Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who writes:
Hey Thomas, just got a broadcast (Nov 5, 2023) on 21640 kHz, from 15h30 to 16h00 UTC here in Rio de Janeiro. A potpourri of pop rock songs and then a female voice says ‘this is the end, have a nice day’.
Both Carlos and I assume this could be a shortwave pirate. If you can help Carlos identify this station, please comment!
Beautiful emailed QSL card from Undercover Radio
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!
Robert Gulley, K4PKM, is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Robert also blogs at All Things Radio.
Halloween is typically the most active day of the year for shortwave pirates. Spend some time on the HF bands tonight and you’ll easily tune in to numerous stations. Expect pirates to emerge like The Great Pumpkin!
Here are two things you’ll want to do this Halloween weekend:
Follow real-time pirate radio spots and loggings on the HF Underground discussion forum. If you’ve never tuned to a pirate in the past, these real-time loggings will help you find pirates while they’re on the air and also help you ID them!
Listen for pirate radio stations tonight! Turn on your radio anytime today, but especially around twilight and tune between 6,920 – 6,980 kHz. Pirates broadcast on both AM and SSB; you’re bound to hear a few. If you’re brand new to pirate radio listening, you might read my pirate radio primer by clicking here.
Caversham Park (Photo source: BBC)
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to John Smith and Chris Greenway for the following tips.
The PIRATE Act Prohibits Landowners and Property Managers from Aiding Pirate
Radio Operations
—
WASHINGTON, July 21, 2023—The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau today issued nine warnings to landowners and property managers in the Miami area for apparently allowing illegal broadcasting from their properties. The FCC may issue a fine exceeding $2 million if it determines that a party continues to permit any individual or entity to engage in pirate radio broadcasting from any property that they own or manage.
“Providing a safe haven for pirate radio operations that can interfere with licensed broadcast signals and fail to provide emergency alert system notifications can have serious consequences for landowners and property managers that allow this conduct to occur on their properties,” said Loyaan A. Egal, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. “I want to thank our field agents for their continued efforts to ensure compliance with federal law in this area.”
The Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting sent today target properties identified by
Enforcement Bureau field agents as sources of pirate radio transmissions. These notices formally notify landowners and property managers of the illegal broadcasting activity occurring on their property; inform landowners and property managers of their potential liability for permitting such activity to occur on their property; demand proof that the illegal broadcasting has ceased on the property; and request identification of the individual(s) engaged in the illegal broadcasting.
The PIRATE Act provides the FCC with additional enforcement authority, including higher
penalties against pirate radio broadcasters of up to inflation-adjusted amounts of $115,802 per day with a maximum of $2,316,034. In addition to tougher fines on violators, the law requires the FCC to conduct periodic enforcement sweeps and grants the Commission authority to take enforcement action against landlords and property owners that willfully and knowingly permit pirate radio broadcasting on their properties.
The Notices of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting are available at:
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-issues-warnings-allowing-illegal-radio-broadcasts.
Readers note that the number of comments on the Shortwave Modernization Petition have surpassed well over 600 at time of posting. No doubt, this particular petition is getting more visibility and notice than expected.
You may know someone who met the love of their life through writing letters, and these days you’d be hard pressed to NOT know people who’ve met online… but have you ever come across someone who’s met her husband in Morse code?
Ulla Knox-Little knew that getting to do an expedition to Antarctica as the radio room operator would be a life-changing experience, but she never expected it to lead to her meeting the love of her life.
Hosted and produced by Helen Shield.
Click here to listen to this short radio piece.
Last month, Readex welcomed librarians to a special breakfast presentation at this year’s ALA Annual Conference in Chicago, IL. Dr. Alban Webb, lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex, captivated the audience in attendance with his talk on “The Art of Listening: BBC Monitoring and the Historical Significance of the Transatlantic Open Source Intelligence Relationship”
Dr. Webb—a noted historian of BBC World Service—gave a fascinating and informative overview of the history of open-source intelligence (OSINT) and the role of BBC Monitoring, highlighting perspectives these newly digitized archives represent for the study of the 20th century history. Click here to read the full article.
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Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to a number of SWLing Post contributors including John, Andrea, and Dennis Dura for the following tips:
Tens of thousands of ordinary Russians are joining the resistance
n a bedsit in Vologda, a Russian city 500 miles north of Moscow, a man sat at a desk surrounded by recording equipment. In his early 60s, tall and thin with long grey hair, glasses and a moustache, he looked like an ageing rock star making a new album. His name was Vladimir Rumyantsev. He lived alone, and his day job was as a stoker, tending a furnace in a factory boiler-room. In the evenings he was the dj of his own pirate-radio station, broadcasting anti-war diatribes against Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Rumyantsev set up the station before the war as a hobby. Radio Vovan (a play on a nickname for Vladimir) mainly broadcast music from the Soviet era that he found in online archives. He said he needed a break from oppressive state propaganda. “Some kind of ‘patriotic’ hysteria started on the airwaves, and as the sole occupant of the flat I voted unanimously to ban the broadcasting of federal tv and radio channels in my home. Well, I had to create something of my own to replace it,” he wrote to me. [Continue reading. Note that this article may be behind a paywall from your location…]
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA —
Jabrallah Tia was a teacher in Sudan in 2011 when a brutal war forced him to flee to a refugee camp in newly established South Sudan. Thirteen years later, Tia is still in a camp but with a new career: journalist.
The Ajuong Thok camp in the Ruweng Administrative Area is home to almost 40,000 refugees and displaced people, most from Sudan. Another influx is expected soon, after a fresh conflict broke out in April.
“It’s terrible now when Sudan has started another war. … We’re expecting more people to come from Sudan, as they’re fleeing the war there,” Tia told VOA in a video interview over Zoom.
He knows what that’s like. Tia had to leave everything behind when he fled his home in South Kordofan state. But he said he has found new meaning in his journalism work. Continue reading
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Dennis Dura, David Iurescia, John Palmer, Gareth Buxton, and Mangosman for the following tips:
The international service of the Sri Lankan Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) recently doubled its Tamil Service airtime to two hours, on 873 kHz AM (medium wave) from Puttalam transmitter. The new schedule is 0130-0330 UTC (7.00 am to 9.00 am IST). This is partly in response to individual efforts of listeners, many in the southern part of India, in Bengaluru. Introducing this change, Colombo International Radio also announced that shortly they are going to use DRM on 1548 kHz! This will be done by is using the old transmitter of Deutsche Welle located in the north of Sri Lanka at Trincomalee. The Sri Lankan public broadcaster has started airing the DRM announcement:
The publicity for the new DRM service is in full swing. See video:
On the occasion of Czech Radio’s centenary, we asked our listeners to let us know where they heard our special programme on that day in order to map Radio Prague International’s broadcast reach today. Here are at least some of the many letters and photos which you have sent us. Thank you to all our loyal fans.
George Jolly, who was listening to our special programme over the internet, wrote from Houston, Texas:
“Thank you so much for the special program today celebrating your 100 years of radio. If I were not so far away, I would surely visit you on Saturday. It means a lot to me that you continue the tradition of the ‘radio magazine’. Hearing the opera excerpt and other recordings from the past was wonderful!
“I love old music and old technology like radio, and I love that you are keeping their spirit alive and new again for today’s world. I am so grateful to celebrate your centenary with you from afar.”
Another listener from the United States is Timothy Marecki, who wrote us from New Port Richey in Florida: Continue reading
Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributors Paul, Frank Howell, NT, and Dan Finegan for the following tips:
The Buzzer, also known as UVB-76 or UZB-76, has been a constant companion to anyone with a shortwave radio tuned to 4625 kHz. However, [Ringway Manchester] notes that there is now a second buzzer operating near in frequency to the original. Of course, like all mysterious stations, people try to track their origin. [Ringway] shows some older sites for the Buzzer and the current speculation on the current transmitter locations.
Of course, the real question is why? The buzzing isn’t quite nonstop. There are occasional voice messages. There are also jamming attempts, including one, apparently, by Pac Man.
Some people think the new buzzer is an image, but it doesn’t seem to be the same signal. The theory is that the buzzing is just to keep the frequency clear in case it is needed. However, we wonder if it isn’t something else. Compressed data would sound like noise. Other theories are that the buzzing studies the ionosphere or that it is part of a doomsday system that would launch nuclear missiles. Given that the signal has broken down numerous times, this doesn’t seem likely. [Continue reading…]
The pioneering inventor died on March 27th at the age of 96.
If you haven’t heard of Virginia Norwood, it’s about time you did. An aerospace pioneer whose career would have been historic even without its undercurrent of triumph over misogynistic discrimination, she invented the Landsat satellite program that monitors the Earth’s surface today. Norwood passed away on March 27th at the age of 96, as reported by NASA and The New York Times.
She achieved all this despite significant pushback from the male-dominated industry before and after her rise. Despite her obvious talent, numerous employers declined to hire her after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For example, Sikorsky Aircraft told her they would never pay her requested salary, equivalent to the lowest rank in the civil service. Another food lab she applied for asked her to promise not to get pregnant as a condition of her employment. (She withdrew her application.) Finally, the gun manufacturer Remington appreciated her “brilliant” ideas in an interview but told her they were hiring a man instead. [Continue reading…]
Facing an existential moment in the 100-year history of the medium, AM broadcasters are banding together, calling on allies in Congress, and enlisting listener support to preserve their place in the automobile. The heads of 10 state broadcasting associations have formed a Dashboard Subcommittee within the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations (NASBA) to slow or stop the removal of AM radio from the dashboard. The two-week old group is working on multiple fronts including fact finding, education and advocacy.