Chris’ Tecsun PL-660
Shortwave listener and radio producer, Chris Freitas, recently posted an article on his blog touting the Tecsun PL-660 as his shortwave portable of choice.
Chris is sticking with his trusty Tecsun PL-660
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Category Archives: Shortwave Radio
More 1968 recordings on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive
I’ve now added a total of five recordings by David Firth, circa 1968, to the SW Radio Audio Archive. Click below for direct links:
Note that you can subscribe to the SW Radio Audio Archive as a podcast via iTunes or by using the following RSS feed: http://shortwavearchive.com/archive?format=rss
WWII Archive: “War On the Short Wave”
I stumbled upon this WWII era book published by the Foreign Policy Association on Archive.org. A fascinating look at the the power and fear of propaganda over the shortwaves.
BBC World Service to further reduce shortwave
(Image source: BBC)
I appears the BBC World Service is cutting shortwave broadcasts even further in an attempt to meet tighter budget numbers. Not many details, at the moment, in terms of what language programs will suffer the most.
Many thanks to Richard Cuff for the tip:
(Source: The Guardian)
The BBC World Service will further reduce its shortwave transmissions next year as part of a £15m savings drive which staff have been warned will be a “real stretch”.
The money will be used to invest in new TV and digital services, part of a programme called Invest to Innovate.
An extra £6.5m is being pumped into the World Service’s budget this year, alongside an extra £1.5m of savings, helping to create 130 jobs. New initiatives include a global version of Radio 1’s Newsbeat.
But the BBC’s director of global news, Peter Horrocks, said further savings would be required in the future.
[…]Horrocks said changes would include more multilingual reporting, with staff filing for their own language service and in English, as well as a further reduction in shortwave transmissions.
He said the World Service would also have to integrate further with the main BBC News operation.
Horrocks also announced that the BBC’s global news division, which includes its world news TV channel, would be renamed “World Service Group … a sort of World Service-plus” and the World Service board would be axed with the change in its funding.
[…]It closed five language services, stopped radio broadcasts in seven languages, cut back on shortwave and medium-wave transmissions and axed a number of World Service English programmes.[…]
Read the full article at The Guardian online.
BBG tries to improve employee morale
In December 2012, we posted a survey from the 2012 edition of The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government by The Partnership for Public Service and Deloitte. The survey indicated that the Broadcasting Board of Governers (BBG) had been ranked in the bottom five places to work in the federal government.
According to the Washington Post, the agency is now working on a plan to boost employee morale. Some of their initiatives include:
“Agency directors and senior staff hold[ing] face-time sessions in the cafeteria for informal talks with employees, a “Civility Campaign” addresses labor-management issues, and a Workplace Engagement Initiative takes a deeper dive into the agency’s low morale ratings.
Some of the morale-boosting events are meant to be fun, such as the raffle during the fitness-center open house, a chocolate bake-off in time for Valentine’s Day, and ?after-work gatherings — a bingo night, happy hour, checkers and chess.
It’s going to take all that and some sustained work to improve the agency’s failing report cards.”
Many thanks to Richard Cuff for the tip!
Horizon FM Tenerife now on shortwave
Thanks to Mike Barraclough for this info:
“Horizon FM Tenerife has started broadcasting on shortwave on 5,780 [kHz], 75 watts at the moment, short English announcement on their website.”
More information can be found here along with an announcement that Horizon plans to increase output power to 1kW within the next three weeks.
Mike originally posted this info on the Cumbre DX FB page.
Eight new recordings in the Media Network Vintage Vault
RNW’s former headquarters in Hilversum, Netherlands (photo: RNW)
Jonthan Marks has just informed me that he’s added new studio recordings to the Media Network Vintage Vault.
They include:
- 7.10.1992. AM Stereo; what went wrong?
- 28.01.1999 Radio’s Future
- 31.12.1999 Radio New Zealand Profile
- 25.02.1999 Budel Radio Museum
- 22.04.1999. Radio Minurca
- 16.01.1997. Radio Ham Revisited
- 12.08.1999 Birthday and the Congo
- 11.02.1999. Remembering JYI Jordan
- Of course the MN Vintage Vault has many more recordings!
Jonathan comments, “I think you might like the Radio New Zealand stuff. Sounds like it was recorded yesterday.”
The New Zealand Bellbird (Anthornis melanura) provides the interval signal for RNZI (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Indeed it does!
To top it off, I’m still amazed RNZI is still on the air and pumping out an amazing signal into North America. Click here for a recording made only one week ago.
Having never heard a New Zealand Bellbird live, I was most impressed to hear how RNZI (in the 1950s!) modified the Bellbird’s call for the distinctive RNZI interval signal. Don’t want to give it away, though, listen for yourself.