Category Archives: Recordings

Carlos tests a Panasonic RN-305 Microcassette Recorder

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Carlos Latuff, who shares the following article. Carlos writes:

Panasonic Microcassette Recorder

To record my radio listening sessions, I usually use a Sony digital recorder, model ICD-PX240. However, last week I purchased another beauty—this time a Panasonic microcassette recorder, model RN-305, manufactured in Japan in 2000.

I decided to test it out, and here are the results. The listening sessions were conducted in Porto Alegre using XHDATA D808 and Ecopower EP-F23B receivers.

Audio:

Click here to download.

Notes:

June 25, 2026

NHK, 11800 kHz (in Japanese)

7.2 quake hits Aomori and Iwate prefectures. Typhoon No.7 approaching Okinawa, No. 8 approaching Izu Islands.

BBC, 15400 kHz (in English)

Earthquake in Venezuela, Spain and France offering rescue workers.
US Secretary of State assured Gulf allies the Strait of Hormuz will stay open as Iran threatens transit fees.
Former Israeli leaders threatened legal action over alleged Jewish terrorism in the occupied West Bank.

June 26, 2026

BBC, 15400 kHz (in English)

Earthquake in Venezuela, more than 900 people are now known to have died in two earthquakes. The U. N. says 50,000 people are missing.
The U.S. announced a framework to end fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
John Bolton pleaded guilty to one charge of mishandling information.
A state of emergency was declared in Crimea.
Extreme heatwave in Europe, Germany recorded temperatures above 41°C on Friday, in France, festivals, street parties and Paris Pride were canceled, while alcohol sales were restricted in Paris, in the Netherlands, electric bus charging failures disrupted public transport.
Paris suspended flights to and from Kinshasa, D.R. Congo, after a passenger tested positive for Ebola.
Civil unrest in Tanzania.
D.R. Congo sued Rwanda at the International Court of Justice over alleged atrocities.
Earthquake in Venezuela: Full coverage.
Lebanon and Israel reached a U.S.-brokered deal for Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Radio Exterior de España, 17715 kHz (in Arabic)

Venezuela was struck by two earthquakes of magnitude 7.2 and 7.3 according to the U.S. Geological Survey on Wednesday. Collapsed buildings and several damaged structures were observed in the capital, Caracas. Acting President Delcy Rodriguez reported in an initial tally that the two earthquakes resulted in 32 deaths and 700 injuries. State of emergency was declared after the two earthquakes, which were followed by approximately 20 aftershocks. The earthquakes caused further damage, including building collapses and the closure of Simón Bolívar International Airport. The state of La Guaira was the most affected and was declared a disaster area, as explained by Acting President Delcy Rodriguez.

Vatican Radio, 11870 kHz (in English)

Africa News Panorama: Ebola outbreak in D.R. Congo, more that 1100 cases with 300 deaths.
Anti-immigrant rallies in South Africa.
Rescue workers are working in the rubble of a three-story building that collapsed in Nigeria.

Radio 2, 1230 kHz AM (in Spanish)

Venezuela increased to 920 the dead and there are at least 3360 injured in the latest reports of the Ministry of Health after the earthquakes of Wednesday. In addition to 50.000 people who remain missing.

Recordings: VOA Chinese and Possible Co-Channel QRM

My Recording of the 2026 BBC Midwinter Broadcast to Antarctica

5 Replies

by Thomas (K4SWL)

First, a huge thank you to everyone who has submitted recordings of this year’s BBC Midwinter Broadcast to Antarctica on our recording-sharing post. It’s been a real pleasure browsing reception reports and recordings from around the globe.

If you haven’t yet shared your recording, there’s still time! Please add it to the original post here.

(Please post your recording there rather than in the comments of this post so we can keep all of the recordings together in one place.)

I thought I’d share my own recording of the broadcast because this year’s reception was especially memorable. Unlike previous years when I’ve listened from the United States or Canada, I’m in the UK this year—and the results were brilliant. Both frequencies transmitted from the Woofferton site delivered excellent audio quality.

Recording notes:

This is the BBC Midwinter Broadcast to Antarctica recorded on June 21, 2026 at 09:30 UTC in Foulden, Scotland, UK. The radio was an Elecraft KX2 connected to a 31-foot 9:1 random wire antenna in the back garden. The broadcast starts on 9460 kHz, but I then move to 12070 kHz because it had slightly less local noise.

Click here to download.

Thank you again to everyone who has contributed recordings and reception reports.

The BBC Midwinter Broadcast remains one of my favorite SWLing events of the year. I simply love the idea that the BBC would broadcast from two different sites on three different frequencies via shortwave to a relatively small audience of British Antarctic Survey scientists wintering over in Antarctica.

It’s always a joy to listen live, knowing that they’re celebrating midwinter with parties at their stations and hearing the voices, messages, laughter, and well-wishes of loved ones carried to them over the air by shortwave radio.

In an age of instant communications, there’s still something magical about that.

Please share your recording of the 2026 BBC Midwinter Broadcast to Antarctica here!

22 Replies

Halley VI Antarctic Research Station

In the comments section of this post, I’d like you to share your recording of the 2026 BBC Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast!

Time and frequencies

Thanks to Dave Porter, who has confirmed these three shortwave frequencies for the annual BBC Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast (2130–2200 UTC Sunday, June 21, 2026):

9460 kHz from Woofferton
9510 kHz from Ascension
12070 kHz from Woofferton
Also on DAB in the UK at 2130 UTC (2230 BST).

Please comment with your recording on this post!

Listening to the 2017 BBC Antarctic Midwinter Broadcast from the back of my vehicle in Saint-Anne-de-Beaupré, Québec, Canada.

I’ve created this dedicated post where you can comment and include links to audio and video of your 2026 Midwinter Broadcast recordings. This will allow you to post your logs and recordings at your convenience without my availability becoming the bottleneck.

Here’s the format I’d like you to leave in your comment on this post:

Name:

Listening location:

Notes: (Include frequencies and any details about your receiver and antenna.)

Link to audio or video: (YouTube, Vimeo, Internet Archive, SoundCloud, etc.)

Video and Audio Recordings

There is no way to directly upload audio in your comments; however, you can link to your recordings if you upload them to the Internet Archive (which I’d highly recommend) or any of the video streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo—or audio services like SoundCloud.

To be clear: I will not have the ability to upload your videos for you—so please don’t email me your video files. Simply upload them to one of the services above and share the link here in the comments. ?

As with each year, I’ll make sure the BAS team and the BBC receive a link with all of your recordings!

Carlos’ Illustrated Radio Listening Report and Recording of Radio 10 AM (June 17, 2026)

3 Replies

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following illustrated radio listening report of a recent Radio 10 AM broadcast.

Carlos notes:

Radio 10 AM 710 kHz, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Click here to view on YouTube.

The MLite-880: A more thorough performance assessment

15 Replies

By 13dka

Following up on the article I recently wrote about the MLite-880, I still had a comparison with a reference radio on a proper antenna on my to-do list. I wasn’t in a hurry because I got pretty fascinated with exploring what I can get out of various magmounts on my car with this radio, which is quite a lot and it never gave me the feeling of missing out on something. I was also a bit hung up on the idea of comparing the MLite with the Belka because, you know, same price level and all, but that’s a bit iffy with my little passive splitter and 2 different input impedances.

Then a claim was made on the interwebz that the MLite-880 would be just a mediocre radio that would not stand scrutiny without its outstanding noise reduction, to summarize that in my own words. My experience is obviously very different and it made me curious how much truth could be in this claim. So I just took the ingenious Icom and the mediocre MLite to the dike to slip in a little shootout and then maybe give the loser a Viking funeral on a little raft I improvised out of flotsam and jetsam while making a lot of recordings to give my findings a whiff of evidence.

Both radios were connected to my lazy 10m/33′ monopole antenna via a Diamond SS-500 splitter and 15m double-shielded and common-mode choked coax. Both were recording to their own SD cards, but unfortunately, the recorded audio from the Icom does not represent the live audio off the radio on AM recordings because it records to an SD card with an 8 kHz sample rate, and that limits the audio bandwidth to at best 4 kHz. The deciding thing to listen to in these recordings is the noise and sometimes the pure existence of a signal, though, and lower bandwidth is almost an advantage in this context.

oznorWO

Sensitivity Test

Since the question is really the practical sensitivity and, therefore, how dependent this radio is on its noise reduction to get good results, I’ll start with the IBP beacons, which were recorded without NR, of course. To spot and quantify SNR/sensitivity differences you can use the four -10dB stepped (100W, 10W, 1W, 0.1W) dashes the IBP beacons transmit after their callsign.

The most grassrootsy first: OA4B in Peru (10,800km/6,700mi) on the 17m-band. MLite first, then the Icom. Both radios receive the second (10W) dash as faintly as the 100W dash, but with too little SNR left.

5Z4B beacon in Nairobi, Kenya (6,600km/4,100mi with a 3rd dash = 1W!) informing a silent 15m band about the opportunity around sunset. MLite starts again, then the Icom. The latter has the 3rd dash faintly but clearly and the former leaves some more ambiguity about that. Demonstrates again the minuscule difference.

5Z4B again, but on 20m with a 4th dash to count, whether or not the last one is really from 5Z4B or just interference doesn’t matter; what counts is that both radios heard it. The 1W dash was clearly received by both, starting with the MLite.

Here’s one where only the MLite heard an interference, and I’m not sure it imagined it (absolutely unavoidable pun) – VK6RBP in Australia for the 10,000 miles bragging rights.

I think the conclusion here is that we could probably agree on “same ballpark”, right? I don’t know about you, but imagine my surprised Pikachu face!

The AF SNR difference, which is probably all that counts in sensitivity tests, is within 3dB between the two, not to be confused with RF power decibels (but reflected on the RF side in comparably small amounts). For the interested:I did take day/night variations of the noise floor above 10MHz into consideration, with a decreased noise level around midnight on 21MHz, the MLite still matches the Icom, which is all that counts in this comparison (not absolute measurements) context.

The magic button

Another claim was made about the noise reduction, that it would only work with signals of a certain strength. While it is technically correct that it needs a minimum SNR to improve upon, my experience is that it is effective with almost any remaining SNR, provided the signal is fed into the NR with sufficient levels, and it exceeds all my expectations at that. Here are a few recordings of CHU demonstrating both points:

CHU 14670 kHz in Ottawa (5,800km/3,600mi) in bad enough conditions. The same announcement from the IC-705, then the MLite with NR at ? of its range. Note how difficult the French announcement at the end of the transmission is for both radios. I will miss that station. The noise, not so much.

This is just the announcement a minute earlier, when the signal dipped below the noise floor. Nothing gets really recovered, but nothing gets lost either, and what’s left stands out more:

However, if you only look at its inability to cheat physics, you could be missing the point of a good noise reduction in this particular “shortwave radio” context. Restoring fidelity, removing masking noises and generally increasing the SNR and thus ease of listening is having a massive impact on how at least I can enjoy programs or conversations and there’s more: After a few decades many of us (particularly 2-way) radioheads have gotten their auditory cortices hardwired to make a connection between noise and signal strength and then pushing this NR button might feel like witchcraft when it makes a bloke driving around on the other side of the globe sound like he’s just passing your local highway intersection.

In the following sound clips you will hear both radios taking turns in 5-second chunks as if I switch forth and back between them, in some of them I will play the same bit of transmission twice, first from the one, then the other radio so you can e.g. make out differences quite precisely. Continue reading →

Time Stations from the 1970s Heard in Ontario, Canada — And What You Can Still Hear Today

7 Replies

by Dan Greenall

Time and standard frequency stations have been around for a long time. In my early years of DXing, there were more than 20 of them scattered all over the globe. These two pages from the 1972 World Radio TV Handbook show what could be heard back then, along with the frequencies used.

A page from the 1975 WRTVH indicates the arrival of BPM.

I managed to log at least ten of them from my listening post in southern Ontario, Canada. They are listed below, some of them including links to recordings I made, have survived for over half a century.

WWV, Fort Collins, CO (change of format in 1971)