Photo of studio via Radio Prague International
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor David Iurescia for sharing this excellent article from Radio Prague International, which commemorates the 80th anniversary of Radio Plzen’s powerful broadcast urging resistance during World War II: https://english.radio.cz/radio-plzen-voice-changed-history-80-years-ago-8849932
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Hirst, who writes:
Thomas,
K-dramas with Korean subtitles can be a useful form of language immersion, so I recently came across this comedy sitcom on YouTube.
In this clip, we see Winter, Karina, and Giselle of the K-pop girl group Aespa.
Behind them are what appears to be a Beomaster 900M and a Philips
Philetta.
Mark
You’ve got sharp eyes, Mark! Thank you for sharing.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following illustrated radio listening report of a recent ZP-30 broadcast.
Carlos notes:
International news of Radio ZP-30, from Paraguay, 610 kHz AM
Part of Paraguay’s Radio ZP-30 news bulletin (in German). Listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on a Xhdata d-808 receiver.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:
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by Don Moore
More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer [SWLing Post affiliate link]. If you’ve already read his book and enjoyed it, do Don a favor and leave a review on Amazon.
I first heard of Huehuetenango in February 1974. I had gotten my first serious receiver, a Barlow-Wadley XCR-30, a few weeks earlier. Now I could try for stations in the 120-meter band. The first one I heard was Radio Maya de Barillas on 2360 kHz from a place named Barillas in Guatemala. And Santa Cruz de Barillas (the town’s full official name) was in a department named Huehuetenango. The name sounded exotic and magical.
In my mind, Radio Maya de Barillas was the ultimate DX target. The Evangelical Protestant station used a tiny amount of power in 120-meters, the shortwave band that provided the most challenge to DXers. The programs were in Mayan languages with mostly hard-to-pronounce names. And my map showed that Barillas was literally at the end of the road. There was nowhere to go beyond Barillas.
That sense of Huehuetenango being on the edge of civilization was totally correct. The department contains the rugged Cuchumatanes mountains, the highest non-volcanic mountains in Central America. It’s the only place in Central America where it’s too cold to grow corn. Instead, people get by raising sheep and planting potatoes. The mountains explain why eight different Mayan languages (belonging to three different language families) are spoken in this one department. Steep rugged mountains are a barrier to communication. A lack of communication causes a common language to diverge into multiple languages over just a few centuries.
The Mam, numbering about half a million, are the fourth largest Mayan group in Guatemala and their homeland extends into other departments in the south. But the other seven languages are only found in Huehuetenango with maybe a little spillover across the borders. The largest of those is Kanjobal, spoken by about 80,000 people today. The Tectiteco (Tektik) number just a little over two thousand.
As noted on the back of my QSL from Radio Maya de Barillas, that station broadcast in six of the region’s languages, including Mam and Kanjobal, the language spoken in and around the town of Barillas. For about a decade Radio Maya was the only radio station to broadcast in the region’s languages. Then in 1975 the Roman Catholic church opened an educational station, Radio Mam, in Cabricán to the south in Quetzaltenango department. But Radio Mam only broadcast in the Mam language. (And, unfortunately, I never got to visit the station.)
When I was traveling to Guatemala while living in Honduras in the early 1980s, one of my goals was to visit as many Guatemalan shortwave stations as possible. Yet I never once considered going to Barillas. Sure, I knew that the dirt road from the town of Huehuetenango to Barillas was one of the worst in Central America and that the bus ride took twelve hours. That wasn’t going to stop me.
Photo from SantaCruzBarillas.com
What stopped me from visiting Radio Maya was that Barillas was right in the middle of the area of the heaviest fighting between the government and the guerrillas. This may surprise you if you’ve read the previous parts of this series, but there really were some things back then that I knew better than to do. Going into the worst part of a war zone was one. The closest I came to Barillas was passing through the southern part of the department on the Pan-American Highway on my way to Mexico in December 1984. That was just a few weeks after a guerilla band had ventured south and blown up four bridges on the road. Continue reading
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dennis Dura, who shares the following video from CBS Mornings:
R.E.M. has given its first single “Radio Free Europe” a new remix. The song was named after the service that provides crucial, uncensored information in places with limited press freedom. Now, Radio Free Europe is one of the federally-funded broadcasters that has been impacted after the Trump administration froze funding granted by Congress. CBS News’ Anthony Mason shows how the rock band is trying to help.
Click here to pre-order/purchase your copy of Radio Free Europe and benefit RFE!
In addition, you can read more detail about this partnership at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Paul, who writes:
Hi Thomas I thought readers may be interested in this YouTube video about Ham Radio in the Movies. It details quite a number of radios that were featured in different movies.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Cheers, Paul
Christchurch, New Zealand
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following illustrated radio listening report of a special Radio Nacional de España broadcast. Note that the Spanish version of this post follows the English version:
This illustrated radio listening report was particularly special to me. It’s a radio station’s acknowledge of the importance of a battery-powered radio in emergency situations.
Spain went through a massive blackout, which left the population used to mobiles without knowing what to do. But then along comes the simple battery-powered AM-FM radio, a device that in developed countries ends up being despised and overlooked, since with a cell phone you can have access to news from all over the world.
However, there’s one *tiny* detail.
No matter how modern (and expensive) a mobile is, it can only work with electricity and, of course, a cell phone signal. And, in a massive blackout like the one Spain, Portugal and parts of Europe were facing, with no cell phone signal or Internet, mobile is useless.
Well, I can speak about this subject with authority, since last year in Porto Alegre, where I live, a flood left me without electricity, telephone and Internet for 6 days.
But back to Radio Nacional de España. They broadcasted today a compilation of audios from news aired by the station during the blackout, and what draws attention is the fact that it highlights the importance of radio in critical situations. One of the phrases in this compilation is pithy:
“Es el dia de los transistores, los viejos, los de pila.”
(It’s the day of radio receivers, the old ones, the ones with batteries).
And there are testimonies from people who said they gathered their neighbors to listen to the news on the radio, or even put a radio on their balcony connected to a speaker so that the neighbors could hear the news from Radio Nacional de España. I believe this was the first time I heard a major broadcaster making such a clear recognition of the importance of the radio.
The younger generations will have to learn that they cannot depend solely and exclusively on the Internet.
For better or for worse.
Click here to view on YouTube.
Muchas gracias al colaborador de SWLing Post y reconocido caricaturista político, Carlos Latuff, quien comparte el siguiente informe ilustrado de escucha de una emisión especial de Radio Nacional de España:
Este reportaje ilustrado sobre la escucha de radio fue especial para mí.
Es el reconocimiento de una emisora ??a la importancia de una radio de pilas en situaciones de emergencia.
España sufrió un apagón masivo que dejó a la población acostumbrada a los móviles sin saber qué hacer. Pero entonces apareció la sencilla radio AM-FM de pilas, un dispositivo que en los países desarrollados acaba siendo despreciado e ignorado, ya que con un móvil se puede acceder a noticias de todo el mundo.
Sin embargo, hay un *pequeño* detalle.
Por muy moderno (y caro) que sea un móvil, solo funciona con electricidad y, por supuesto, con señal. Y, en un apagón masivo como el que sufrieron España, Portugal y partes de Europa, sin señal ni internet, el móvil es inútil.
Bueno, puedo hablar de este tema con total autoridad, ya que el año pasado en Porto Alegre, donde vivo, una inundación me dejó sin electricidad, teléfono ni internet durante seis días.
Pero volvamos a Radio Nacional de España. Hoy han emitido una recopilación de audios de noticias emitidas por la emisora ??durante el apagón, y lo que llama la atención es que resalta la importancia de la radio en situaciones críticas. Una de las frases de esta recopilación es concisa:
“Es el día de los transistores, los viejos, los de pila”.
Y hay testimonios de personas que dijeron haber reunido a sus vecinos para escuchar las noticias por la radio, o incluso haber puesto una radio en su balcón conectada a un altavoz para que los vecinos pudieran escuchar las noticias de Radio Nacional de España. Creo que fue la primera vez que escuché a una gran emisora ??reconocer tan claramente la importancia de la radio.
Las generaciones más jóvenes tendrán que aprender que no pueden depender única y exclusivamente de internet.
Para bien o para mal.
Haz clic aquí para verlo en YouTube.
Rádio Exterior de España returns to shortwave one day after the massive blackout that affected Spain and other regions of Europe. Porto Alegre, April 29, 18h13 UTC.
Carlos also originally confirmed that Radio Nacional de España was operational again on April 29, 2025. He noted:
Rádio Exterior de España returns to shortwave one day after the massive blackout that affected Spain and other regions of Europe. Porto Alegre, April 29, 18h13 UTC.