Tag Archives: Radio Documentary

Treetop Antennas: Featured with my friend Wlodek (US7IGN) on BBC Radio 4 Short Cuts

I’m very honored to be featured with my good friend Wlodek (US7IGN) in a short radio documentary on BBC Radio 4 today.

Wlodek is long-time reader and subscriber here on the SWLing Post and QRPer.com. Wlodek lives in Kiev, Ukraine and we keep in touch these days over email. Like me, he is passionate about field radio work and before the Russian invasion, you’d often find him in nearby forests experimenting with some pretty impressive field antennas.

Sadly, when Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, it very quickly brought an end to all of that for Wlod. Not only were amateur radio operators not allowed to transmit under the state of emergency, but it’s no longer safe to venture into nearby forests.

Radio producer, Cicely Fell, learned about our love of all things field radio and put together an audio piece that airs today on BBC Radio 4:

BBC Radio 4 Short Cuts

From the forests of North Carolina, USA to the city of Kyiv, Ukraine – two ham radio enthusiasts seek each other out and a voice from the past prompts a dialogue on listening between a rabbi and a radio producer.

Click here to listen via the BBC Radio 4 website (note that the audio can be streamed shortly after the program airs today).

Many thanks to Cicely and her talented team at Falling Tree Productions for spending a little time with us in the forest and on the air! Truly an honor.

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Radio Doc: New York City’s pirates of the air

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SWLing Post friend, David Goren (the same fellow behind Shortwaveology and the Brooklyn Pirate Radio Sound Map) has just produced and presented a BBC World Service documentary about the pirate radio scene in NYC.

Spoiler alert: it’s amazing–!

Below, I’ve included the description and audio links from the BBC World Service:

New York City’s pirates of the air

As the workday winds down across New York, you can tune in to a clandestine world of unlicensed radio stations; a cacophonous sonic wonder of the city. As listeners begin to arrive home, dozens of secret transmitters switch on from rooftops in immigrant enclaves. These stations are often called ‘pirates’ for their practice of commandeering an already licensed frequency.

These rogue stations evade detection and take to the air, blanketing their neighbourhoods with the sounds of ancestral lands blending into a new home. They broadcast music and messages to diverse communities – whether from Latin America or the Caribbean, to born-again Christians and Orthodox Jews.

Reporter David Goren has long followed these stations from his Brooklyn home. He paints an audio portrait of their world, drawn from the culture of the street. Vivid soundscapes emerge from tangled clouds of invisible signals, nurturing immigrant communities struggling for a foothold in the big city.

With thanks to KCRW and the Lost Notes Podcast episode Outlaws of the Airwaves: The Rise of Pirate Radio Station WBAD.

Producer/Presenter: David Goren

Click here to download New York City’s pirates of the air via the BBC World Service.

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ABC Radio National interviews author of new Marconi biography

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Guglielmo Marconi

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, John Figliozzi, who shared a link the following radio program via the Shortwave Programs email list. John writes:

Here’s an interesting segment heard recently on ABC Radio National’s and Radio Australia’s “Late Night Live”:

Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World is a new biography of Guglielmo Marconi: Nobel Laureate , entrepreneur, inventor and Fascist.

Marconi, the inventor of wireless technology was constantly self inventing and reinventing his life story. One thing is certain , Marconi helped create our modern world of communications and media.

Click here to listen to the full interview on ABC Radio National’s website, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Click here to view Marconi: The Man Who Networked The World on Amazon.

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“Tuning In” Radio 4 documentary on the history of early radio in Britain

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Tuning In, a history of early radio in Britain, will be broadcast November 3rd on BBC Radio 4. If you don’t live in the UK, you can listen live on the Radio 4 website where they will also post an archive of the show. (Note that some archived shows are only available for a limited time.)

(Source: Radio 4)

The press fulminated, the enthusiasts were frustrated, and the radio manufacturers fumed. Despite the fact that Marconi had invented radio before Queen Victoria had celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, radio in Britain took another 25 years to begin an official service to listeners. But when, on November 14th 1922 the British Broadcasting Company’s station at Marconi House radiated to an awaiting nation “This is 2LO calling” for the first time under the company’s name, it marked the start of the first and most distinguished public-service radio station in the world.

As part of the celebrations to mark nine decades of the BBC, historian Dominic Sandbrook explores the long and involved pre-BBC history of radio in Britain, how Britain’s broadcaster got going and developed into an institution dedicated to entertainment, education and information, discovers why Australian diva Dame Nellie Melba was involved, and how the improbably-named Captain Plugge made his first British commercial broadcast from the roof of Selfridges department store in London. From Marconi to Savoy Hill via an old army hut in Essex, the story of the early radio in Britain.

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Radio Documentary: The Wireless World of Gerry Wells

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I just discovered (via PRI’s The World Technology Podcast) a 2010 radio documentary about lifelong radio designer and repairman, Gerry Wells.

If you haven’t heard it before, I suggest you drop what you’re doing and give it a listen below. This is the most charming radio doc I’ve ever heard out of the BBC World Service.