Tag Archives: Radio Nostalgia

Dan Unearths Radio Memories: A 1990s Treasure Trove of Broadcast Ephemera

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who writes:

Hi Thomas

Before the days of the internet and e-mail, handwritten or typed reception reports mailed out to broadcast stations would often net the lucky DXer other goodies, including station brochures, program schedules, frequency guides, station stickers, blank reception report forms, pennants, booklets, and other items in addition to that coveted QSL verification.

The QSLs were stored carefully away in albums or shoe boxes, while much of the other paper ephemera eventually (over the years) made its way into a recycle bin. Recently, while cleaning out some storage boxes in the basement, I came across a number of envelopes containing some of the aforementioned items from the early to mid-1990s. To preserve these newly discovered pieces of radio history, I have scanned much of the material and included it here.

Here’s a sampling:

There are 39 JPEG and 7 PDF files to view: https://archive.org/details/radio-finland-program-guide-1992-3-page-2

73

Dan Greenall VE3HLC, Ontario, Canada

Thank you so much for archiving and sharing these, Dan! Pure radio nostalgia.

Paul’s Treasure Trove of 1980s Shortwave Interval Signals and Idents

I recently received a fascinating message from long-time SWLing Post reader Paul, who has graciously shared a remarkable collection of shortwave radio recordings he made from his home near London in the 1980s. Here’s what he wrote:

Hi Thomas,
I have been following your excellent blog for many years. I have noticed that sometimes you feature archive recordings. I have some that might interest you.

During the 1980s I was listening to shortwave radio from my home near London, in the south east of England. I had a cassette recorder connected to the receiver and taped anything interesting that caught my ear. Little did I know that 40 years later the majority of these stations would have disappeared and I would have the opportunity to share these recordings with the world.

I have put together a collection of five audio files of recordings from many of these international shortwave broadcasters, consisting of IDs and interval signals. The majority of these recordings are in English. I’ve grouped the files geographically:

      • Western Europe
      • Eastern Europe and the USSR
      • Africa and the Middle East
      • Asia and the Pacific
      • The Americas

I have uploaded these files to the Internet Archive, under the user name Shortwave Memories.

There are no dates or frequencies but the recordings were made during the 1980s, the majority during the first half of the decade.

I hope you and your readers find this interesting. I certainly enjoy listening to these recordings and a reminder of how shortwave used to sound.

Best regards,
Paul

Listen to the Recordings

Paul has organized his recordings by region. You can stream them directly from the Internet Archive or download them to enjoy offline: https://archive.org/details/@shortwave_memories

I’ll also embed the audio players below with Paul’s notes:

Western Europe

Audio Player

AUSTRIA: Radio Austria International (0)
CYPRUS: Cyprus Broadcasting Company (1.40)
DENMARK: Radio Denmark (3.09)
FINLAND: Radio Finland (4.29)
FRANCE: Radio France Internationale (5.30)
GERMANY (WEST): Deutsche Welle (6.30)
GREECE: Voice of Greece (7.53)
ITALY: RAI (9.24)
MALTA: Radio Mediterranean (11.00)
NETHERLANDS: Radio Netherlands (12.21)
NORWAY: Radio Norway (13.34)
PORTUGAL: Radio Portugal (15.34)
SPAIN: Spanish Foreign Radio (16.32)
SWEDEN: Radio Sweden (18.17)
SWITZERLAND: Swiss Radio International (19.53)
Red Cross Broadcasting Service (20.38)
UNITED KINGDOM: BBC World Service (21.49)


Eastern Europe and the USSR

Audio Player

ALBANIA: Radio Tirana (0)
BELARUS: Radio Minsk (1.18)
BULGARIA: Radio Sofia (1.41)
CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Radio Prague (2.29)
ESTONIA: Radio Tallin (2.50)
GERMANY (EAST): Radio Berlin Int (3.49)
HUNGARY: Radio Budapest (5.22)
LATVIA: Radio Riga (6.31)
LITHUANIA: Radio Vilnius (7.14)
POLAND: Radio Polonia (8.30)
ROMANIA: Radio Bucharest (9.37)
UKRAINE: Radio Kiev (10.41)
USSR: Radio Moscow World Service (12.17)
Radio Station Peace & Progress (13.35)
Radio Station Rodina (13.59)
YUGOSLAVIA: Radio Yugoslavia (14.21)


The Americas

Audio Player

Bonaire: Trans World Radio (3.31)
Brazil: Radio Nacional do Brasil (4.32)
Canada: Radio Canada Int (6.58)
Chile: Voice of Chile (8.48)
Colombia: Radio Nacional (11.06)
Radio Sutatenza (12.00)
Cuba: Radio Havana (12.48)
Dominican Republic: La Voz del CID (14.20)
Radio Clarin (15.01)
Ecuador: HCJB (15.43)
Grenada: Radio Free Grenada (17.36)
Nicaragua: Voice of Nicaragua (18.42)
USA: Voice of America (19.54)
Radio Earth (20.33)
KCBI (21.39)
WHRI (22.13)
WRNO (22.38)
WYFR (22.49)
Venezuela: Radio Turismo (23.22)
Radio Tachira (24.06)
YVTO (24.41)


Asia and the Pacific

Audio Player

Afghanistan: Radio Afghanistan (0)
Australia: Radio Australia (1.55)
Bangladesh: Radio Bangladesh (3.18)
China: Radio Peking (4.23)
India: All India Radio (6.16)
Japan: Radio Japan (7.29)
Korea (North): Radio Pyongyang (9.02)
Korea (South): Radio Korea (12.26)
Malaysia: Voice of Malaysia (14.22)
New Zealand: Radio New Zealand (15.49)
Pakistan: Radio Pakistan (16.13)
Saipan: KFBS & KYOI (16.44)
Taiwan: Voice of the Free China (18.14)
Tajikistan: Radio Dushanbe (19.01)
Uzbekistan: Radio Tashkent (19.22)
Vietnam: Voice of Vietnam (20.16)


Africa and the Middle East

Audio Player

ALGERIA: Radio Algiers (0)
EGYPT: Radio Cairo (1.03)
IRAN: Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran (2.33)
IRAQ: Radio Baghdad (4.17)
ISRAEL: Kol Israel (6.33)
KUWAIT: Radio Kuwait (8.00)
LEBANON: Voice of Lebanon (9.29)
LIBYA: Radio Jamariyah (10.18)
NIGERIA: Radio Nigeria (12.15)
QATAR: Qatar Broadcasting Service (13.53)
SAUDI ARABIA: Broadcasting Service of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (14.21)
SOUTH AFRICA: Radio RSA (15.45)
SYRIA: Radio Damascus (17.37)
TURKEY: Voice of Turkey (18.40)
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: UAE Radio (19.50)


Many Thanks to Paul!

A huge thank you to Paul for not only preserving these recordings, but also for taking the time to digitize and share them publicly. This is a nostalgic treat for many of us and a valuable reference for future generations of listeners.

If any readers have similar recordings they’d like to share, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to help preserve and feature them on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.

— Thomas

Bob’s Radio Corner: Buttons, Knobs, and Switches

Source: The Great International Math on Keys Book, Texas Instruments Inc., Dallas, Texas, p. 4-7, 1976.

Pressing Buttons. Twirling Knobs and Throwing Switches

By Bob Colegrove

Move along.  Nothing informative to read here, just the wandering of an idle mind scheming with meandering fingers on a keyboard.  On the other hand, if your curiosity can’t be controlled, consider that a significant amount of enjoyment in this hobby is the mere operation of the radio – seeing what all the buttons, knobs, and switches do, both separately and in combination.  It’s always been this way.  Beginning in the Amplifiozoic Epoch there was continual rotation of the knobs.  This occurred before the discovery of ganged capacitors, when each circuit had to be tuned independently to resonate at the proper frequency.  Otherwise, nothing.

It could be quite confounding for a non-radiofile trying to break into the sport.  Just getting some sound out of a two-knob radio could be a challenge.  My late mother solved this problem on all our radios by painting a dab of red nail polish at the points on the dial where each local station came in.

The Complexities of Shortwave

Later, with the humble entry-level shortwave “set” there was conundrum in the way the bandspread interacted with the main tuning control, and the curious effect of the BFO switch.  Even the venerable Hallicrafters Company, which catered to the hams and SWLs of the time, recognized the problem. They tried to solve this by prescribing a default setting in installation and operating procedures for model S-40 receiver, The Hallicrafters Company, Chicago, USA, p. 4, 1946:

“NOTE. – Some of the control markings are in RED. This is an added feature incorporated for the convenience of the listener who is not familiar with radio terminology as an aid in setting the controls most used for the reception of standard broadcast stations.”

That was the nice way of saying it.  After many years, I still chuckle to myself thinking of an old ham radio mentor of mine who insensitively explained that the purpose of these markings was for certain members of the household who could not otherwise make the radio work.  On my S-40B, the “convenience” markings are white dots.

Modern Radios

Modern radios have many buttons, which can work in different ways.  A short press will do one thing while a long press will do something else.  Some buttons do one thing with the radio turned off and another thing with the radio turned on.  On many radios you can lock the buttons and knobs, in which case they won’t do anything.  You must get it right.

Hidden Features

Today, the possibilities with all these variables are boundless, even beyond the control of the manufacturers who incorporate the complex TEF6686 30-pin IC chips in their designs.  Qodosen has set the bar high by making a plethora of user-adjustable functions available on the DX-286.  An uncommonly informative 40-page manual has been included with each radio and is highly recommended as an essential tool to assist with its operation.

In recent years, Tecsun has capitalized on this by incorporating “hidden features” in some of their models; that is, their operation and even their very existence are not revealed in the manual.  In computer gaming parlance, these features are called “Easter eggs” for which one must hunt.  Originally, the inclusion of hidden features may not have been intentional, but with the introduction of the PL-880 in 2013 they became a veritable sensation, as testified by the countless owner postings on the PL-880 Yahoo users’ group of that time.  A prize of unbounded esteem and self-satisfaction went to the intrepid listener who discovered and solved a hidden feature.  This interest went on for several months as Tecsun tweaked the firmware and the “features” migrated somewhat.  But unfortunately, a spoiler has been introduced.  Hidden feature data sheets are now packaged with current models.  In case you are missing any, here is a sampling.

For the Tecsun PL-368 see https://swling.com/blog/2021/08/troys-tecsun-pl-368-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-990 see https://swling.com/blog/2020/10/johns-pl-990-hidden-features-quick-reference-sheet/

For the Tecsun PL-880 see https://swling.com/blog/2019/10/40072/

For the Tecsun S-8800 see https://swling.com/blog/2018/08/bill-discovers-a-number-of-tecsun-s-8800-hidden-features/

SDR

The complexity of radio operation is compounded still further by the advent of SDR, wherein combinations of various hardware and software components result in a host of possibilities.  Features and their placement seem endless as they are distributed on multiple menus.  As my personal experience is limited to WebSDR, I leave the pursuit of this point to others.

Manual Power Generation

Finally, the inclusion of some elementary form of leverage and dexterity is present in some radios.  Isn’t the hand-powered crank on today’s emergency radio akin to the vintage treadle-operated transcription machine pictured at the beginning of this posting?  Perhaps we have come full circle.

Conclusion

Today’s radios are a sort of Rubik’s cube which can continually be manipulated to provide many hours of discovery and complement the listening and DXing experiences.  So, the next time you crawl underneath the headset and unconsciously tune to the object frequency, zero beat on the necessary sideband, and adjust the proper bandwidth and volume, reflect on all the time and practice it took you to develop this useful skill.

Bob’s Radio Corner: The Curious Case of the Nibi-Nibi Islands

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Bob Colegrove, who writes:

Hi Thomas,

No mention of UTC or frequency in the attached. Made my day, but some folks apparently were not amused.

Nibi-Nibi Islands A few months ago there appeared in the bulletins of various clubs and organizations an item about a new station located in the Nibi-Nibi Islands. Additional reports on this station have been received from time to time, with the latest report containing information on new programming. The National Geographic Society claims that there is no such island. And investigation into the situation by several veteran DX'ers has failed to locate the original source of the information. It is believed now that the entire episode was a hoax. While it may have begun as a harmless prank, it has, nevertheless, consumed the time and efforts of the editors of many clubs, organizations, and DX programs. This sort of thing has no place in short-wave listening. It is sincerely hoped that all DX'ers will be on the lookout for such obviously phony reporting and will do all they can to discourage any repetition of this kind.

Source was “Short-Wave Report” by Hank Bennett, Popular Electronics, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., New York, p. 86, March 1959.

Regards,

Bob Colegrove

This absolutely made my day as well, Bob! What a delightful bit of pranksterism from our esteemed DXing history.

From NDBs to TIS: A DXer’s Journey Across 1610-1700 kHz

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who shares the following guest post and asks, “Wonder who can add to this list?“:


A Look Back – DXing between 1610 and 1700 kHz

by Dan Greenall

1. The Caribbean Beacon, Anguilla West Indies 1610 kHz (1985 QSL)

2. NDB stations (non-directional beacons)

  • transmitted call letters on CW, mostly from airports, heard in the 1970’s
  • examples: MDE Medellin, Colombia 1690 kHz and RAB Rabinal, Guatemala 1613 kHz

3. U.S. Army Broadcasting Service KTRK 1670 Fort Meade, MD Feb 1996          articles and recordings

https://www.radioheritage.com/ktrk-k-truck-1670-khz/

4. FCC Part 15 Radio Stations

Example:    WDKW 1630 “the Klaw” Dundalk High School near Baltimore, MD

Audio Player

Link to my recording made at a DX camp in Coe Hill, Ontario, Canada on April 20, 1997: https://archive.org/details/wdkw-the-klaw-1630

An internet search revealed the following;

Part 15 of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules allows some low-powered radio devices to operate without a license on the AM and FM radio broadcast bands. These devices are subject to certain restrictions, including:

  • Range: On FM frequencies, the effective service range is limited to about 200 feet (61 meters).
  • Field strength: The field strength should not exceed 250 ?V/m (48db) at 3 meters.
  • Detachable antennas: Part 15 rules prohibit detachable antennas on all Part 15 transmitters.

Some examples of Part 15 radio stations include:

  • Microbroadcasting

Often used by hobbyists, drive-in theaters, or on college or high school campuses.

  • Talking roadsigns, talking houses, or talking billboards

These transmitters air a repeating loop of information, such as traffic or highway construction. They typically operate on empty channels on the AM broadcast band.

  • InfOspot

A custom product that can include special audio systems, USB / internet connectivity, cabinets, and antenna mounting styles.

  • Free-radiate AM radio stations

Educational institutions can use a transmitter without a license if the signal coverage is limited to their property.

5. TIS (Travellers Information Stations)

1610 kHz with low power, usually around 10 watts, such as the one I hear near the Blue Water Bridge between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan

6. Expanded AM broadcast band 

Over a quarter century ago, these frequencies began to be used in the U.S. by BCB stations.  I still have recordings of a half dozen of these from the early days.

WTDY 1670:

Audio Player

WNML 1670:

Audio Player

WMDM 1690:

Audio Player

KCNZ 1650:

Audio Player

KCJJ 1630:

Audio Player

KBGG 1700:

Audio Player

Also, here is a link to a column in Popular Communications magazine from February 1998.

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Popular-Communications/90s/Popular-Communications-1998-02.pdf

Radio is Cheap Entertainment

Source: Better Shortwave Reception, William I. Orr, W6SAI,
Radio Publications Inc., Wilton, CT, 1st Edition, p. 129, 1957.

A Radio is Cheap Entertainment

Digressions of Bob Colegrove

Radio is a cheap hobby.  Consider the plight of concertgoers and sports fans.  Today, the price of a ticket to a single event can easily equal or exceed the cost of a decent radio.  Then, after the event, all you have left is a ticket stub and a memory.  Further, if your team loses, the memory is probably not pleasant.  Whereas, with a radio, you have a tangible item you can go on using as long as you want to.  Perhaps by dividing some measure of enjoyment by the time engaged in the activity one could come up with a quotient indicating the relative value of various forms of entertainment.

I guess my point is an attempt to justify why I have more than the necessary number of radios.  After all, it’s hard to listen to more than one at a time.  But it’s also hard to put a number on ‘necessary,’ and besides, radios are cheap.  It wasn’t always that way.  In 1959, the entry-level shortwave “sets” were the five-tube Hallicrafters S-38E and the National NC-60 Special.  These radios were marketed head-to-head at the $60 price point.  To put things in perspective, that’s nearly $650 today.  Conversely, a highly desirable Tecsun S-2200x (price, $372) with countless transistors would have cost less than $35 in 1959 dollars had it been feasible.  An XHDATA D-220 (price, $10) would have been 92 cents.

I financed my purchase of a Hallicrafters S-38E using the device shown below.  For those too young to recognize it, it was what passed for a lawn mower in 1959.  It was very ecofriendly requiring neither gasoline nor battery charging.  Instead, the short blade rotated, and the device moved forward on two metal wheels by manual exertion of pressure on the handle, which is shown at the top right.  You had to overlap each pass across the lawn by at least ½ a blade width to get a decent cut.  I had a clientele of three neighbor’s yards, each of approximately 1/6 acre for which I received $2 per mowing – $1 for the front and $1 for the back.  There was no sales tax in Indiana at that time, and my earnings were under the minimum amount to pay any income tax, so you can do the math to see how long it took to buy my radio.

Fast forward 65 years.  My neighbor’s boy rides on a 48-inch $3,200 mower with a cold soda in the cup holder; streams rock music on his noise-canceling, Bluetooth headphones; and knocks down $60 in about ½ hour.  Radio?  He thinks single sideband was a heavy metal group from Chicago.

Outside of an occasional set of batteries, there is very little continuing ownership cost for a radio beyond the initial investment.  There is no monthly fee for Internet streaming or satellite radio.  Whatever you care to donate to your local public radio station is your own business.

All of this is to say I have gone to some concerts and sporting events, but a fair share of my disposable income in recent years has been spent on radios, some of which, like entertainment events, are now just memories.  The remaining radios festooning the shack are all necessary.

Bottom line: If your conscience is troubled by the prospect of spending money on a spare radio, or you are consumed with guilt at having done so, reassure yourself by considering what little would remain after any investment in a good meal at a decent restaurant.  Just remember, for the sake of domestic tranquility, use discretion when sharing any plans with your spouse.  In this situation, I often reflect on words attributed to the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, USN who used to say, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

May your radio logbooks be enriched with many new entries in 2025.

Happy New Year!

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Albania – Part Two

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Don Moore–noted author, traveler, and DXer–for the latest installment of his Photo Album guest post series:


Façade of the National Museum of Albania on Skanderbeg Square

Don Moore’s Photo Album: Albania – Part Two

Bunkers and Bugs

Click here to read Part One: Finding Radio Tirana

More of Don’s traveling DX stories can be found in his book Tales of a Vagabond DXer. Don visited Albania in March 2024.

Albania has a lot to offer foreign visitors. The country has coastal beaches, beautiful mountains and historical sites hundreds and thousands of years old. Tirana is a fascinating city filled with good restaurants and friendly people. It’s inexpensive. The central city is easy to get around on foot. I’m already planning my next visit.

But the number one reason to visit Albania is to see the sites related to the Communist era and the Enver Hoxha dictatorship. I don’t think there is anywhere else where you can get such close insight into what real life was like inside a brutal police state. Indeed, after visiting Tirana, I can’t imagine how anyone could praise dictatorships or say that their own country would be better off under a dictatorship. In Tirana three sites in particular stand out in this regard. And each of them has some interesting displays involving the use of radio.

The House of Leaves

The House of Leaves … the name sounds peaceful and innocent. That was once true. Constructed in 1931, the two-story villa originally served as the first obstetrics clinic in Albania. Then when the Nazis moved in after the Italian surrender in 1943, it was chosen as headquarters for the Gestapo. That might have been a minor blip in the structure’s history, but the Gestapo had remade the building into just what Enver Hoxha’s new government needed: a headquarters for their secret police.

The dreaded Sigurimi would occupy the building for nearly five decades. But that was supposed to be a secret, so no one could say what the villa really was, even though everyone knew. So it became known as The House of Leaves from the vines that covered the outer walls. Even then, the name was mostly whispered among the closest friends. It wasn’t safe to pay much attention to the building.

After the Communist regime fell in 1991, The House of Leaves mostly sat unused. Then, in 2014 the Albanian Ministry of Culture announced it would be turned into a museum telling the story of Sigurimi and its operations. The Museum of Secret Surveillance opened in 2017 and three years later was awarded the European Museum of the Year award by the Council of Europe.

The museum has many rooms focusing on various aspects of Sigurimi’s work. My favorite was one filled with electronics used to monitor and record conversations by suspected malcontents.

The key to monitoring someone was placing a radio transmitter bug in the suspect’s home. The Sigurimi made their own bugs in a workshop in The House of Leaves. They were particularly proud of the tiniest ones, which could very easily be hidden.

The bugs were usually placed inside a small piece of wood that could be placed under a table or chair. The effective range was only about two hundred meters, so monitoring posts had to be in the same building or nearby. The Sigurimi would either recruit a neighbor or persuade a neighbor to host a Sigurimi agent to monitor the recordings. Rinia brand transistor radios made in Romania were the preferred receiver. They were inexpensive and could easily be modified to receive the desired frequency. And they were common enough that possession of one didn’t mark a person as a government agent. Agents usually listened in on headphones while also making a recording of the conversation.

In some cases, homemade amplifiers were used to boost the weak signals produced by the tiny bugs.

Recordings of conversations of interest were taken back to The House of Leaves for further investigation at monitoring posts such as this one.

The Bunkers

Enver Hoxha knew that tiny Albania could never support an army large enough to repel an outside invasion. His experience as a guerilla in World War II, on the other hand, had convinced him that an armed hostile populace could do the job. Albania was, after all, the only occupied country to retake its own capital without any outside help. So Hoxha based Albania’s national defense on making sure that invading the country would be so difficult and painful that no one would dare attempt it.

A key part of that policy was constructing concrete bunkers. Hoxha’s goal was to construct 750,000 of them – approximately one for every four Albanians at the time. Just how many were actually constructed is not known, but the number was in the hundreds of thousands. And they were built everywhere – in farms, in forests, in villages, and in cities.

Most were the three-meter-wide Qender Zjarri type, just large enough to give two or three combatants a concealed firing position. Depending on the location these were built individually or else in small clusters. Today, a fun activity while traveling by bus through Albania is seeing how many you can spot. Occasionally these bunkers are used for storage but there are so many that most are abandoned other than the occasional visit by local teenagers. Evidently, they’re the cool place for losing one’s virginity.

The second type of bunker was the eight-meter-wide Pike Zjarri, intended to serve as local command centers. Being larger, many of these have been put to other uses. And then there were the big bunkers, huge complexes of underground rooms and tunnels where officials would take refuge and continue to run Albania’s government. But today’s Albania is not concerned with repelling foreign invaders. Instead it welcomes them in the form of tourists. And so two of the biggest bunker complexes in Tirana have been turned into museums. And both of them contain some interesting radio memorabilia.

Enver’s Refuge

The biggest bunker was a vast underground complex built in the 1970s inside the base of a mountain on the eastern outskirts of Tirana. Construction was so secret that this bunker’s existence wasn’t even known publicly until the 1990s. This was where Enver Hoxha and other top officials would have gone in the event of an invasion or nuclear attack. It had over one hundred rooms on five levels with its own power and water systems. The entrance passed through a decontamination station where anyone entering could wash off the fallout if a nuclear bomb had already been dropped. (Or so they hoped.)

The inside is a labyrinth of hallways and small rooms used for everything from communication centers to support services. There is even a small auditorium where the Albanian legislature could meet. Enver Hoxha and the prime minister had small spartan private apartments. Other officials, guards, technicians, and servants slept in dormitories. Of course, the facility was never used. It’s believed that Enver Hoxha only visited three times – once when it was completed in 1978 and then two more times for drills.

One of many hallways in the Enver Hoxha’s refuge. 

Enver Hoxha’s office in the big bunker. The desk has the same Chinese-made Red Lantern Model 269 receiver that I saw at the Radio Bar Tirana.

The Albanian military continued to use the facility for several years after the Communist government fell in 1991. After that it was locked up. Then in 2014 a pair of journalists came up with the idea of making it into a museum which was named Bunk Art. But it’s a history museum, not an art museum. Some rooms were left unchanged to show the structure’s original purpose. Others were filled with exhibits on Albanian history, the Italian invasion, the Communist period, and life under Communism. And those exhibits include a few interesting radio items.

According to the display, this was one of two portable transceivers in possession of Xhevdet Mustafa when he was killed by the Sigurimi on the beach south of Tirana in 1982. The display didn’t make clear who Mustafa was working for.

On several occasions in the early 1950s the CIA tried to insert small bands of Albanian agents into the country, mostly without success. This Russian-made transceiver was part of the gear that came with a small group of agents parachuted into Albania in 1953. The group were all killed or captured when they landed. With help coerced from the prisoners, the Sigurimi used this radio for several months to trick the CIA into continuing to air-drop supplies into the mountains.

This black-and-white Albanian-made TV was configured at the factory to only receive Albanian channels. However, clever Albanians figured out ways to use small electronic circuits (called kanoce) that overrode those limits. Albanians along the coast were able to receive TV from Italy while those in border areas could receive Yugoslav or Greek TV.

The Downtown Bunker

The original Bunk Art proved so popular with Albanians and foreign visitors that in 2016 it was renamed Bunk Art 1 and a second location, Bunk Art 2, was opened in the city center. This bunker had been built under the city streets near The House of Leaves and had been intended for use by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It consisted of a single level with several branching hallways lined with small rooms. Today, it’s a museum telling the story of the Ministry (of which the Sigurimi was just one part) until its dissolution in 1991.

This bunker was also configured for a long-term stay. The Minister of Internal Affairs had this private bedroom.

Some Chinese-made radio equipment used by the ministry.

The Broom Bug

On 12 December 1985, the streets of Tirana were crowded with people out to watch a large patriotic parade which just happened to pass by the Italian embassy. Two women and four men dressed in fashionable western clothes and chatting in Italian among themselves snaked their way through the crowd to the door of the embassy. The Albanian police monitoring the door didn’t try to stop them. Obviously, they were Italian tourists or embassy workers. Except they weren’t. The sisters and brothers of the Popa family had long been persecuted by the Albanian government as their parents had collaborated with the Italians during the war. And now the six children wanted political asylum.

The Italians were willing to resettle the family in Italy but the Albanian government refused to give them permission to leave. Instead Albania demanded that the siblings be turned over to its police, which the Italians refused to do. The family would live in the embassy for 4 ½ years until the Albanian government finally agreed to let them go. In the meantime the Albanians kept a strong police and military presence in the neighborhood surrounding the embassy.

The Sigurimi wanted to know what was going on inside so they recruited an Albanian maid who worked at the embassy to help them. She was given five bugs and instructions to hide them in the usual places like behind paintings and under tables. They knew the Italians would find these and that was fine. It would give the Italians false confidence that they had found all the bugs. The real bug was concealed in a special new broom that the maid brought in and left in a closet next to where the Popa siblings stayed. Each day she was given a freshly charged battery to swap with the depleted one inside the broom. The Italians never discovered the bug-in-a-broom. The Popa siblings were finally allowed to leave the embassy for Italy on 3 May 1990.

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