Tag Archives: Recordings

Carlos’ illustrated listening reports of Typhoon Khanun from Okinawa and KBS

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art from two recent reports and a radiofax.

Good morning, Thomas.
My radio activity on August 10, 2023.

Attached are two illustrated listening reports about Typhoon Khanun: one from Okinawa Fishery radio station and the other from KBS World Radio.

Okinawa Fishery

Here is the audio via YouTube:

KBS World Radio

Here is the audio via YouTube:

Radiofax


Also attached a typhoon warning issued yesterday by South Korean meteorology agency via radiofax at 05h00 UTC and received in Porto Alegre. Signal wasn’t good, therefore image arrived with poor quality. Even though, it’s possible to notice the map of Korea and the path of Typhoon Lan, now a tropical storm.

Thank you so much for documenting these broadcasts, Carlos, and sharing them with us in the SWLing Post community!

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Radio Botswana barnyard sounds mystery

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Many thanks to SWLing Post and SRAA contributor, Dan Greenall, who shares the following off-air shortwave radio recording and writes:

In all of the recordings of Radio Botswana’s famous barnyard interval signal I can find, the barnyard sounds are accompanied by the sound of cowbells. There is usually a rooster crowing and cows mooing too.

Today, while revisiting some raw tape from an old cassette dated 1973, I came across a short [off-air] recording of some similar barnyard sounds, chickens clucking and cows mooing. No sign of the cow bells here, but perhaps they started up farther into the interval signal?

If this recording is from Radio Botswana, perhaps they were only using the animal sounds in 1973? Maybe someone out there can help with this? Sorry but I have no other info. Many thanks!

Dan Greenall

London, Ontario Canada

Thanks for sharing this, Dan.

If you can shed some light on this recording and if Radio Botswana’s interval signal has changed over the years, please comment with details! Thank you!

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Carlos’ FM DX in a Flight Over Europe and North Africa

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(Photo by Maria Sleptsova)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Carlos Latuff, who shares the following FM radio recordings made while flying over northwest Africa. Carlos writes:

Flying over Northwest Africa towards Paris yesterday I managed to listen and record FM stations from countries like Senegal, Mauritania, Morocco and Spain, at an altitude of 10668 meters, using the native FM radio of my cell phone. Interesting thing is that it was only possible when I got close to the plane emergency exit. Back to my seat I wasn’t able to listen.

94.3 FM, Senegal, May 11, 2023:

95.0 FM,  SNRT Amz Morocco, May 11, 2023:

101.7 FM, Spain, May 11, 2023:

91.0 FM, Mauritania, May 11, 2023:

Thank you for sharing this, Carlos. Impressive reception from your cell phone’s FM receiver!

Without fail, I always try to listen to FM stations as I fly. This also reminds me of a post from our archives when Ivan used a small SDR to DX while on a flight. 

Thank you again and happy travels!

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Off-Air Recording: Can you help Pete ID this broadcast?

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pete Jernakoff, who writes:

Last Saturday evening, I was cruising through the SW bands and came across music and talk on 2640 kHz, a rather odd (I would think) frequency on which to find such a broadcast format.

The music was of the soft pop variety (for example “Vou de Taxi” by Angelica; “A Time For Us – Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” by Jack Jones; “A Lua E Eu” by Cassiano), and it sounded to my ears that the on-air talent (male) was speaking (between songs) either in Portuguese or in a Brazilian dialect of said language.

I have attached an audio clip of this broadcast [see below] which begins at 0158 UTC (on 26-March-2023). The recording is a little over 13-minutes long and ends when the signal abruptly leaves the air.

Note that there is a seeming mention in the recording of the words ‘Brazil’ and ‘Brasilia’ at the 4:40 and 5:03 time points, respectively. I have no clue where this signal originated, and I’m hoping that you or one of your many readers might be able to help ID this one. As far as I’m aware, there is no station that broadcasts on this frequency at least with this kind of programming. The signal seemed too strong to be a harmonic of a station broadcasting on, say, 1320 kHz. Perhaps a pirate? A mystery to me…

Thanks for sharing this recording, Pete! 

If you can help Pete ID this mystery recording, please comment!

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Guest Post: Listening to LRA 36

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post:

Listening to LRA 36

by TomL

I finally had time to go outdoors to listen to LRA 36, Antarctica.  People were gushing about how well it is being received.  My location was a park across the street from the Forest Preserve I usually go to (the Forest Preserves are shutdown and gates locked after sundown).  Even though it was after sunset, this Park has no gate or chain to prevent people from parking there.  In the dark, I setup the trusty amplified Loop-on-Ground antenna, SDR, and laptop.  Solar Flux Index about 179, K index 2.

Started recording and, NOTHING! ARRGH.  But I had just heard it at home in the noise!?!?  Waited about two minutes and all of a sudden music started playing in the middle of a song.  S6 – S7 strength with lots of fading.  Very cool.  20 minutes later, went off the air.  Then 10 minutes later, came back on again in the middle of another song.  They must be tweaking the transmitter.  This feels like the 10 kW transmitter; no way could a 1.5 kW be this loud over 12000 kilometers!  Also, an advantage with IQ recording of a spectrum is I could tune into it later.  Good thing because between their tweaking the transmitter, my SDR, and the crazy propagation, I had to tune to 15475.983 kHz in order to get the USB signal perfectly in pitch.

For your listening enjoyment if you have not had a chance to hear it clearly, I have uploaded both recordings to archive.org where you can listen as long as you want.  Worth listening to, playing music of Argentina music bands.  Happy Listening!  Here is the link to Archive.org and the audio files are also embedded below:

LRA 36 at 00:30 UTC on 05 March 2023:

LRA 36 at 01:00 UTC on 05 March 2023:

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Guest Post: Old Fashioned Band-Scan after the Solar Storms

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, TomL, who shares the following guest post:

Old Fashioned Band-Scan after the Solar Storms

by TomL

This is just an old fashioned band scan to randomly see what I could hear after last week’s solar perturbations when the Solar Flux Index went well over 200.  I considered what I could hear on the shortwave broadcast bands, even though the SFI had quieted down to around 135.  Would the ionosphere still be holding on to the charge built up during the solar storms?  The date and time was January 30, 2023 around 1400 through 1600 UTC.  By the way, as of today (February 2), the bands are dead and cannot hear any of these even though the Solar Flux is about the same!

I will not have time to describe my antenna setup now at my noisy Condominium in detail.  I have been experimenting with a DX Engineering NCC2 antenna phasing device for the past year with somewhat good results.  I had to place dedicated receive antennas in many different ways in order to find an arrangement that works in conjunction with the two Ham Radio antenna wires out on the porch.  Sometimes it helps by lowering the noise, sometimes the native antenna by itself, or peaking the signal,  has better reception even though it might be slightly more noisy.  By matching one of two receive-only antennas (the left Heathkit switch) with one of the Ham Radio antennas (the right Daiwa switch), I can usually eke out some extra decibels of signal-to-noise improvement. Continue reading →

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