Tag Archives: Shortwave Radio

RNW: Antenna repairs under way in Madagascar

(photo: RNW)

RNW Madagascar was hit by a tropical cyclone last week and incurred heavy damage. I’m very happy to read the report below that antenna repairs are under way:

(Source: RNW Media Network)

We have received some more photos from our colleagues in Madagascar, showing the damage to the antennas caused last week by Tropical Cyclone Giovanna, and repairs under way. The first photo shows the satellite dish that was used to receive BVN TV and the RNW audio channels from the satellite. The broken dish has been replaced by a backup. Damage to several of the antennas was similar to the one in the second photo. One has already been repaired. The third photo shows some repairs taking place on the ground to the feeder of the log periodic antenna.

As BBC World Service moves from Bush House, they open doors

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BBC World Service - Bush House

BBC World Service opens doors to celebrate 80th birthday

(Source: BBC Press Office)

Global audience gets unique behind the scenes access as move from iconic London home begins.

Audiences are to be given unprecedented behind the scenes access as part of a special day of live programming on February 29, to mark the BBC World Service’s 80th birthday.

Highlights from the day will include a special global audience with Sir David Attenborough and The Strand – the WS global arts programme – will be edited by guest artist and music producer William Orbit.

Audiences will be able to join a special debate about what they want from the World Service, both on air, online and across social media forums. (#bbcws80)

The day will give audiences around the world a unique insight into production of their favourite programmes and multilingual videos will be produced of all the broadcasts throughout the day online at bbc.co.uk/worldservice.

For the first time audiences will be invited to watch and participate in over 12 hours of programmes in English and across more than 12 different languages. The day will be hosted by BBC Persian’s Pooneh Ghoddoosi and BBC World Service presenter Ros Atkins.

BBC World Service’s daily morning editorial meeting, which normally takes place behind the doors of Bush House, will be opened up and broadcast live for the first time. In this meeting – a daily part of life in the building – the newsroom’s editors discuss and agree the big stories and developments and decide on which stories will shape the day’s news agenda.

The open courtyard of Bush House will host many of the programmes that day. Flagship programmes such as Newshour and World Have Your Say will invite audiences to join a conversation about international broadcasting and the future priorities of the BBC World Service.

Listeners around the world – and the audience at Bush House – will have the chance to shape the news agenda and debate by making suggestions from the floor, or through Twitter, Facebook and Skype.

Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC Global News, said: “The 80th birthday and departure from Bush House means these are historic and changing times for the BBC World Service. We want our audiences to be at the heart of both the commemoration of the past and conversation about the future.”

BBC World Service Commissioning Editor, Steve Titherington, said: “We are turning Bush House inside out showing who we are and what we do to our audiences and asking what the world wants next from the BBC World Service.”

On February 29, BBC World Service is also launching a new series of programmes on the human body. Linked to the Olympics, The Human Race will invite the public to take part in a ‘healthcheck special’ featuring leading international scientists and sportspeople.

Not only celebrating 80 years of broadcasting, this special day of programming marks the start of the BBC World Service’s move from Bush House, its iconic London home for over 70 years, to a new state of the art broadcasting centre in Oxford Circus.

The move will see all of the BBC’s news services – UK and international – based together for the first time. The aim is to create ‘the world’s newsroom’ – enhancing the BBC’s global newsgathering and creating a forum for the best journalism in the world.

Programming

BBC World Service English – much of the day’s global schedule from 07:00 to 23:00 GMT will broadcast live from outside Bush House. Programming highlights from this day include:

09:00 – The live news meeting – normally conducted behind closed doors, audiences will for the first time be given insight into the inner workings of the newsroom.

11:00 – World Have Your Say – the global interactive news discussion programme will ask audiences around the world what they want the programme to be about on that day.

15:00 – A live global audience with Sir David Attenborough.

17:00 – World Business Report and Focus on Africa will link up to broadcast a special programme asking how business journalism is reporting the financial crisis with Alistair Darling on the panel, and looking at the creative energy and entrepreneurship coming out of Africa.

19:00 Health Check – will air a special programme to launch The Human Race Season – a raft of programmes examining the human body. Endurance runners and sprinters, sports psychologists, doctors and coaches will all be in the courtyard to try to answer ‘What makes an Olympic athelete?’

20:00 – 22:00 – Newshour, BBC World Services flagship current affairs show, will broadcast a special debate looking at the future of international broadcasting.

22:00 – 23:00 – The Strand Extra – BBC World Service’s global arts show, will be edited by special guest artist and music producer William Orbit.

Today is World Radio Day: Support a Cause via Shortwave Radio

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Shortwave Radio Listeners may occasionally feel that their hobby is a passive one–one of simply listening. I’m here to tell you that it is not.

SWLers are among the more enlightened of media hobbyists, and here’s why: 1) they tend to be intensely curious about the world, 2) they tend to cultivate a nostalgic appreciation of the past, of the world’s history and what it teaches, and 3) as a result, they understand the power that radio still holds for much of our world today, especially those the not-so-world-wide internet has forgotten or overlooked, and those that political strife oppresses.

This World Radio Day, you can change that false label of “passive” to active, and create change by contributing to a charity near and dear to my heart–Ears To Our World (ETOW).

ETOW is a shortwave radio charity that sends self-powered shortwave radios to schools and communities in third world countries. This is because ETOW believes that access to information is access to education.

In other words, every day is World Radio Day at ETOW.

Children in South Sudan listening to music on their self-powered shortwave radio supplied by Ears To Our World.

Click here to donate to Ears To Our World, and make World Radio Day a lasting reality for needy schools throughout our world.

Happy World Radio Day! To quote ETOW’s tagline: Listen and learn.

More power to you, SWLers.

The Guardian on World Radio Day: celebrating an unsung hero

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(Source: The Guardian)

Radio is the predominant source of information in areas of the world that are sometimes too remote to get a newspaper delivered, let alone access the internet. This is why Unesco has noted that radio is a “low-cost medium, specifically suited to reach remote communities and vulnerable people”.

Attention given to technology for information communications has recently been captivated by web-based applications, especially “new” or “social media”. But about 65% of the world’s 7 billion people do not use the internet. In addition to those who are offline due to lack of access, there are also those who are unaware, unable or simply do not want to use social media.

People listen to the radio in their cars, on the move and at work. Radios don’t require large amounts of electricity, and wind-up radios don’t need an electrical source at all. Moreover, radio reaches large groups of people, being easily shared among families or listener groups. It is a medium often used as a focal point for community discussion on subjects including politics, elections and service provision. Radio efficiently reaches large audiences in real time. [continue reading…]

This will be filed under our ever-growing category, “Why Radio?”

Read the full article at The Guardian.

Hear WTWW’s new transmitter – 22:00 UTC on 9,990 kHz

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Here’s your chance to catch the first broadcast of the new shortwave transmitter installed at WTWW in Nashville, Tennessee. Ted Randall will be hosting a show called, “This is Only A Test.” Here’s the press release:

(Source: Ted Randall)

It is not very often that you can hear a new HF shortwave radio station sign on the air. WTWW, a new International Shortwave Radio facility just outside of Nashville, TN is launching a new transmitter this Saturday with a broadcast we are calling ‘This Is Only A Test’ starting at 4 pm Central Standard Time. This is a 100,000 watt transmitter running into a full size rhombic antenna.

This is a global radio event with radios being tuned in all over the world.

The QSO Radio Show has requested that we could air this broadcast as a amateur radio event to promote amateur radio along with shortwave listening. Why? Well, the shortwave listening audience is huge.
The typical shortwave radio listener is a great potential candidate for amateur radio.

There are more than 1.5 billion shortwave receivers in use worldwide, the BBC estimates that at any given moment, over 200 million sets are tuned to shortwave broadcasts.

This is the second time WTWW has allowed us to conduct this kind of broadcast on a powerful new shortwave facility.

The purpose of this broadcast is to demonstrate HF communications and to put radio amateurs on the air to a worldwide audience to tell their story.

This is not a commercial venture in any way.

So spread the word to all of your amateur radio friends and call us on Saturday on “This Is Only A Test” and talk to the world about Amateur Radio!

Thanks and 73
Ted Randall
QSO Radio Show
http://www.qsoradioshow.com

YOU ARE INVITED TO SHARE THE MAGIC OF HF BROADCASTING AND AMATEUR RADIO TO A WORLD WIDE LISTENING AUDIENCE.
YOU ARE INVITED TO CALL IN AND SHARE WITH A HUGE GLOBAL RADIO AUDIENCE.
WHAT YOU LOVE ABOUT AMATEUR RADIO
YOUR FAVORITE MODES KHZ
YOUR LOCAL AMATEUR RADIO CLUB AND ITS ACTIVITIES
YOUR PERSONAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN AMATEUR RADIO THIS SATURDAY Feb 11 at 4 PM CENTRAL

FROM 4 – 6 PM / 2200 – 2400 UTC THE FREQUENCY IS 9990

6 – 10 PM / 2400 – 0400 UTC THE FREQUENCY IS 5085 KHZ

THE CALL IN NUMBER IS 615-547-9520

Radio República: shortwave broadcasting 24/7 on a budget

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In this Miami Herald Op Ed piece, Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, the national secretary of the Cuban Democratic Directorate, defends his organization and their clandestine station, Radio Republica. It’s worth noting that in an effort to use their limited funds effectively, and to get their message into Cuba, they use shortwave radio as their medium of choice:

(Source: Miami Herald)

Radio República, the Directorate’s 24-hour, seven-day-a-week shortwave radio station, has provided a voice to Cuba’s resistance from the smallest provincial towns to the largest Havana neighborhoods. Its format has been strategically designed to enhance the natural self-defense mechanism of nonviolent struggle generated by Cuban society. Costing between $1.5 million to $2 million a year, Radio República’s budget accounts for over 50 percent of the Directorate’s annual funds from federal grants. These costs are far below the annual budgets of both public and commercial shortwave radio stations.

Likewise, it is undeniable that Directorio has made a vital contribution to the changing attitudes of the international community towards the Castro regime. The Cuban pro-democracy leadership has moved from international neglect to international recognition, winning prestigious awards like the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize and nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize in the process.

[…]The truth is that the testimony of hundreds of civic resistance leaders throughout the island shows that Radio República has become an essential tool for social organization.

Read the full Op Ed article on the Miami Herald website.

Though they carry a different message, the choice in shortwave radio is the same for Charles Caudill and WCB.

London pirate radio documentary offers insight

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This documentary certainly touches on the motivation behind most pirate radio stations. I should note that while many FM pirate stations are dissapearing with the advent of online sources, shortwave pirates seem to be going strong and they use many of the same remote transmitter tactics that appear in this short film.

If you have trouble watching the embedded video above, please click here for the documentary video page.