Tag Archives: Mediumwave

Radio France to shut down mediumwave

La Masion de la Radio, Paris, France, (Photo source: Gérard Ducher via Wikimedia Commons).

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Marc, who shares this news from Radio France.

The article (in French) notes that as of midnight on December 31, 2015, Radio France will cease all mediumwave broadcasts permanently. Up to this point, Radio France’s mediumwave transmitters have broadcast France Info, France bleu RCFM and France Bleu Elsass.

The article notes that regions previously within the broadcast footprint of their mediumwave transmissions are now serviced via FM and/or online streaming.

Click here to read the article on Radio France’s website.

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New from Heathkit: the Explorer Jr TRF AM radio receiver kit

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The Heathkit Explorer Jr. (Image Source: Heathkit)

Yes, the legendary Heathkit company is back and their first kit is a simple Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) AM/mediumwave analog receiver: the Explorer Jr.

I knew Heathkit was back in business and under new management, but hadn’t heard any updates as of late. Their president, Andy, just sent a message to the “Heathkit Insiders” group explaining what the team has been up to:

“We’ve designed and developed a wide range of entirely new kit products. We authored the manuals for these kits, complete with the beautiful line art you rely on, preserving and respecting our iconic historic Heathkit style. We developed many new inventions and filed patents on them. We relocated Heathkit, and set up a factory, and a warehouse, and offices, in Santa Cruz, California, near Silicon Valley. We built the back office infrastructure, vendor and supply chain relationships, systems, procedures, operations methods, and well-thought-out corporate structure that a manufacturing company needs to support its customers, to allow us to scale instantly the day we resume major kit sales. All this effort enables us to introduce a fleet of new kits and helps ensure Heathkit can grow, prosper, and continue to bring you great new products for a very long time.”

The Insiders’ message goes into much more detail–I would encourage you to contact Heathkit about joining this group.

The big news in this message was the launch announcement of the Explorer Jr. kit which can be ordered from their website now. The price is $149.95 plus shipping. Heathkit anticipates a 30-day shipping time for the first set of orders.

Here’s a description of the kit from their website:

A Radio Kit Whose Time Has Come.

Again.

When Heath started designing & selling do-it-yourself airplane kits shortly after the Great War, the state-of-the-art in radio was the Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) design.

A TRF radio was a great deal. If you had a great deal of money. A TRF receiver became a fixture in the homes of families around the world, receiving the news and music AM broadcasts of the day. A family AM radio was a big investment — $100 to $625 in 1929 dollars. (With inflation, that’s $1,400 to $8,700 in today’s dollars.) Of course, at that price radios also were beautiful. They were made of fine wood, and designed to last. Radios were a visible and attractive furnishing you could be proud to have in your living room or parlor.

Heathkit’s TRF radio is a great deal. And a great deal of radio. This Explorer Jr^TM radio is modeled on the original TRF designs, but better. You get to build it yourself. It’s safe and simple enough for beginners to assemble and understand. But it receives AM broadcast stations with performance superior to the vintage radios of 1930.

With the number of Heathkit enthusiasts out there, I suspect this first run of kits won’t last long. The kit trim is available in six colors: Silver, Cranberry, Cucumber Green, Plum Pie, Sapphire Blue, and Tangerine.

Click here to view and order the Explorer Jr on Heathkit’s webstore.

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The Oxo Good Grips Turntable for the Mediumwave DXer

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SWLing Post contributor, Robert Gulley, writes:

I recently purchased an Oxo Good Grips Turntable, 16” from Amazon. As the photos show, the size of the turntable can hold a fairly large radio (CC Radio EP and Select-a-tenna) on the turntable in almost any configuration. (Of course the CC Radio EP doesn’t need the Select-a-tenna, just used for illustration purposes for size.)

At $16.99 I think it is a good bargain, and seems quite capable of turning smoothly even with this amount of weight.

Click here to view on Amazon.com.

Many thanks, Robert! I think that turntable is large enough to hold pretty much any portable radio; thanks so much for the photos (especially the one your kitty cat photo bombed, above!). I have several OXO products in my kitchen and have never been disappointed with quality, so I expect this turntable will last you a very long time.

Readers: If you haven’t checked out Robert’s radio blog, All Things Radio, I encourage you to do so!

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BBC sets plans for next decade

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Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Bill, for sharing a link to this article which summarizes the BBC’s plans for the next ten years.

BBC director general, Tony Hall, said the corporation will become an “open BBC for the internet age”.

While Hall was quick to add that funding cuts would equate to “the loss or reduction of some services” he also highlighted several efforts that would include shortwave and mediumwave broadcasts, including:

“Significant investment” in the BBC World Service, including a daily news programme for North Korea and more broadcasts to Russia, India and the Middle East
A news service for Ethiopia and Eritrea on medium wave and short wave

Of course, we can expect more cuts to BBC World Service shortwave broadcasting over the next ten years even if it wasn’t specifically mentioned in Hall’s speech. If we’re lucky, the BBC will continue to broadcast into those parts of the world that still rely on shortwave. Specifically mentioning North Korea, Ethiopia and Eritrea appears to be a nod in that direction.

Click here to read this article on the BBC News website.

Also, The Guardian has posted the full text of Tony Hall’s speech. It’s worth reading.

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Obtaining QSLs from AM broadcast stations?

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SWLing Post reader, Paul Grodkowski, writes:

“Just a quick question to anyone at the SWLing Post:

Is the practice of sending a reception report to a AM broadcast station in return for a QSL card still accepted in the age of the internet ?

So many stations are broadcasting online now that I wonder if they have QSL cards at all?

I just want to keep up with the times and not bother busy people at radio stations and look out of date, yet at the same time would like to confirm report of reception.

Any information would be greatly appreciated.”

Thanks for your question, Paul! I’m no expert on AM broadcast QSLing, but I’m pretty sure many mediumwave stations still respond to listener reports. Indeed, I believe there are even radio enthusiasts who act as QSL managers of larger clear channel stations (CFZM comes to mind).

Of course, one brilliant resource for all things MW DX is the National Radio Club (NRC).

Readers: Can you help answer Paul’s question? Please comment. Also, if you have some AM broadcast QSL cards, please contact me as I would love to post some.

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Tuning in to AM broadcast history and the venerable RF-2200

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Eric (WD8RIF), for sharing a link to this excellent article in the Illinois Times by James Krohe Jr. Here’s an excerpt:

Tuning in: Making a small world bigger and the big one smaller

So much of happiness, I’ve realized, depends on getting tuned in. When he was a young married, my father used to tune in the console radio in the living room of the Krohe family mansion on Manor Avenue to the live broadcasts of big-band music “from the beautiful Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel” in downtown New Orleans. He was able to be in two places at once thanks to WWL-AM, whose 50,000-watt clear channel signal was beamed north. For all I know, while he tapped his toe on the sofa in Springfield, Inuit couples were jitterbugging on the tundra.

For Springfield teens in the 1950s and ’60s, getting a chance to listen to what kids in bigger cities had already decided they liked was important. WCVS-AM was just crawling out of its cocoon, having crawled into it as a country station and emerging as a rock station – although in the late ’50s there wasn’t that much difference. “Rock ’n’ roll” was, in stations like WVCS that catered to mostly white markets, rockabilly and pop-ish country ballads. (Geezers will recall when Brenda Lee was, briefly and laughably, marketed as a rock artist.)

For Top 40 music, as for so many other things, if you wanted to get the really good stuff you had to go to the big city. Around here that meant WLS-AM, WCFL-AM out of Chicago (whose Ron Britain made Soupy Sales look, or rather sound, like Noel Coward), and KXOK-AM out of St. Louis. George Lucas’s American Graffiti brilliantly captured the ways that car radios, transistors, radio stations blaring over PAs in drive-ins, permeated the bubble in which teenagers then lived.

Later I learned I could hear WBZ out of Boston if I acted as the antenna on my transistor. (“Turn on, tune in, drop out” to me meant losing the signal when I lighted a smoke.) WBZ was one of the first stations with the newest 45s from Britain, which allowed us yokels to hear The Yardbirds while the records were still on their way to Midwest stations by stagecoach from Boston harbor.

Continue reading…

Krohe also mentions the virtues of the Panasonic RF-2200 which is, in my opinion, one of the best AM broadcast portable receivers ever.

Click here to read the full article at the Illinois Times website.

Side note: The Panasonic RF-2200 still has a loyal following among mediumwave DXers of the world. The RF-2200 can be found on sites like eBay (click here to search), but make sure you’re purchasing from a reputable seller and not over-paying.

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