Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent NHK World broadcast.
Carols notes:
News about the strong earthquake that hit Cianjur, West Java, Indonesia, more than 200 people dead.
Broadcasted by NHK World Japan radio in Indonesian via shortwave frequency of 13705 kHz, and listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent Voice of Korea broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Announcement of the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by the DPRK, via KCBS Pyongyang, domestic radio service from DPRK, broadcasting in Korean, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, shortwave frequency of 11680 kHz.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Announcement of the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by the DPRK, via Voice of Korea, broadcasting in English from Kujang, North Korea, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, shortwave frequency of 12015 kHz.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Announcement of the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by the DPRK, via Voice of Korea, broadcasting in Spanish from Kujang, North Korea, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, shortwave frequency of 12015 kHz.
The new 2022 “Belka” (generation 3) general coverage receiverby 13dka
Since its introduction in 2019, the super-tiny Belka (back then called “Belka DSP”) shortwave receiver sure gained an enthusiastic followership among SWLs and hams. The main reason for this is certainly the way how the Belka is incredibly small yet playing in a different league than the various consumer grade, Chinese mass-production radios, particularly the DSP-based ultraportables: The Belka is an all-mode shortwave communications receiver with a completely different (direct conversion SDR) architecture, developed and produced by a radio enthusiast (Alex, EU1ME) in a small mom&pop shop in Belarus.
In case you’ve never heard about it amidst all the buzz about more popular brands, here’s the skinny:
The Belka offers true allmode (including NFM and CW) reception with a proper 400 Hz CW filter and individual settings for the low and high filter slopes for AM, FM and SSB. It has an AM sync detector and comes with a 0.5ppm TCXO-controlled local oscillator for absolutely spot-on, calibration-free frequency precision and stability, which makes SSB or ECSS reception of broadcast stations a pure joy. The second iteration “Belka DX” brought a slightly extended coverage down to 1.5 MHz and an I/Q output for panadapter display and/or processing via your favorite SDR software.
All Belkas are quiet and very sensitive radios with a surprisingly robust front end, the filters are better and its AGC works like you’d expect it from a communications receiver, without the artifacts and distortion the DSP radios are infamous for, and of course smooth, non-“muting” tuning in variable steps down to 10Hz.
The Belkas have no built-in speaker (available as option tho) but really excellent audio on headphones and external speakers and they actually give my Icom IC-705 a run for its money in terms of reception quality, and they do that for up to 24 hours on a single charge of the internal Li-Ion battery. This stunning feature set is crowned by the best performance on a telescopic whip antenna ever – the Belkas have a high-impedance (>10 kOhm) antenna input optimized for this whip and taking it on a walk is (really!) like having a big rig with a big antenna in tow…
Despite all this goodness setting the Belka(s) quite fundamentally apart from most (if not all) current and former, even much higher priced portables and simultaneously putting it solidly into pricey tabletop territory, it hasn’t put Tecsun et al out of business for a couple of reasons: One reason is that it can only be obtained from Alex in Belarus, which is now often assumed to be impossible (it isn’t, more on that later). Another reason is that it doesn’t try to compete with aforementioned multiband radios from China, so there is no FM broadcast band and – until now – no AM BC band, but most owners and potential buyers particularly in the US really wished it had at least the latter. Well, Alex obviously heard us! After the Belka DSP and the Belka DX, the new Belka is just called “Belka”, so in order to avoid any ambiguity I’m going to refer to this model as “Belka 2022”.
The most prominent addition to the Belka 2022 is the extended 0.1-31 MHz coverage, the previous version only started receiving at 1.5 MHz. With LW and MW included, its “pseudosynchronous” detector (as featured in venerable radios from Harris, Racal or Drake), the great filtering and the great frequency precision for hassle-free ECSS reception are promising that the “squirrel” is now an ultra-ultraportable companion for MW DXers as well.
I received the following inquiry from Neal Lavon via the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contact form. Check out Neal’s request below and if you have any information or leads that might help him, please comment.
Neal writes:
I am working on a project about a Voice of America broadcaster from 1952-54 named Billy Brown. He was a 16 year-old kid who launched a Pen Pals club by speaking on a Voice of America broadcast to the Near East, particularly Pakistan.
The announcements were so successful they generated hundreds of responses and led to him getting a 15-minute weekly radio program on VOA in English that was later translated into Urdu. The programs were broadcast on Friday nights at 1530 GMT on 17750, 16.90; 15130, 19.30. The relay were TAN 17780 16.87 15230 19.70, and Colombo 15120 19.84. At least, I think those are the frequencies; it comes as close as I can get it.
So far, I have not been able to find any surviving tapes of this broadcast at the National Archives or the Library of Congress. The family does not have any tapes. So I am wondering, hope against hope, if somehow, somewhere, someone in the region or someone else might have a copy of this. I would greatly appreciate it.
Neal Lavon, Takoma Park, Maryland, former VOA Staffer.
This would have been in the very early days of home recording so I imagine it might be difficult to find audio from Billy Brown’s broadcasts. If you have any leads, please comment.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent Voice of Korea broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 11865 kHz, broadcasting in Japanese from Kujang, North Korea.
Kim Jong Un guides test-firing of long-range strategic cruise missiles.
Listened this morning [13 Oct 2022] in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
I received the following message from Ted Muldoon via the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contact form. If you happen to have any recordings of Radio Free Grenada, please comment so we may add these to the archive and preserve them for all to enjoy:
Hello,
My name is Ted Muldoon. I’m an audio journalist at The Washington Post.
I’m currently working on an audio project examining the U.S. invasion of Grenada in 1983. Among the many lasting impacts on the island from that year, was the loss of the Radio Free Grenada archive, which was bombed and destroyed by the Americans. From what I understand from speaking with people on Grenada, it was huge cultural loss for the island.
Doing a quick search, this post (https://shortwavearchive.com/
Best,
Ted Muldoon
I realize how unlikely it is that anyone still has a recording of Radio Free Grenada, but if you do please comment or contact us so that we can digitize, archive, and share this with the wider world.
We’ve published thousands of off-air recordings on Shortwave Radio Audio Archive over the past decade. They’re freely available for everyone to search and download.
For those of us who work on the archive, it’s a pure labor of love. We are not compensated for the time and effort we put into running and curating it, although we use Patreon and Coffee Fund contributions to help pay for the site and online archives.
Quite frequently, our recordings are discovered and are intensely meaningful to individuals. Listening to radio recordings has an amazing ability to summon up memories and moments in time.
We recently discovered the following article on the blog PNG Attitude written by Keith Jackon. Keith has kindly given us permission to post it in its entirety here on the SWLing Post. Thank you, Keith, and we’re pleased this recording was so relevant to you:
KEITH JACKSON
NOOSA – It had dropped into my Twitter feed via @Laselki, the account of the Lebanon-based Arab Amateur Radio Network, and @Stret_Pasin, a valued supporter and one of my 8,700 Twitter followers.
It had originated in Ontario, Canada, from the historic village of Ancaster close by the US border and Niagara Falls.
It was a fleeting recording of a shortwave broadcast.
Map showing location of Ancaster, Canada
A broadcast from Radio Bougainville transmitted 51 years ago on 21 October 1971, which had travelled 13,300 km to Ancaster and been recorded.
Then saved on a cassette tape until, for some reason, recently retrieved and shared.
“Sound is a bit crackly,” wrote @Stret_Pasin, “but this will bring back memories of Radio Bougainville.”
Truer words never were tweeted.
When you link to the brief recording here (scroll down to the black audio bar), you will pick up in rapid succession the sound of chanting to the famous Bougainville kaur flute, then an announcer’s voice and finally a snatch of Bougainville string band music.
Click here to listen on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.
I thought I recognised this sequence as the pre-recorded station identification put to air each time the station’s transmitters were fired up at Toniva, just south of Kieta, from a switch in the main studio down a ladder beside my house.
But the more I listen to it, the less convinced I am of its provenance.
All I can say for sure is that anything the captured snatch of radio was broadcast at about 12 noon on Bougainville on 22 October 1971.
This was at a time when Radio Bougainville usually broadcast for 11 hours a day in three separate sessions: 6 am – 9 am, 12 noon – 2 pm and 4 pm – 10pm.
In a small town in Canada it was late morning the day before, and a young Dan Greenall was tuning his Hallicrafters shortwave radio seeking out distant stations he would register as finding in the ether.
Even in our modern digital age, there are shortwave junkies who ferret out remote radio stations and seek QSL cards: written proof of reception. (One issued by Radio Bougainville in 2016 is pictured here.)
QSL reception confirmation from NBC Bougainville, 2016
’I heard this at such time on your station; tell me it is true.” And we’d check the log and return a QSL postcard. Yes, you had indeed heard our station.
Collecting these cards became popular with radio listeners 100 years ago and continues to this day
Dan had been doing just that 51 years ago when he happened upon a distant signal struggling through heavy interference to be captured by his outdoor copper wire aerial and delivered to the sturdy Hallicrafters S-52 receiver.
Keith’s appointment to manage Radio Bougainville was greeted by this headline in the Bougainville News
Dan has written for the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive:
“The morning of 21 October 1971 provided some of the best reception of Papua New Guinea stations in the 90 metre band that I ever experienced.
“These stations were rare visitors to my headphones but I was able to make a couple of short recordings of two PNG stations that morning, and they have survived to this day on that same audio cassette (now 51 years old).
“This one of Radio Bougainville begins with a local chant followed by announcement on the hour. The station ran 2.5 kw and their signal made it over 13,300 km to my receiver that day.
“Audio quality is passable considering the recording was made using an open mic to the speaker of the Hallicrafters S-52.”
Technical data:
Broadcaster: Radio Bougainville
Date of recording: 21/10/1971
Starting time: 1100
Frequency: 3.322.5 MHz
Receiver location: Ancaster, Ontario, Canada
Receiver and antenna: Hallicrafters S-52 using a longwire antenna
When I linked to the thin signal that had managed to land so far away so long ago, I was momentarily overcome with emotion.
I had known those sounds so well from too many early mornings wondering whether the breakfast announcer would arrive in time to open the station.
A recording something like that told me he’d arrived, fired up the transmitter and was ready to begin proceedings.
Through the static of 51 years – two-thirds of my life – came a once-familiar sequence of bamboo flute / announcer / stringband, transporting me back to a time when I was young and in my first management job which, bad bits and all, I was enjoying as if born to it.
Keith Jackson at the time of his appointment to Radio Bougainville
They were tough years for the people of Bougainville, especially in the villages around Kieta and its hinterland.
Bougainville Copper had started to dig the ore that produced great quantities of copper, gold and silver on alienated land amidst an alienated people.
Despite the volatile social and political climate, I had enjoyed the challenge of Bougainville.
I felt I’d been made for it and that it was making me.
And I enjoyed working with talented station staff, most from Bougainville, like Tom Kathoa, Sam Bena, Perpetua Tanuku, Justin Kili, Aloysius Sahoto, Aloysius Nase and Aloysius Rumina – most now gone from our midst. That’s what 51 years does.
And that simple recording – made so long ago and so far away – brought it all rushing back.
You can read more about my Bougainville years here in Brink of Secession.
So thanks to Dan Greenall, the Arab Amateur Radio Network and @Stret_Pasin for giving me a free ticket to fly back more than half a century. I really enjoyed the trip.
Read this full article and check out Keith’s website PNG Attitude here.
Also, a very special thanks to Dan Greenall and all of our contributors on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.