Tag Archives: Recordings

Rediscovering the Golden Age of Utility DXing

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.

Wow, Dan! What a utility DXing treasure trove you’ve created on Archive.org. Thank you for sharing these resources and recordings with us!

Archiving Cassettes: Dan’s Rewarding Journey to Preserve Off-Air Shortwave Radio Recordings

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Many thanks to SWLing Post and Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Dan Greenall, for sharing the following guest post:

Preserving Radio History – Old Audio Cassettes

by Dan Greenall

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.”

https://archive.org/details/@dan_greenall

Short recording from the Voice of Indonesia

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

This is a follow up to the SWLing Post article from last May informing about a frequency change at the Voice of Indonesia from 4750 to 4755 kHz.

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.

Dan Greenall VE3HLC

Thank you Dan and Ken for sharing this recording!

Carlos’ Shortwave Art and recording of Adventist World Radio (August 7, 2024)

Carlos’ Shortwave Art and Recordings of Furusato No Kaze & Nippon No Kaze il bon ue broadcasts

Furusato No Kaze

Click here to listen on YouTube.

Nippon No Kaze il bon ue

Click here to listen on YouTube.

Can you help Dan solve this 50 year old radio mystery?

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Many thanks to SWLing Post and Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Dan Greenall, who writes:

Hi Thomas

From the early 1970’s, where sadly, some of my original logbooks went missing many years ago.

ANTEL, the Administracion Nacional de Telecommunicaciones in Montevideo, Uruguay used to use its telephone time announcement instead of a voice mirror – so they got their name ‘La Senal’ in the 1970’s. Their voice announcements in SSB mode were in Spanish and the station could be found on frequencies all over the shortwave spectrum, including 5772 kHz (CXL20), 8037 kHz (CXL21), 10770 kHz (CXL24), 11660 kHz (CXL25), 14575 kHz (CXL26), 16047.5 kHz (CXL28), and 19525 kHz (CXL33). The accompanying recording was made on January 9, 1971 on about 13550 kHz.

La Senal Uruguay Jan 9 1971 13.55:

In those days, it paid to belong to a good DX club (such as SPEEDX) or I may not have been able to identify this station at all. I was also able to get my hands on a used copy of the Klingenfuss guide to utility stations which had very detailed frequency and callsign information. Unfortunately, I let this valuable resource go a number of years ago.

And now for the mystery……

Around the same time (early 1970’s), I heard and recorded this similar styled transmission, except it was in the French language, and which remains unidentified to this day. I have no exact date/time heard or frequency information for this one.

All recordings made in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. (40 miles SW of Toronto)

Mystery French Time Station:

Any guesses will be greatly appreciated.

Dan Greenall

Readers, if you can help Dan identify this recording, please comment!

Bob shares a 1968 off-air recording of Radio Australia

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Bob Purse, owner and curator of the excellent Inches Per Second audio archive and blog, who recently posted a 1968 recording of Radio Australia. This recording is in the queue to be published on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive, but I thought I’d share it here first since I know there are so many Post readers who are fans of Radio Australia.

Bob shares the following notes with his recording on Inches Per Second:

Periodically, I have shared parts of the large collection of shortwave recordings, most of them of Australian programming, which I picked up… somewhere, at some point. I’ve shared most of it, at this point, but have a few tapes left. I held off on this because the quality is fairly poor, then near the end becomes abysmal, but I thought I should share it, since there is an audience for these recordings. The newscast heard here makes it clear (specifically, the golf results, among other stories) that at least part of this tape is from the second week of March, 1968.