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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Dan Greenall, who shares:
Running into an old friend
Hi Thomas
I was doing some random tuning on shortwave this evening using the KiwiSDR at VK2ATZ in New South Wales, Australia, when I came upon a repeating music box-like tune on 13705 kHz that I thought had a familiar sound to it. It was like running into someone who you hadn’t seen in many years and trying to place where you knew them from. Yes, the sound was a bit different, perhaps even a little slower (age does that ?), but then it came to me, could it be Radio Japan, the overseas service of NHK? A quick check at Short-Wave.info revealed this was indeed NHK World Radio.
It felt like I had found an old friend, one that I knew from my high school days over a half century ago. Still recognizable after all those years, and it felt good to know that they are still around.
Attached are two recordings:
Radio Japan, interval signal and bilingual ID, as heard in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada on 9505 kHz in 1970:
NHK World Radio, interval signal and sign on in Thai on 13705 kHz, January 23, 2025 at 2300Z (via VK2ATZ KiwiSDR):
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor Carlos Latuff, who shares the following guest post:
Exploring Radio Radio Nikkei
by Carlos Latuff
It’s been a while since I listened to Nikkei Radio, a Japanese commercial broadcaster that operates on shortwave for a domestic audience. If I remember well, the signal was very weak and, since I don’t speak Japanese, I didn’t know what the content of its broadcasts was about. But today, with the possibility of recording the audio, transcribing it and translating it, it has become more interesting to follow its programs on shortwave here in Brazil, more specifically in Porto Alegre (distance between Nikkei’s transmitter in Chiba, Japan, and Porto Alegre, Brazil: 18779 km).
Nikkei Radio 1 was founded in 1954 and Nikkei 2 in 1963, and at the time it was called Nihon Shortwave Broadcasting Co., better known by the acronym “NSB”. Some Japanese electronics manufacturers have in the past released receivers dedicated to receiving the signal from these stations (see below).
Today, the Japanese company Audiocomm has radio models whose packaging states that this receiver is compatible with Nikkei Radio; note the image alluding to horse racing (see below).
I haven’t been able to acquire any of these devices (yet), since they were basically produced for the Japanese public. But any receiver with shortwave bands can tune into Radio Nikkei. I use my good old XHDATA D-808 with a long wire antenna. In Porto Alegre, the best propagation is between 08:45 AM and 06:15 AM (UTC). In the late afternoon, the signal also arrives, but with a fair amount of static.
Both Radio Nikkei 1 and Radio Nikkei 2 operate on the following frequencies:
Radio Nikkei 1:
3.925 MHz (in case of emergency)
6.055 MHz
9.595 MHz (in case of emergency)
Radio Nikkei 2:
3.945 MHz (in case of emergency)
6.115 MHz
9.76 MHz: (in case of emergency)
On the station’s website https://www.radionikkei.jp/ you can find details of its programming, as well as broadcast times, including a table (in Japanese) with this information, which can be translated with the help of Google Lens.
Radio Nikkei also broadcasts its programming via streaming, however the platform used (radiko) is inaccessible to me here in Brazil (see message below).
Nikkei Radio is majority-owned by the business newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which means the station focuses mainly on the financial market. However, much of its programming, especially on weekends, is dedicated to horse racing, a popular sport in Japan. In addition to news, talk shows and music, the radio station also broadcasts evangelical preaching (!). One of these religious programs is called “True Salvation” and is sponsored by The Japan Gospel Mission, a Christian Protestant organization.
This heterogeneous mix of business, horses and Jesus Christ makes Nikkei Radio an interesting station to tune into, to say the least.
The radio listening sessions published here were made in the central Porto Alegre, Brazil, between January 15th and 19th, 2025.
(Domo arigato gozai masu Mr. Tagawa Shigeru for helping me with translation).
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Greenall, who writes:
Hi Thomas
Back in the 1970’s, I used to enjoy hunting for “utility” radio stations outside the regular SWBC bands. When I came across a copy of the Utility DXer’s Handbook from 1971 recently on eBay, I couldn’t resist purchasing it. I have since made a page on archive.org for it to help preserve this unique piece of radio history. Anyone interested can follow this link and take a look at the world of utility radio as it was over 50 years ago.
Also, I have included links to some of the recordings and QSL’s from these stations that I have set up on the Internet Archive.
A few years ago, during the Covid lockdowns, I rediscovered a box full of my old audio cassette tapes on the bottom shelf of a cupboard in the basement. These cassettes contained many vintage recordings I made between 1970 and 1999, including shortwave, AM, FM and even a bit of TV audio.
I suppose I was a bit lucky, but sometimes not so much.
The box was closed and had basically been in a dust free, climate controlled environment for the previous 22 years (1999-2021). Prior to that (1970-1999), the cassettes were subject to much use and reuse, often being left out (for convenience) unprotected, then being packed up and moved a few times to a new QTH, always within southern Ontario, Canada.
In the early 1970’s, and on a student’s budget, I even resorted to repurposing a couple of cheap demonstration music cassettes by placing a piece of scotch tape over the ends so I could record over the existing music. Inevitably, some “prize” recordings were accidently erased over the years when a cassette was needed urgently and one was thrown hastily into the recorder without a proper check.
Around 1983, I made a decent recording of Radio Mogadishu in Somalia on the out of band frequency of 6790 kHz, but it seems to have been corrupted from being left in the recorder and not discovered until it was too late. Unfortunately, the mistake occurred right over the moment of the actual station ID:
In spite of all of this, I need to feel fortunate that so many of my recordings actually survived for 30, 40 and even 50+ years in spite of my neglecting them for so long. A great deal of this material has since been sorted through and digitised, then saved on the Internet Archive in order to preserve this radio history. I have also regularly submitted some of these recordings to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive.
Here is a link to my material on Archive.org, which I am constantly adding to. Most files have audio, however, some are “read only.”
My long time friend Ken (VE3HLS) has been retired and living in northern Thailand for several years now. He continues to enjoy his radio hobby from that location, and recently sent me a recording he made of the Voice of Indonesia on 4755 kHz:
He states:
“It’s not a vintage recording from back in the 70s. It’s from last night! I was tuning around and found the Voice of Indonesia booming in on 4755 kHz in English, no less!”
It reminded me of the good old days so I thought I would pass it along to share with the group.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent AWR broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Part of Adventist World Radio evangelist preaching in Yoruba language to Nigeria and region, broadcasted from Nauen, Germany. Listened in Florianopolis, Brazil.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of these Furusato No Kaze and Nippon No Kaze il bon ue broadcasts:
Carlos notes:
Opening of Japanese government shortwave radio programs aimed at Japanese citizens abducted by DPRK between 1977 and 1983: “Furusato No Kaze” (in Japanese) and “Nippon No Kaze il bon ue” (in Korean). Broadcasted from a transmitter in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and listened in Florianopolis, Brazil.