Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Daniel Amoroso, for sharing the following QSL cards from the Voice of America and China Radio International:
Daniels’ QSLs from VOA and CRI
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Tag Archives: China Radio International
The Straits Times: “Western radio broadcasters tuning out”
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Richard Cuff, for sharing this article from The Straits Times which interviews our friend Victor Goonetilleke. This is one of the first articles I’ve seen in the international press which gives a listener’s perspective on recent cuts to shortwave broadcasting.
(Source: The Straits Times)
For 67-year-old Victor Goonetilleke, sitting with his headphones on in his house in the lush green Sri Lankan countryside, June 30 was the end of an era.
Voice of America’s (VOA) short-wave broadcasts to Asia abruptly went off the air, raising howls of protest from many of the US government-funded broadcaster’s listeners across the region.
But as the broadcasts had already been greatly diminished, this was not a surprise. The big Western radio broadcasters have gradually ceded the political “soft power” space they once dominated to a new heavyweight: China Radio International (CRI).
In recent years, Radio Canada International and Radio Netherlands Worldwide have shut down while the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and VOA have cut back on their range of languages and hours of programming. Now, the VOA has left Asia.
Mr Goonetilleke is not just an avid radio listener. He professionally monitors radio frequencies for the VOA. He is also a former veteran radio correspondent with Radio Netherlands for 24 years in an era when short-wave radio broadcasts from the likes of the BBC, VOA, Radio Netherlands, and Deutsche Welle were often lifelines to other worlds for hundreds of millions especially in times of conflict and misery.
The BBC now broadcasts in 29 languages across the planet, down from a peak of 69 in the 1970s. CRI broadcasts in 65, up from a reported 43 in 2006. Some programmes are run by local FM stations.
These days, Mr Goonetilleke can listen to four hours of CRI broadcasts in Sinhala and Tamil daily, compared with 30 minutes each on BBC.
CRI’s Tamil language broadcast is one of its oldest, run by fluent Tamil speaker Zhu Juanhua, a Shanghai native better known by her tens of thousands of listeners as Kalaiarasi.
According to the CRI website, it has 3,165 listener clubs around the planet, including CRI netizens’ clubs.
China Radio International warbling on Dave’s home brew receiver
My buddy and SWLing Post reader, Dave Richards (AA7EE), wrote several weeks ago with an interesting comment:
“I was just now tuning around the 31M band on a [regenerative receiver] that I am putting the finishing touches on, and noticed that the audio from China Radio International on 9790KHz was not only cutting in and out, but was also warbling, as if the program was being played from a tape machine with a slipping pinch wheel.
I’m finding it a bit hard to believe that in this day and age, a country like China would be using tape machines in their studios still, but am trying to figure out what other explanation there could be for this. The warbling doesn’t sound as if it is being caused by the propagation. Have you heard this before?
I have attached a short recording. Please excuse the bassy audio – I need to modify the receiver circuit to provide some bass roll-off.”
Click here for Dave’s recording or listen below:
I agree with Dave; it sounds like CRI is playing from a tape deck with a slipping pinch wheel. I’m not sure this could be a modulation issue. Perhaps it’s both? Curious what other readers think.
Warble aside, I was also very intrigued by Dave’s home brew 31 meter broadcast band regenerative receiver. I asked him for more details; he replied:
“I built another version of the WBR. The original version, as well as the first version I built, was for the 40M amateur band. I was intrigued to see how it would perform on other frequencies, so I built a version for the 31M band. The only change I need to make now is a bit of filtering to provide some rolloff of the bass frequencies, as they are hurting the intelligibility in my opinion.”
Wow! What a cool little home brew project! And many thanks to Dave for the brilliant photos of the WBR. I should mention that Dave has an excellent ham radio blog where he documents his radio projects. Indeed, check out this page for more information about the WBR broadcast band receiver.
Dave told me that he is currently working towards his goal of designing and building the “ultimate” regenerative receiver with plug-in coils for many different bands. I’ll be following him, so I encourage you to do the same by bookmarking his website.
Many thanks, Dave!
Shortwave Radio Recordings: Radio Australia
Like most Friday mornings, yesterday at 11:00 UTC, I tuned to 9,580 kHz to listen to Radio Australia news and ABC National’s technology program Download This Show.
While the signal out of Shepparton, Australia was as strong as ever, I heard adjacent interference from China Radio International.
Indeed, looking my WinRadio Excalibur‘s spectrum display (see image on right), you can see that CRI’s signal on 9,570 kHz was actually producing noise 15 kHz on either side of their AM carrier (for a total bandwidth of 30 kHz!). Radio Australia’s signal was much cleaner, sticking to their allotted 10 kHz bandwidth limit.
The recording of Radio Australia was still quite good, despite the interference, because I was able to run the Excalibur’s AM sync detector locked on the (less noisy) upper side band.
Click here to download the recording as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below:
Daniel shares recent QSLs
Daniel (W3DI) writes:
I have been enjoying some shortwave broadcasts recently and received some nice QSL cards. Wanted to share the cards and some station information.
Deutsche Welle – copied broadcast on 15,275 KHz – Jan 20 , 2013 at 1930 UTC
China Radio International – copied broadcast on 9,580 & 6,020 KHz – Dec 29 & 31 , 2012 at 0130 UTC
VOA – Africa service –
They sent not only a QSL but a beautiful 2013 calendar.
Daniel addeded:
Shortwave listening was my first step to becoming an amateur [radio operator]. First receiver was a Lafayette HE – 10 with a Q mulitplier I built. Now using a WinRadio 313 – things have really changed.
Shortwave listening was also my first step to becoming a ham radio operator. The Lafayette HE-10 is a beautiful little 9 tube radio. I love the split dials on the front–much like the venerable Hallicrafters S-38.
The Lafayette HE – 10 (Photo: RigPix.com)
The Hallicrafters S-38 (Photo: The S-38 Guy)
New book focuses on China’s Firedrake jamming
I just received the following press release from Steve Handler (N9ABC), author of Firedrake – China’s Secret Shortwave Jamming Project Exposed!
Priced at $3.99, his new 45 page eBook is available at Amazon.com:
Firedrake – China’s Secret Shortwave Jamming Project Exposed! by Steven Handler is the new revised and updated version of this electronic publication. Published in late August, 2012, it is now available through Amazon.com for the Kindle. Other booksellers should, by Mid September, 2012, be offering versions for other electronic readers including the Nook, iPad, Sony Reader and other formats.
A little “Firedrake” History-The Chinese government jams or interferes with the HF broadcasts of certain shortwave stations that they apparently deem “dangerous” for their citizens to hear. My publication serves as a guide to the world of Chinese jamming and helps the reader learn about Firedrake and some of China’s other shortwave jamming stations.
Included are jamming frequencies heard during the current A-11 shortwave broadcasting season as well as times of reception. Also included are frequencies heard in use during the past two shortwave broadcasting seasons (A-11 and B-11). Readers will also find information about the direction finding results identifying transmitter sites which I obtained from ITU registered monitoring sites. There is also a virtual tour of a Chinese jamming facility.
Available for $3.99 from Amazon.com (stock number ASIN: B0093NNABQ ) you can find more information and view sample pages at Amazon.com.
Amazon.com also offers free Kindle Readers for both PCs and MAC. Information about the Free PC Kindle reader can be found on their web site. For information about Amazon.com’s Free Kindle reader for the Mac, click here.
The author does not sell copies of this publication directly. Rather copies are sold by retailers and bookstores.
China Radio International increasing Turkish content
(Source: Today’s Zaman)
“I’ve sometimes been challenged trying to find exactly the right word to translate from Turkish into Chinese,” recalled Wenjun Liu, a 37-year-old reporter working at the Turkish Broadcast Service of China Radio International (CRI) in Beijing.
“Thank God, we have Turkish native speakers working here to rush to our aid,” she added.
Like many Chinese nationals who were assigned to work at the Turkish service, Liu has assumed a Turkish name for herself — “Damla.” She works at the world news desk and was working on a story about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an’s visit to Iran in late March. Like many of her colleagues, Damla is a graduate of Beijing Foreign Studies University, a foreign language and international studies university in China.
CRI has been broadcasting in Turkish since October 1957 using the shortwave frequency. It has a one-hour-long program every day, repeated four times during the day in different time slots. It uses Internet broadband to spread the word and has also used local FM stations in ?stanbul and Ankara to reach its audience since 2010. With unprecedented growing ties recently with Turkey, China is set to promote its culture in many areas, including broadcasting more Turkish content on the CRI.
Yongmin Xia, the director of the Turkish service, revealed to Sunday’s Zaman that the CRI has decided to boost its presence in Turkey. Going by the Turkish name Murat, Xia said the CRI has chosen ?stanbul, the largest city in Turkey, to launch a radio station. “We are going to start with five people and hope to reach 15 in this service in ?stanbul,” he said, adding that the stronger presence would help develop bilateral relations further.
“Our common values are more than the differences between the Turkish and Chinese peoples,” he emphasized, pointing to a strong adherence to traditional values in both cultures. “Turks and Chinese share similar traits such as hospitality and warmth in human relations,” he added.
There is no easy way to rate how popular the Turkish service at the CRI is since it airs in shortwave, but the managers at the CRI say they have some idea by looking at regular mail, e-mails and website impressions. “Our Turkish website has 600,000 clicks on a monthly basis,” Xia explained. Overall, the CRI received more than 3 million letters from overseas listeners in 2011.
Though CRI has an enormous broadcasting presence around the globe (and it keeps growing), I would certainly question the listenership numbers based on the methods they use to quantify them. If by 600,000 monthly website “clicks,” they mean “hits,” their numbers may be overly generous. Many of “hits” are associated with search engine and other bots that routinely crawl the web. A more telling number would be either web page views or unique visitors.
Frankly, the 3 million letters from overseas listeners is also hard to believe, though I do imagine they receive a hefty amount of correspondence.