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My pal, @K7al_L3afta, recently posted the following recording of the Nepal emergency amateur radio net via Twitter:
He also recorded this short segment relaying that A65DR is alive and well:
@K7al_L3afta is using a PL-660 in an RFI-heavy, urban environment in Morocco. Even knowing some of these operators are using high power, I’m impressed the PL-660 is getting such good reception.
If you have SSB mode on your receiver, you can try monitoring some of the Nepal emergency nets on 14,205 and 14,215 kHz USB.
As you can see from the screenshot of the Elad spectrum display above, Radio Romania International’s signal was quite strong. Earlier in the day, the FDM-S2 could also easily hear the RRI English service on 11,700 kHz, which was much weaker at my location here in the eastern US.
Thursday night at 00:00 UTC, I was pleased to hear the interval signal of one of my favorite pirate radio stations: Radio Casablanca.
“Rick Blaine” fired up his AM transmitter and pumped out some amazing WWII era music on 6,940 kHz for well over one hour and a half. This is the first time I’ve been able to catch Radio Casablanca in well over a year (click here to listen to previous recordings).
Close your eyes and imagine what it must have been like to hear the great bands of the era over the shortwaves…
DW’s relay station in Kigali (Source: Deutsche Welle)
Yesterday, Deutsche Welle transmitted its final broadcast from the Kigali, Rwanda relay station. Since I’ve only had moderate luck hearing the Kigali site the past few days–especially on 31 meters–I fired up the TitanSDR Pro (which is still currently under review) and set it to record all three final afternoon broadcasts from Kigali on 12,005, 15,275 and 17,800 kHz.
As you can see from the screenshot above, Kigali produced a very strong signal on 17,800 kHz. The TitanSDR recorded the full broadcast, starting with one minute of the transmitter tuning, then one hour of DW’s French language service, followed by one hour of DW’s Hausa language service…then the transmitter went silent.
The recording begins around 1659 UTC on March 28, 2015 on 17,800 kHz:
Kigali’s early days
Last week, SWLing Post reader Bob LaRose (W6ACU) sent me the following message and scans:
“Here’s some nostalgia from [when the Kigali relay] opened, 50 years ago!”
Bob then followed this with another email:
“I dug into the “vault” and I found [the] 1964 Third Quarter issue of “Hallo, Friends” from Deutsche Welle that talks about the “new” Kigali station as it was being built. The 1965 issues did not cover the actual inauguration.”
This morning, I re-discovered a recording I made in the early morning hours of January 25, 2015 on 6,230 kHz SSB: the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s marine weather radio service.
This was actually a new station for me and, no doubt, decent DX (though I’m sure the broadcast is quite audible when conditions are favorable). While I prefer old-school recorded voice for shipping forecasts, this nonetheless has a catchy cadence.
Yesterday, my buddy Dan Robinson posted a tip on the Extreme Shortwave Listening Facebook page that Radio Bahrain was audible in the Eastern USA (note his video below). I quickly tuned to 9745 kHz and, sure enough–though weak–the Radio Bahrain signal could be heard over the noise floor. Radio Bahrain is not the easiest catch in my part of the world–especially with propagation conditions being less than favorable as of late–so I made a recording.
This recording was made on 9745 kHz starting at 23:15 UTC on March 15, 2015. I used my WinRadio Excalibur which was already on and connected to my horizontal delta loop antenna. Click here to download as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
