Thanks to the Southgate ARC for bringing this to my attention:
The radio this reporter demonstrates is a shortwave version of the Eton FR160.
Video: Al Jazeera reports on Zimbabwe shortwave radio ban
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The 2013 SWL Fest: another good one!
The SWL Fest Saturday dinner banquet and raffle draws a large crowd. This year, yours truly (not pictured) even had a bit of luck in the raffle! (Click to enlarge)
I’m back from a week of travelling which happily included three nights in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, at the NASWA Winter SWL Fest.
As I’ve mentioned before, I look forward to the SWL Fest every year. Not only am I able to spend time with friends and radio “family,” but I have the opportunity to attend fascinating presentations and demonstrations that both explore and expand the very meaning of radio.
Next year, the Winter SWL Fest will be held between February 28-March 1, 2014; location to be determined. Do yourself a favor, and earmark those dates in your calendar. If you enjoy reading the topics here on the SWLing Post, I assure you, you’ll enjoy the content–and the company–offered by the SWL Fest.
Shortwave Radio Recordings: Jazz Notes
Jazz Notes presenter, Ivan Lloyd (Photo: Radio Australia)
For your listening pleasure: thirty minutes of Radio Australia’s Jazz Notes.
This broadcast was recorded yesterday at 1:30 UTC on 11,945 kHz. You will note a little noise that bleeds over from jamming of Radio Marti on an adjacent frequency.
You can download this recording of Jazz Notes by clicking here, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
Zimbabwe: door-to-door search for radios
(Source: SW Radio Africa)
On Friday police in Rusape went door-to-door to houses belonging to known MDC-T supporters, in search of shortwave radios. But the MP for Makoni South said they found nothing.
Pishai Muchauraya said the morning raids saw police officers go in groups of three to MDC-T homes in Gandanzara, ‘demanding radios distributed by Pishai.’
[…]Last week the police ordered a ban on the possession of shortwave radios, saying they are being used to communicate hate speech ahead of next month’s constitutional referendum and elections set to be held later this year.
Wind-up, solar-powered radios sets have been distributed by some NGOs to rural communities, where villagers have established listening clubs to tune in to popular independent stations such as Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa. The broadcasts are produced by experienced exiled Zimbabwean journalists based in Europe and the US.
Read the full report on the website of clandestine radio station, SW Radio Africa.
Bill helps with low-power, license-free broadcasting
In reference to our post, Dave’s FM Station Empire, SWLing Post reader Bill writes:
Nice article on the use of low power broadcasting. For the last 5 years my site, HobbyBroadcaster.net, has been helping radio enthusiasts along with schools and businesses learn how to use legal, low power, license-free Part 15 radio for a variety of uses. I created the site due to my involvement with starting a campus-limited high school station and discovering the lack of quality resources available for school-based broadcasters unable to obtain an FCC allocation. With many hobbyists also using this same technology on AM to serve their neighbors with micro radio it only seemed natural to expand the interest to hobbyists, too.
Also, Part 15 regulations allow for some use of the shortwave bands for experimental broadcasting with the most common frequency used by hobbyists being 13.56 MHz.
Bermuda…Missing?
“Uh, Charlie, where did Bermuda go?”
My good buddy, David Goren, directed me to the VOLMET frequency for New York Sunday afternoon on 3,485 kHz.
VOMET, for those of you not familiar, is a worldwide network of radio stations that broadcast TAF, SIGMET and METAR aviation weather reports on shortwave radio, and in some countries on VHF, too. All of the reports are broadcast in upper sideband, using automated voice transmissions.
At any rate, they must have experienced a glitch which resulted in the loss of meteorological data for most of the United States. The broadcast preamble is as usual, but as soon as specific airport regions (mostly major US cities and some islands) are mentioned, the report takes a disturbing turn. It’s fodder for science fiction–one is not sure whether to be alarmed or amused by this eyebrow-raising data (or, lack thereof).
The end result becomes almost like a numbers station, sans numbers, of course. Take a listen for yourself by clicking here to download the recording, or listen via the embedded player below:
Even numbers stations make mistakes
On February 5th, 2013, the Cuban numbers station widely known as HM01 struggled to maintain its composure following an awkward studio error.
In this particular case, I started recording a few seconds prior to the carrier, at which point you’ll hear a couple of minutes of “dead air” (silence). The broadcast starts around 2:25, cutting into the middle of a data burst; the station then goes silent before it comes back on at 5:15 with numbers, then abruptly stops. At 6:15 the station restarts the numbers broadcast in earnest.
Download the MP3 of the full recording by clicking here, or listen via the embedded player below:
Click here to view the Archive.org with original audio files.