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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, April TimeLady, who writes:
Please find in this email links to two months of Japanese SDR recordings I have made. One is for July and the other is for August. I have uploaded them to archive.org. I send you these links because I think it may interest your audience to listen to Japanese language SDR recordings. Nearly all of the domestic broadcast recordings are NHK, specifically the late night program since I like it. Enjoy!
The Voyager aircraft circles before landing at Edwards Air Force Base (Source: NASA via Wikimedia)
One of the most amazing things about hosting and curating a massive collection of shortwave radio recordings is listening to each recording as they’re published on the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA).
SRAA contributor, Tom Gavaras, has shared some brilliant off-air and studio recordings over the years including the following shortwave recording of Voyager Experimental Aircraft flight communications with Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager in 1986.
I haven’t even published the recording on the archive yet, as he just submitted it. Tom notes:
The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base’s runway in the Mojave Desert on December 14, 1986, and ended 9 days later on December 23, setting a flight endurance record.
This shortwave recording is a sample of some of the communications between Dick Rutan and his ground crew including a debate if Dick should walk out of the aircraft after it lands.
Tom made this recording with an ICOM R71A receiver in Minnetonka, MN, and believes the date of this recording is December 22, 1986:
QSL card
This is simply amazing, Tom! Thank you so much for sharing your recording and QSL card with us. A proper radio treasure!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Richard Lacroix,
I was intrigued by your post, “The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run (BBC Future)”. I attempted to listening to the station on 4625 kHz from my home location here in Toronto, Ontario Canada but unfortunately could not receive the signal. WebSDR to the rescue. I managed to locate a couple of KiwiSDRs in Russia which yielded great reception of “The Buzzer”.
I figured that some readers may be interested in knowing what the buzzer sounds like. I have therefore included 2 recordings of the broadcast; the first in AM and the second in USB mode with a 3.2 kHz wide filter setting. I am also sharing a screen shot of the waterfall which clearly depicts the signal [see at top of post].
Recordings
The Buzzer recorded July 18, 2020 at 01:07 UTC on 4625 kHz in AM mode:
The Buzzer recorded July 18, 2020 at 08:26 UTC on 4625 kHz in upper sideband mode:
Thank you for sharing this, Richard!
Like you, I have difficult receiving The Buzzer from North America (especially in summer conditions with QRN). That’s where KiwiSDRs really come to the rescue. Thanks again for sharing your recordings.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, April TimeLady, who writes:
This is a collection of SDR recordings made of Japanese language radio stations for June 2020.” It may be useful to note that I had encoded them at .ogg from .wav, and archive.org automatically converts audio to .mp3 format. The great majority of the recordings are from NHK JOAK Tokyo; I have reason to believe that it broadcasts in AM Stereo. Those recordings with “sas” in the filename are in stereophonic sound, or supposed to be at least. I am unsure if what I hear are artefacts of skywave or AM interference or actually stereo, but it seems to be so when I listen to the playback of such files. The English language Wikipedia article on AM stereo is definitely not complete when it comes to Japanese radio stations, and there does not seem to be a corresponding article on the Japanese Wikipedia..
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, April TimeLady, who writes:
This is a collection of Japanese SDR recordings I made over the month of May. Labelling may be “off” and I can’t find sources for some of the call letters of the stations I’ve heard; WRTH is only so useful, but it is still very useful anyway. The recordings are also biased towards what I’m interested in, which means mostly music programs, NHK programs, shortwave programs. Available in .wav, .mp3 and .flac.
“Does anyone know the call letters of the NHK shortwave transmitters located in Japan itself. Or the call letters for the Issoudun and Nauen shortwave complexes?
I’ve tried googling the answers for the first question in Japanese and the answers have been less than useful, most likely due to the kanji barrier.”
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, April TimeLady, who writes:
To aid in my knowledge of the Japanese language I have been using SDRs and recording what I hear.
I have uploaded a collection of recordings of Japanese audio made from various SDRs, primarily those located in Japan itself. Those with 6105 kHz in the title were generally made off of American SDRs. Occasionally there will be some European and African off air recordings in there. These are in .ogg format.
This morning, I uploaded a recording of 2001 shortwave pirate The Purple Nucleus of Creation to the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA). The recording was submitted by Adam C. Smith, a regular over at the SRAA.
Adam’s six minute off-air recording was made on October 27, 2001 at 0009UTC on 6,928 kHz USB with Adam’s Grundig 800 and 100’ wire antenna. Check out the audio embedded below or via the SRAA.
But first? Check out this extraordinary QSL card:
This QSL is more intricate than a wedding invitation! I love it! Thanks for sharing, Adam!
Adam also included other correspondence from The Purple Nucleus of Creation:
Again, thanks so much, Adam, for submitting this recording and memorabilia with everyone via the SRAA. Now your recording will (literally) be shared with our thousands of podcast subscribers and also streamed to devices across the globe via TuneIn. It’ll also be permanently preserved on the SRAA website and the Internet Archive.
