London pirate radio documentary offers insight

This documentary certainly touches on the motivation behind most pirate radio stations. I should note that while many FM pirate stations are dissapearing with the advent of online sources, shortwave pirates seem to be going strong and they use many of the same remote transmitter tactics that appear in this short film.

If you have trouble watching the embedded video above, please click here for the documentary video page.

Charles Caudill believes in the power of shortwave radio

Charles Caudill, is president & CEO of World Christian Broadcasting. This week, he wrote a piece in Radio World about why his organization still firmly believes in shortwave radio.

(Source: Radio World)

In order to make [our] budget go as far as possible, there is no question that we can reach more people on a regular basis with shortwave than with any other method. With an annual budget of something over $3 million, we will be able to broadcast 50 to 60 hours daily from our two broadcast facilities. Those 50 to 60 hours will be produced by six different services: English, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Latin American and African.

Obviously, we cannot do everything on that limited budget, but we can literally talk to millions of people using shortwave. We don’t have the luxury of being able to cut $40 million or even $14 million from our budget as some international broadcasters can. Our idea is that God has given us the ionosphere. Our job is to make use of it.

There are millions of analog receivers in the world — some say 600 million, some say 1.5 billion, some say as many as three billion. Regardless of the number, those receivers will not be turned off tomorrow. Those receivers will have listeners for years and years.

Look around; even though technology advances with great rapidity, there are still newspapers. I receive mine every morning. There are still AM radios and FM receivers and they are still making more. And you can still buy books. They are still being published. Even though Amazon is making a fortune selling electronic digital reading devices, they still sell books.

[…]My point is, no medium disappears overnight. Our belief is that shortwave will be here for a long, long time.

Read Caudill’s full article on Radio World’s website.

Studio 1 Software Defined Radio will give your Perseus a resizable interface

One of the major complaints I hear regarding the benchmark Microtelecom Perseus SDR is that its GUI (graphic user interface) is not resizable or scalable to fit a large monitor at full-screen.

If you’re a Perseus owner and if this is a problem for you, then you need to watch for the release of Studio 1 Software Defined Radio by SDR Applications. Which will boast:

  • Fully re-sizable windows/interface,
  • support for multiple sessions
  • and state of the art visualization, demodulation and filtering

WoodBoxRadio told me that SDR Applications is still finishing off development, but plan to have a bug-free version of their software available at the end of March 2012. They told me that Studio 1 will work with the Microtelecom Perseus, FDM-S1 and the Softrock family of software defined radios (SDRs).

We will stay in touch with WoodBoxRadio and post any updates here on the SWLing Post.

“VOA Looks to Future on 70th Anniversary”

(Source: Voice of America Press Release)

Washington, D.C. — February 1, 2012 — Voice of America turned 70 on Wednesday, and VOA Director David Ensor says the international broadcast agency is aggressively moving forward with new programs that ensure it remains an “information lifeline to people in closed societies like Iran.”

Addressing VOA journalists at the agency’s Washington headquarters, Ensor pointed to a television news show for Burma that began airing in January, a popular video blog that has been viewed more than 7 million times in China, expanded TV broadcasts to Iran, and new health programs on radio in Africa. He also described plans for a Russian language TV program that will harness popular social media programs to make citizen journalists and the audience a key part of the show.

Ensor said the one-time cold war broadcaster is “as relevant today as it was February 1st, 1942,” the date of the first shortwave radio broadcast to Germany.”

Created by the U.S. government in the opening days of World War Two, the Voice of America has evolved into a global multi-media organization, broadcasting balanced and comprehensive news in 43 languages to an estimated weekly audience of 141 million.

The first shortwave radio transmission, spoken in German just weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, began with the words “Here speaks a voice from America.” The broadcast went on to promise, “The news may be good. The news may be bad. We shall tell you the truth.” Ensor, the 28th Voice of America director, says the agency continues to be guided by those words.

VOA radio remains highly popular in many markets, including Somalia, parts of Pakistan and Haiti. Ensor says the agency is moving forward with new television and Internet programs that target countries like Iran, where the government restricts the free flow of information.

VOA programs are delivered on satellite, cable TV, mobile, shortwave, FM, medium wave, the Internet, and on a network of about 1,200 affiliate stations around the world. In addition to more than 1,100 employees in Washington, VOA works with contract journalists in trouble spots around the world. Last month the Taliban claimed responsibility for the murder of a reporter working for VOA in Pakistan.

Updates to the WRTH B11 schedules are now available for download

The World Radio TV Handbook (WRTH) B11 schedules updates file is now available to download, free of charge, from the WRTH website. This is a comprehensive update and supplement to the printed 2012 WRTH.

Final Transmission of Radio Bulgaria

Just in case you missed it, below I have a full recording of Radio Bulgaria’s final transmission in French. This was recorded on 7,400 kHz, Jan 31, 2012 at 21:00 UTC.

Typically, I have to move to 5,900 kHz after 22:00 UTC due to neighboring Radio Marti on 7,405 kHz (which you hear come in at the end of this recording). Yesterday, after moving to 5,900, I heard one Radio Bulgaria interval signal and then dead air in place of their normally scheduled English service. I believe the recording below was their last transmission on shortwave.

Audio Player

Click here to download.

Still want to listen to Radio Bulgaria? No problem–they now stream online, everyday, on their website.