Category Archives: What’s On Shortwave

Radio Guinée back on shortwave

Check out this news by Sheldon Harvey of The International Radio Report:

As reported by many DXers worldwide, Radio Guinée, from the Republic of Guinea in west Africa has returned to shortwave on 9650 kHz. Check between 0000 and 0300 UTC as well as around 0600 UTC. Programming is in French with lots of African music. Here is an article from March about the state of radio and TV transmitters in the Republic of Guinea. Perhaps this is what spurred them to reactivate the shortwave transmission. The article is in French.

Click here to read the article in French.

Click here for an English version through Google Translate.

Thanks for the heads-up, Sheldon! I start listening for Radio Guinée again.

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Nothing to hear on shortwave? Jacques disagrees…

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Jacques Catherine, who left the following comment on our post from 2012: Is there anything to listen to on shortwave?

“I live in Mauritius Island in the Indian Ocean and I’ve been listening to Shortwave since I was a kid (I’m 58 today) on my dad’s good old Phillips wooden valve radio.

I’m sorry, but shortwave is certainly not dead. After having read all the comments above, I come to the conclusion that reception definitely depends on your location.

The Tecsun PL-660.

I have two Tecsun receivers ( Tecsun S 2000 and PL 660) hooked to a Windom antenna and an ATU. I receive dozens of stations from all over the world here as well as a lot of stuff on ssb, including – in the morning – New York MWARA (8825.0 usb), Gander (8831.0 usb) or, in the evening, Brisbane (5634.0 usb).

Broadcast stations from Japan, Taiwan, India, Iran, Australia, Singapore, China, Africa and even the US, come in here loud and clear with very little static, depending on the season and time of the day. I think I’m privileged to be located where I am !

And I bought some years back a pair of cheap small wooden amplified speakers in Hong Kong that reproduce exactly the sound of my dad’s old valve radio!”

Thank you for your comment, Jacques. You’re right: it’s all about your location…and you certainly live in a prime spot!

I’m most fortunate that I live where I do–quite far away from sources of noise that plague our urban readers/listeners (and that have plagued me in the past). My location is not ideal (from a radio/receiving standpoint) because my ground conductivity is very poor and I’m in North America where very few broadcasts are targeted these days. I do, however, have the space for a rather large horizontal delta loop antenna that serves me well across the HF bands. I might have invested $50 in the antenna wire and components five years ago.

When propagation is good, some broadcast bands are actually packed tightly with signals. Indeed, Thursday last week, I could’ve easily logged two dozen stations on the 31 meter band alone. Here’s a screen capture from the spectrum display of my SDR:

If you live in an urban area and feel that you’re missing out on the action, consider taking your receiver outdoors and away from interference. Take your receiver on hikes, camping trips or to the beach. You might be surprised by the number of stations you’ll log!

Recently, our friend London Shortwave has been posting an amazing array of broadcast recordings he’s made in a park in the middle of London, England. He’s the guru of mitigating urban interference.

When I have time to curate the recordings, I hope to do a 2016 update of “Is there anything to listen to on shortwave?“–it’s been on my to-do list for a while now.

Jacques, thanks again for your comment and reminding us to keep listening!

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RCI programming returns to shortwave via Shortwaveservice.com

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who writes:

Here is the response from Christian Milling, the director of Radio 700 and Shortwaveservice. Note that he is stressing the difference between Radio 700 (as a program and separate broadcasting station) and Shortwaveservice (as the provider of technical services for the shortwave transmitters at the Kall-Krekkel). The transmitters are actually maintained by Burkhard Baumgartner, DF5XV, under the name “Classic Broadcast”.

All three operations are closely linked so it’s understandable that there is confusion about who does what. Furthermore, in the WRTH, we have “Radio 700 Kurzwellendienst” (Radio 700 Shortwave Service). No reply directly from RCI yet.

Dear Richard Langley,

thank you very much for your e-Mail. Indeed we (not Radio700 but Shortwaveservice.com as technical provider) has set up an official cooperation with Radio Canada International which allows us to transmit the english, french and spanish programming. So this will be a long-term relay on a legal basis. As we prepare a spanish language outlet, the spanish broadcast of RCI will follow later on on SW.

The propagation conditions are a bit lousy at the moment, resulting in a bigger skipzone since a few days on 7310 kHz. Normally we boom into on that frequency also in Twente (which is approx. 200km away from our tranmitter [sic] site). We got some reception reports from the UK, which one from Manchester I’d like to quote: “Good clear signal, just some slight fading from solar disturbance that was taking place. How wonderful to hear Radio Canada International back on shortwave again, I really hope they continue broadcasting from Kall, I couldn’t believe it when I saw they would be broadcasting here this week.”

As the brodcasts [sic] are intended for the reception in europe and most speak either french or english and our weekend-schedule is very crowded, we only managed to find a slot for both languages at a time. But we will think about a re-run of the shows on a different day.

Thanks for tuning in!

If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,
Christian Milling

Thanks so much for the update, Richard!

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Update: From the Isle of Music

Radio Canada International back on shortwave via Radio 700

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Langley, who shares the following message:

Only a barely-detectable carrier [of Radio Canada International] on 7310 kHz from Radio 700 Kurzwellendienst (or Radio 700 Shortwave Service using the web-interfaced University of Twente SDR receiver at 15:00 UTC. However, the online streaming of Radio 700’s 7310 kHz transmission came through clearly 😉 and, indeed, an RCI program is being transmitted. In fact, it’s this week’s “The LINK Online”!

So, finally, RCI is back on shortwave. Too bad the signal for the English program isn’t stronger. I was waiting for the scheduled start of the French RCI program at 14:30 UTC on 6005 kHz but when I tuned in via Twente at 14:15 UTC it was already in progress with a good signal! So, obviously it starts at an earlier time. Perhaps 14:00 UTC? What’s the point of having the English and French programs on at the same time? Some of us might want to listen to both.

[…]The French-language RCI program was the weekly program “Tam-Tam Canada” (with the familiar tam-tam drum signature music) and it was today’s edition that was broadcast. Good reception via Twente. It ended at about 14:52 UTC with then a switch briefly to Radio 700 programming. I have queries out to both Radio 700 and RCI about these programs and will report back if I get further information.

[…]I wonder if there’s an active collaboration of RCI in this effort?

Please let us know what you discover, Richard! Though I imagine this broadcast of The Link and Tam-Tam Canada may be a limited broadcast run, it would be incredibly cool to hear RCI on shortwave once again.

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Radio Romania International 2016 Summer Broadcast Frequencies

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, David Iurescia (LW4DAF), who notes that Radio Romania International has published their updated English language broadcast frequencies:

RRI Summer Broadcast Frequencies valid March 27 to October 30, 2016