Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
Good day all SWLing Post Community, FastRadioBurst 23 here bringing you news of this week’s Imaginary Stations transmissions. Beamed to Europe via Shortwave Gold on Sunday 12th November 2023 at 1000/1400 hrs UTC on 6160 kHz and 2100 UTC on 3975 kHz, we have a special Peruvian Edition of Skybird Radio International. Expect some wonderful music in a true South American style.
A few hours later in the early hours of Monday 13th November via the transmitters of WRMI we have a different episode of Skybird Radio International at 0300 UTC on 9395 kHz and then repeated at 0400 UTC on 9455 kHz. Tune in chill out and listen to the sound of this world of ours.
For more information on the shows please email [email protected] and check out our old shows here.
Much ink has been used recently on the topic of carmakers dropping AM reception capability in cars, especially in EVs. Hence the “for and against” discussions in the U.S., at least, about the “AM for Every Vehicle Act.”
Shortwave reception, with is large coverage possibilities, has often been criticized for its audio quality which can be noisy and subject to annoying levels of variations. In cars, there are other drawbacks like less than optimum antennas, which are mostly tuned for vertical polarization while shortwave is horizontally polarized.
It is undeniable that analog AM Shortwave reception in cars can be quite unreliable, also due to lower average-SNR over time. But all these negative points are not always present. In some places (take Nigeria and the BBC broadcasts) the shortwave transmissions are great, in a quality that is not much different from that of a FM broadcast. [Continue reading…]
Westminster’s famous bell will be heard live from next week after years of only occasional appearances
It is one of the most recognisable sounds in the UK, and one that hasn’t been heard on BBC Radio 4 since New Year’s Eve last year, but from next week the famous bongs of Big Ben will be heard once again on the station.
The most famous bell in the UK will be heard live once again on Monday 6 November, just before the 6pm news bulletin and again before midnight. Listeners will be able to hear the chimes again before Radio 4’s Westminster Hour political discussion programme at 10pm on Sundays.
And after years of only occasional appearances, the chimes will form part of Radio 4’s regular schedule where they will be heard live twice daily and three times on Sundays after new microphones and a live set-up were installed.
To mark the nation’s two-minute silence this Remembrance Sunday, Big Ben will also be heard live on 11 November at 11am, and the bongs will air at 3pm on Christmas Day, before the king’s speech is broadcast on Radio 4. [Continue reading…]
It has been 75 years since Radio New Zealand started broadcasting on short-wave into the Pacific region.
Using two 7.5 kilowatt transmitters in Titahi Bay, near Wellington, Radio New Zealand began short-wave broadcasts to Australia and the Pacific in 1948.
RNZ Pacific’s Moera Tuilaepa-Taylor has this report.
Earlier this week we posted a note from John who only recently took a deep dive into the world of Radiofax transmissions, inspired by Carlos Latuff‘s recent posts.
I mentioned to John that he’ll hone his skills the more he captures these Radiofax transmissions. John just sent the following update:
Thanks, Thomas!
Indeed you are correct.
Having more luck decoding the Boston service… remembered I have a Sony AN-LP1 external antenna and so I unpacked and unraveled it and plugged in to the D-808 … drop that noise floor and…
12179kc USB Fine Tune +50
Above is the best example I have so far with HF FAX.
I guess it’s rather easy to decode these overall once you get the noise floor down, and fine tune the signal. These transmissions can take several minutes to complete which allows for a great deal of fade during that time.
Radio has filled my off-hours for the best part of 50 years now. I should no longer be surprised to find something I had overlooked like this that just adds to the fun and challenge of it.
72s and 3s.
John Johnson
N8ELK
Thank you so much, John, for sharing this with us! That is a brilliant decode, indeed!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan Roe, who shares his B-23 (version 1.0) season guide to music on shortwave. Alan provides this amazing resource as a free PDF download:
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, John Johnson, who writes:
Well, based on this post from Carlos Latuff–QSL: Australian Radiofax Received in Brazil–I got interested in HF weather fax decoding. I asked how to do it and got an answer but did not find a linked post that would help.
Which led me to realize… I already owned the Black Cat Systems decoder in my iPhone, but alas had never tried to use it!
So I reinstalled the HF FAX program. It had been included in a package of iPhone ham software programs I had previously purchased. I then searched the frequencies linked here: Marine Weather Broadcasts from the USCG
And soon after on 12179kc on my D-808 around Noon eastern time on 11/4/23 was decoding my first partial wx fax from Boston, I believe:
I then started fine tuning the D-808 and as you can see the fax quality began to improve significantly…
Alas the signal ended very abruptly, before I could perfectly tune it… I never received a complete fax but this was a fun radio exercise and I will keep at it.
WxFax (this is my name for it) reminds me of my NDB beacons. Both are older tech that appear to be rapidly disappearing. Just last night I was happy to tune two new but weak Canadian LW beacons from my Michigan location on my D-808. Alas I then refreshed the dxcentre NDB list–at: https://www.dxinfocentre.com/ndb.htm–only to find that I would be losing 3 relatively strong beacons to decommission within weeks! Such is the life of an LW NDB chaser in the year 2023.
Thanks to Carlos for giving me something else to chase on SW HF!
John Johnson (N8ELK)
This is brilliant, John! The more you work with the app and reception, the better you’ll get at clear decodes. It’s a skill you’ll build very quickly. Thank you for sharing this!
This QSL card just came today from a broadcast on Halloween, station Undercover Radio. There were a number of broadcasts that night, but this was by far the most unusual that I heard!
