Richard’s 1998 St. Helena Day QSL Card

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Schreiber (KE7KRF), who shares the following:

Here [above] is the QSL card I received in 2004 for the 1998 St Helena Day shortwave broadcast. There were, I recall, some staff changes and other issues that delayed many reports from being verified, but resubmitted everything in 2004 and they promptly verified.

For the 1998 broadcast I actually phoned the station in St Helena and was put on the air, but unfortunately didn’t record the broadcast.

This is one of my most prized QSLs.

Thank you, Richard. It would be one of my most prized QSLs as well! What a great memory–thank you for sharing!

 

Giuseppe’s recordings of Radio St. Helena Day 2006 & 2009

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The current listening post and ham radio shack of Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW) from Ponza Island, Italy.

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Giuseppe Morlè (IZ0GZW), who shares the following short recordings of Radio St. Helena day in 2006 and 2009. These recordings were made from his home on Ponza Island, Italy using the Yaesu FRG-7 and FRG-100 and a 30 meter length of wire antenna:

Radio St. Helena – November 4, 2006

Click here to download.

Radio St. Helena – November 14, 2009

Click here to download.

Thank you again, Giuseppe, for sharing these recordings following my recent post about St. Helena island!

With loss of Northern Territory service, ABC recommends AM/FM and a satellite phone

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Photo: Lisa Herbert via Twitter

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, London Shortwave, who shares this tweet from Northern Territory resident, Lisa Herbert.

Read about the cuts to the ABC NT service and Radio Australia by clicking here.

From the Isle of Music, Week of January 9-15

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From the Isle of Music, Week of January 9-15, 2017
A Jazzy show this week – Leonardo Pérez shares more of Una Mecanica Diferente, and we have two other special guests: pianist Alejandro Falcón and saxophonist Carlos Miyares, part of the new generation of Jazz stars in Cuba. Also, a tribute to the recently- departed Carlos Averhoff, who was a key figure in both Cuban Jazz and early Timba.
Three options for listening on shortwave:
WBCQ, 7490 KHz, Tuesdays 0100-0200 UTC (8pm-9pm EDT Mondays in the Americas)
Channel 292, 6070 KHz, Fridays 1100-1200 UTC (1200-1300 CET) and Saturdays 1200-1300 UTC (1300-1400 CET)
See the From the Isle of Music Facebook Page for more information. 

Chris’ Seoul AM Radio Listening Guide now live

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Chris Kadlec, who shares the following announcement about his Seoul AM Radio Listening Guide:

After a long 14 months of work, I’m happy to present the completed Seoul AM Radio Listening Guide, a three-hour documentary broadcast exploring the Seoul AM band one frequency at a time, plus a look at the radio war on the Korean peninsula accompanied by a 115-page guide.

http://www.beaglebass.com/dx/seoul/

In addition to radio broadcasts from across East Asia, the broadcast includes Korean noise jammers and AM, FM, shortwave, and television propaganda broadcasts from both the north and the south, additionally outlined in a 25-page broadcast transcript and 115-page informational guide. It also includes:

* A comprehensive list of 260 East Asian AM stations, including station names, tower locations, distance and direction from Seoul, parallel FM frequencies, broadcast hours, and station website links.

* A full bandscan of 235 regular nightly skywave signals as heard after the sun sets over Seoul.

* Daytime groundwave bandscans taken from eleven different locations in the Seoul metro area, along the North Korean border, beside the sea, and in Korea’s mountainous interior with background information about each location.

* A guide showing stations organized by their network affiliations in addition to privately-owned stations and networks. Alternatively, stations are also shown organized by country, region, and city.

* A chart showing signal strength for each bandscan – day and night – in bar graph format.

* A full colour-coded regional station map covering both skywave and groundwave signals.

* A view of some of Korea’s signal jammers as seen on an SDR (software-defined radio).

* Plus, a complete transcript of the three-hour audio broadcast with additional information on the featured audio clips as well as the songs featured in those clips.

– Chris Kadlec

Brilliant, Chris! I can only imagine the amount of time and effort you’ve put into this guide. Thank you!

GigaParts opens new distribution center in Las Vegas

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

GigaParts opens new distribution center in Las Vegas

After Amateur Electronic Supply went out of business in July, GigaParts began hiring the AES staff in Las Vegas and working on moving the operation to a new location less than 5 minutes from the famous Las Vegas Strip and just 3 miles from the former AES building.

Although the retail showroom won’t be ready for visitors for another few months, starting today, the Las Vegas store becomes the primary distribution center for GigaParts shipments to the western half of the US. That means fast, affordable shipping to the huge population of hams in California and other western states, without sales tax!

Former AES customers will see some familiar faces at GigaParts Las Vegas, including AES’s former shipping manager, Terry Spaulding, and store manager, Julio Suarez. “I’m excited to be back and I’m looking forward to helping all of my old friends again,” said Julio. “AES was iconic in ham radio and it was sad to see it die off, but we have an opportunity with GigaParts to do things better than we ever could before,” he continued.

In addition to the new and improved facility, another improvement over the AES business model will be a single toll free number for customers wishing to place orders by telephone: (866) 535-4442. Sue Stephens, Customer Service Manager for GigaParts: “Technology has come a long way in the 70 years since AES first opened. Our state-of-the-art call center in Huntsville handles calls and online chats from all over the world. The guys in Las Vegas are going to be a huge asset to us by helping with employee training, adding new product lines and even backing up our reps on the phones during peak call times.”

Jeff Sinclair, the e-Commerce Division Manager at GigaParts, states, “This is a significant move forward for GigaParts as we continue to expand our distribution capabilities in North America. The new facility in Las Vegas doesn’t just mean faster shipping to our west coast customers, but the employees there add decades of experience in customer service and ham radio product knowledge.”

Initially, the Las Vegas store will carry the complete lines of amateur radio and maker equipment with more product lines being added later. Understanding that hams come to Las Vegas from all over the country and all over the world, GigaParts plans on making the retail showroom more of an interactive showcase of the latest equipment rather than a self-service shopping experience common amongst other amateur radio outlets. Today, GigaParts Las Vegas is stocked with ham radio gear and is ready to fill your order! To welcome AES customers, GigaParts is offering a $25 gift certificate to every former AES customer.

See www.gigaparts.com/AES for details

Was Morse Code the smoking gun for this spy with no name?

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who shares this story from the BBC News via Matthew M. Aid‘s blog:

[…]It was a cold Saturday morning in April 1988 when a van full of detectives arrived outside the North London home of Erwin van Haarlem. The self-employed art dealer, 44, lived alone in sleepy Friern Barnet, a smattering of brick homes beside the grim North Circular ring road.
The Dutchman’s apartment building on Silver Birch Close had become the centre of an investigation led by the British intelligence agency MI5. It suspected that Van Haarlem – whom neighbours described as an “oddball” – was not in the art business at all, but a sinister foreign agent.

Inside, Van Haarlem was hunched over a radio in his kitchen. He was still wearing his pyjamas, but his hair was parted neatly to one side. He was tuned in, as he was every morning, to a mysterious “number station”. In his earpiece, a female voice recited numbers in Czech, followed by the blip-bleep of Morse code.

At 09:15 detectives from Special Branch, the anti-terror unit of London’s Metropolitan Police, crashed into his apartment. Van Haarlem tried to lower his radio’s antenna. It jammed. When he pulled open a drawer and grabbed a kitchen knife, an officer tackled him, and yelled: “Enough! It is over! It is over!”

Hidden among his easels and paintings, detectives discovered tiny codebooks concealed in a bar of soap, strange chemicals, and car magazines later found to contain messages written in invisible ink. Investigators suspected Van Haarlem was not really from the Netherlands, but was a spy for the UK’s Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union.

[…]Mrs Saint, 61, who co-ordinated the local Neighbourhood Watch Scheme, said she telephoned the police in November 1987 to report strange noises and a “Morse code” interference which affected her television reception every night at 21:20.[…]

Click here to read this fascinating in0depth story on the BBC Magazine website.