on his laptop despite the loud voices coming from the patio. I have the inside to myself so I wander around sipping raki, taking pictures of old radios, and remembering Radio Tirana.

The Kantata M model radio was produced in Murom, Russia by the Murom RIP Works in the 1970s. 

Rodina-52M receiver made in 1952 by the Voronezh Elektrosignal Radio company in Voronezh, Russia. Thank you to Anatoly Klepov and Wojtek Zaremba for their assistance in identifying these two Soviet-era receivers.

The Red Lantern Model 269 was made in Shanghai in the 1960s. It predates the General Electric Super Radio by at least fifteen years so the “2 Band Super” name was not a takeoff on the popular GE receiver.

History in a Nutshell

Yesterday, I had visited the vast National History Museum on Skanderbeg Square in the heart of Tirana. All the peoples of the Balkans had a golden age and for Albanians it was the mid-1400s. The Ottoman Empire was the strongest and most aggressive power in the region but George Skanderbeg and his successors held off the Turks for fifty years. The Turks eventually conquered Albania and much of the Balkans but the delay likely prevented them from taking even more of Europe including Italy.

The Ottomans would rule Albania for over four centuries and in that time most Albanians converted to Islam. It was the only Ottoman territory in Europe where that happened. But Albanians continued to remember Skanderbeg, the Catholic who had led the fight against the Muslim Turks, as their national hero. And they never took their Islam as seriously as most other places. That’s why they still drink alcoholic raki.

Over the centuries, the Albanians would periodically raise the double-headed eagle flag of Skanderbeg and rebel against Ottoman rule. And each time the rebellion would be brutally put down. But by the early 20th century the Ottoman Empire had been significantly weakened and Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria had already won their freedom. In 1912 those countries went to war against the Ottomans to gain more land for themselves and as a side result Albania gained its independence. Then two years later World War I came and Albania and its neighbors were overrun by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

When a war is over the victors usually divide the spoils and World War I was no different. Secret negotiations among the European powers included a plan to divide Albania between the new nation of Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy. When the plans leaked out Albanians once again raised the double-headed eagle flag in defiance and this time received support from the United States. The Woodrow Wilson administration made sure that Albania would continue to exist with its pre-war borders intact.

Still, Albania’s bigger neighbors, especially Benito Mussolini’s Italy, continued to intervene in the country’s affairs. In 1928, at Mussolini’s urging, Prime Minister Ahmed Zogi declared Albania a monarchy and crowned himself as King Zog I. As the years passed King Zog came to realize that Mussolini’s plans for Albania were not friendly and he gradually distanced his government from the Italian ruler. The unmarried king also knew that his dynasty needed an heir. In April 1938, 42-year-old King Zog (a Muslim) married 23-year-old Countess Geraldine Apponyi de Nagy-Appony, a Catholic and daughter of a Hungarian nobleman and his American wife.

Meanwhile Albania was slowly entering the modern world and that included radio broadcasting. In 1937, a new radio-telephone station was installed outside of Tirana. The three-kilowatt shortwave transmitter was also used to broadcast several hours of programming per day, but it wasn’t a formal radio station. In the early 1930s several four-story Italian style villas had been built along Kont Urani Street, not far from Skanderbeg Square. In 1938, King Zog’s government confiscated one of the buildings, the Italian-Albanian Culture Center, and made it the first home of Radio Tirana. The new station was officially inaugurated by King Zog and Queen Geraldine in a live ceremony on 28 November 1938. A few months later, on 5 April 1939, the station had its first news scoop when it announced the birth of Crown Prince Leka to the world.

Queen Geraldine and King Zog at the 1938 inauguration of Radio Tirana.

The prince’s birth was good news for Albania, but it was a dark time in Europe. Just a few weeks earlier Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army had marched into Czechoslovakia without consequences. Not to be outdone by his German counterpart, on 7 April (two days after the prince’s birth), Mussolini invaded Albania. The Italian plans had been drawn up quickly and haphazardly and would likely have failed against a formidable opponent. But the handful of patrol boats in Albania’s navy could do nothing to stop the two battleships, six cruisers, nine destroyers, and numerous smaller ships that carried the invasion force across the Strait of Otranto. And Albania’s tiny poorly trained army was no match for the 100,000 troops that came ashore. In just a few days Albania had been overrun and King Zog and his family had fled to Greece (and eventually to England).

What happened over the next few years is a complex story. Mussolini’s goal was to turn Albania into an Italian client-state. The invaders set about to Italianize the country while also benefiting from its resources and workforce. As Radio Tirana was a key part of that process, the Italians modernized the studios, installed new antennas and transmitters throughout the country, and professionalized the programming. In order to not alienate the population, the station tried to maintain a balance between promoting Italian culture while also carrying Albanian culture and music.

Meanwhile, a resistance run by loyalists to King Zog fought back. They had some initial successes but soon the Italians quashed the movement by killing or capturing most of its leadership. They hadn’t made much effort to hide what they were doing. That should have ended the resistance but a new force, Albania’s tiny Communist Party, stepped in to fill the leadership vacuum. Unlike King Zog’s men, they already knew how to operate an underground movement. Gradually the Communists formed an effective guerilla force in Albania’s mountainous interior.

Italy’s surrender to the Allies in September 1943, should have been good news for Albania but the Nazis quickly sent in troops to take over and prevent the Allies from moving in. Their rule was more brutal than anything the Italians had done and that pushed more Albanians to join the resistance. By October 1944 the movement had grown to the point that its leaders had the confidence to launch an all-out attack on Tirana. For three weeks fighting raged back-and-forth in the city streets until on 17 November the last German troops withdrew under the cover of darkness. Tirana was once again ruled by Albanians and one of the leaders was a man named Enver Hoxha.

Albanian partisans in front of Radio Tirana after liberating the city. Tirana was the only European capital freed by its own partisan forces without any help from Allied armies.

Enver’s Place

My glass of raki is empty and I have all the pictures I want. I hand a generous tip to one of the bartenders. He was kind enough to move some bottles so I could get a clear picture of the “Radio Bar” sign. I continue up the street in the direction I had been heading and a block later come to my next destination, the house where Enver Hoxha lived while he ruled Albania.

The house doesn’t look at all like the sort of place a national ruler would live, let alone one who ruled with a deadly iron fist. It’s more like the kind of Frank Lloyd Wright inspired house that might be found in an upscale American suburb. Next door is the Abraham Lincoln Center, a school that teaches American English to Albanians. It’s a good thing, I think, that Enver Hoxha is dead. Enver hated the United States and he would never have been happy with these neighbors.

Unfortunately, the house is not open for tours so all I can do is stand outside and take pictures. As I look at the house I think back again to Radio Tirana. I hadn’t planned to visit any radio stations on this trip but the raki is still having its effect on me. Just for fun, I open up Google Maps and type in Radio Tirana. Surprisingly, I get a result and it’s only two blocks further down the same street. But the huge Radio Televizioni Shqiptar building on the corner with Rue Ismail Quemal turns out not to be the Radio Tirana building I had seen in the old picture in the national museum.

Inside, two young women are working at the reception desk and one speaks excellent English. I explain how I used to listen to Radio Tirana on shortwave. Unlike the bartenders, she knows all about it even though she is clearly in her early 20s. She says that in those days Radio Tirana would have been broadcasting from the old building near Skanderbeg Square. I’m about to leave but then I turn around. “Does that old building still exist? I would really like to see it if it does.” Continue reading →

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Bob asks: “What’s Your Favorite Corner of the Dial?”

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bob Colegrove, who shares the following guest post:

What’s Your Favorite Corner of the Dial?

As asked by Bob Colegrove

Let’s suppose you’ve been listening to radio for a while.  Consciously or not, you’ve probably favored a range of AM, SW, or FM frequencies.  These are areas where you go to DX or just listen to your favorite stations.  One area I seem to keep returning to is the very bottom of the medium wave band, roughly 530 kHz to 600 kHz.  With the convenience of today’s digital radios, I have consciously pushed the envelope somewhat lower.

The main reason for specializing in that frequency range is the challenge.  In the very beginning there didn’t seem to be much at the extreme lower end of the AM broadcast band.  Growing up in Indianapolis in the ‘50s, the local stations were all at the upper end of the mediumwave dial.  WXLW held down 950 kHz – lower than that nothing.  I would say the stator plates on the variable capacitor got very dusty, never being closed any further than that on many radios.

Another challenge was sensitivity.  In analog times, the sensitivity of a tuned circuit had some falloff as the inductance/capacitance (L/C) ratio decreased.  Sensitivity is highest with the variable cap open at the high end of the band.  As you tune lower by increasing capacitance (inductance remaining constant), the Q and consequently sensitivity drop off – not dramatically, but somewhat.

Finally, not all old analog radios tuned to 530 kHz; some were even challenged to tune 540 kHz.  By performing a little mischief with the alignment, I could sometimes venture into unknown territory.

This was all part of the challenge.  So, what could I do to coax some activity out of the bottom of the band?  I spent many hours poring over Bill Orr’s Better Shortwave Reception (Radio Publications, Inc., Wilton, CT, First Edition, 1957) and tweaking caps and coils trying to squeeze the last few kilohertz and microvolts out of my radios.  This exercise fascinated me and became a hobby within a hobby.  If I may be allowed a self-deprecating aside here, the first time I took a radio out of the cabinet, I just assumed that all these alignment screws were loose, and dutifully torqued them down.  The alignment problem is not comparatively complex with today’s digital receivers.  Note, I didn’t say it was unimportant.

I still tend to favor the bottom of the medium wave band.  Below is a list of my catches over the past couple of years.  It’s just a sample of what one might hear by casual listening over time.  Highlighted stations are heard during daylight hours.  This is NOT intended to impress anyone, rather it is hopefully a stimulus for your own efforts.

As another attraction of the lower mediumwave band, you will find a potpourri of stations.  Besides regular North American broadcasting stations, one might possibly hear an occasional high-powered trans-Atlantic station which is not synchronized with the 10 kHz spacing.  530 kHz is interesting.  It is not used in the US by commercial broadcast stations.  Instead, stations from Canada and Cuba at roughly orthogonal directions from me are regularly audible at night on this frequency.  Thus, the radio is tuned by simply rotating the antenna.  530 kHz is also home to several Travelers’ Information Stations (TIS) throughout the country.  Question:  How will this long-time service fare if travelers don’t have AM radios in their new cars?  Finally, the very bottom of the frequency range still contains a few holdouts of non-directional beacons.

Frequencies below 530 kHz probably put a strain on the medium wave bands of old radios, but they are likely no problem on most digital radios having both LW and MW coverage.  As mentioned, there are a few non-directional beacons down there.  They are Morse coded using amplitude modulation.  I have found placing the receiver in SSB mode makes detection much easier, as the heterodyne from the carrier can be heard well before the signal is strong enough to produce any audio.  These beacons generally fade in for brief periods of time and then fade out like passing comets.

My most recent catch was experimental station WI2XLQ, 486 kHz, during its annual Fessenden Event on Christmas Day and again on New Year’s Day.  See https://swling.com/blog/?s=Fessenden+ .  The experience was not the armchair listening quality one might expect from FM or the Internet.  Instead, it was weak and fraught with atmospheric noise.  The station came in periodically, then disappeared, in short, DXing to its highest degree of satisfaction.

The antenna is the key to good reception, and there is no exception to this rule at the lower end of the AM band.  Many years ago, I switched to an indoor, resonant loop antenna.  The selectivity, directional properties, and noise rejection of a loop antenna in this frequency range are superb.  The figure below shows my 40-year-old loop antenna, which is still used in its original form.  It tunes from ~485 kHz through ~1710 kHz in two bands.  The antenna can rotate 360 degrees horizontally and 90 degrees vertically.  Further, it is mechanically balanced to remain in any position without locking.  For those not inclined to construction projects, the Tecsun AN-100, AN-200, and Terk Advantage will perform quite well through inductive coupling with a portable radio’s ferrite bar antenna.

As all experienced medium wave DXers know, for success you need to have patience, “set a spell,” and let the radio do its thing.  Radios are living organisms, kind of like cats, very independent at times, and will let you hear only what they want you to hear.  On many channels, stations will come and go over time.  If you’re lucky, you might catch an ID; lacking that, you might be able to identify it by the format or network.  You might try to compare the contents you hear on the radio with what you can hear online either over the station’s website or via streaming sites such as TuneIn, iHeart, or Radio Garden.  There may be a delay between the Internet stream and the live signal.

When you feel you’ve exhausted the possibilities, there’s still more.  Turn the antenna 90 degrees and start over.  You’re only half finished with that frequency.  Don’t forget a headset or earbuds.

What’s the next challenging rung on the limbo bar?  Well, possibly the 633-meter ham band, 472 to 479 kHz.  I’ll have to pad the old loop with a small capacitor to tune down there.

What’s your favorite corner of the dial?  Why?

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Clear Channel Stations: Dan’s gateway into the world of DXing

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Many thanks to Dan Greenall, one of our dedicated Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributors, who shares the following guest post:

Clear channel BCB stations – My Introduction to the world of DXing

by Dan Greenall

Sometime in the mid 1960’s, I acquired a Japanese made AM only transistor radio similar to the one pictured.

I was entering my teenage years and living in southern Ontario, Canada in relative proximity to the U.S. border, and was immediately fascinated that I could receive American stations from places such as Buffalo and Rochester NY as well as Detroit MI with amazing clarity.

Before long, I discovered that signals from much further afield would begin to come through at dusk and throughout the night time hours. Although I was unaware at the time, many of these would be from so-called “clear channel” stations, those operating on frequencies with the highest level of protection from interference from other stations.

In addition, many of these stations ran a full 50 kw of power.  Signals from the Atlantic seaboard to the Midwest could often be heard at near local strength if I turned my radio to just the right angle.  At this point, I was beginning to learn about the directional properties of the built-in ferrite rod antenna.  It gave me great pleasure to be able to listen to their local ads, newscasts, or a far away sporting event from the comfort of my home.

I recall listening regularly to WOWO in Fort Wayne IN on 1190 for their play by play announcements of the Fort Wayne Komets hockey games.  Then there was a station identifying as WFAA in Dallas.  That was back when they shared 820 kHz with WBAP whose famous cowbell you can hear in one of the audio clips below.

By the end of 1969, a friend of mine had encouraged me to try shortwave, and I “borrowed” my parents Philips kitchen radio for a few months, but that is another story. I wonder how many others got “hooked” in this manner?

A few brief recordings of clear channel stations that I made in the early 1970’s are presented here. Many, but not all, of the stations heard in the last two links are from clear channel stations. Reception for these recordings was made using a Realistic DX150A or a Hallicrafters S-52 receiver hooked up to an outdoor long wire antenna.

KFI Circa 1971:

Audio Player

WOAI Circa 1973

Audio Player

KSTP Circa 1970s:

Audio Player

Vintage AM Radio Airchecks 1973:

Audio Player

Vintage AM Radio Airchecks 1973 Part 2:

Audio Player

As a sidebar, the National Radio Club has put out a number of books showing the daytime/nighttime directional antenna patterns of AM broadcasting stations in the USA and Canada.

I gave up my copy from 1973 a number of years ago, but you can find this one and others online. I found this very useful.

For example, it is easy to see why I was more likely to hear WBT Charlotte NC on 1110 kHz from my listening post in southern Ontario, Canada, rather than KFAB Omaha, NE.

The links below will take you to the 1973, 1975 and 2018 versions of these books.

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Logbooks/NRC_Logs/NRC-Pattern-Book-First-1973.pdf

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Logbooks/NRC_Logs/NRC-Night-Pattern-Mapbook-2nd-1975.pdf

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Logbooks/NRC_Logs/NRC-Pattern-Book-8th-2018.pdf

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FastRadioBurst 23 letting you know of a forthcoming project from DJ Frederick called The Radio Enthusiast e-APA. It looks very interesting and will cover subjects we all love radio-wise! As the flyer above states the main purpose of the project is “for fun, to connect with other radio enthusiasts, to share information & creativity.” It’ll be available via email and a print edition and also a possible audio program. It will go out three times a year: Spring, Summer and Autumn starting Summer 2024. So please send you submissions to: RadioThriftShopNH@gmail.com Send anywhere from 1 to 10 pages per mailing by email (Word docs) please!

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