Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent Voice of Korea broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 15245 kHz, broadcasting in English, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil, April 17, 2022, 21h08 (UTC).
Part of news bulletin: Kim Jong-un observes new missile test.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Hyun Woo P., who writes:
I’m interested in SWLing and I have collected some station QSLs and confirmation (RFA, VOA, NHK, RTI, and time stations such as BPM, and HLA).
I would like to know of other stations that I can listen to and send reception reports.
Please let me know.
My receiver is Tecsun PL-680 and my location is a city in South Korea.
Best Regards, Hyun Woo P.
Thank you for your question.
There are a number of shortwave stations that still appreciate reception reports and acknowledge them with a QSL or letter. I know that you can add Radio Romania International, Radio Prague, and WRMI to your list, but it’s been a while since I’ve requested a QSL from a shortwave station.
Readers: if you’ve recently received a QSL or acknowledgement after sharing a reception report, please comment with the station name. Thank you!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alan Roe, who shares his A-22 (version 1) season guide to music on shortwave. Alan provides this amazing resource as a free PDF download:
Click here to download Music on Shortwave A-22 v1 (PDF)
Thank you for sharing your excellent guide, Alan!
This dedicated page will always have the latest version of Alan’s guide available for download.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent China Radio International broadcast.
Carlos notes:
China Radio International, 9525 kHz, broadcasting in Russian from Beijing, China.
Listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
April 9, 2022, 20h (UTC).
Part of news bulletin, war in Ukraine.
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor and noted political cartoonist, Carlos Latuff, who shares his radio log art of a recent Voice of Korea broadcast.
Carlos notes:
Voice of Korea, 11910 kHz, broadcasting in English from Kujang, North Korea, listened in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
April 5, 2022, 19h10 (UTC).
News bulletin (excerpt):
“…In case South Korea adopts military confrontation against us, our nuclear combat forces are inevitably obliged to carry out its mission…”
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Pete Madtone, who writes:
[L]ast night while I was having my dinner, a lovely Marconi crystal set came on Antiques Roadshow that a chap had rescued from a skip! In the end it was valued for £1000-£1500. A sort of radio you’d love in a museum cabinet at home.
Nice pics of radio in that time too in the little piece.
Click here to watch on iPlayer.
[Also,] I just got a recommendation about a wonderful series on the BBC called The changing sound of radio with Chris Watson (wildlife sound recordist and original member of Cabaret Voltaire). The first one is all about recording natural sounds which is wonderful but episode 2 has shortwave radio, binaural sound and tape loops in music. It is very very interesting!
Click here to check it out on BBC Sounds.
Thank you so much for these tips, Pete!
Because I keep my ear to the waves, as well as receive many tips from others who do the same, I find myself privy to radio-related stories that might interest SWLing Post readers. To that end: Welcome to the SWLing Post’s Radio Waves, a collection of links to interesting stories making waves in the world of radio. Enjoy!
Good news — an Australian parliamentary review recommends a more “expansive” media presence in the Pacific.
Bad news — little of that expansion envisions a role for island media.
Instead, the committee endorsed a proposal for “consultation” and the establishment of an independent “platform neutral” media corporation, versus the existing “broadcasting” organisation.
That proposal was among several points raised at two public hearings and nine written submissions as part of Australia’s “Pacific Step Up” programme, aimed at countering the growing regional influence of China.
Former long-time Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney last month told the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade that Australia was previously leading regional media spaces.
“But the vacant space that was left there when Australia Network disappeared, as people have said, has really been taken over by China,” he said.
“Throughout my time as the Pacific correspondent for the ABC, I saw this Chinese influence growing everywhere.”
[…]Taking up ten of 176 pages, the report’s media section is nonetheless seen as relatively comprehensive compared with the dismantling of broadcasting capacity in recent years.
This includes the literal dismantling of shortwave equipment in Australia despite wide protest from the Pacific region.
Nearly three years previously, a 2019 Pacific Media Summit heard that discontinuation of the shortwave service would save Australia some $2.8 million in power costs.
A suggestion from a delegate that that amount could be spent on $100,000 for reporters in each of 26 island states and territories was met with silence from ABC representatives at the summit.
However, funding would be dramatically expanded if the government takes up suggestions from the submissions to the joint committee. [Continue reading the full article…]
In the 1890s, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi left a lasting legacy when he sent a wireless telegraph message via Morse Code to a recipient. By the turn of the 1900s, Marconi’s innovation would give rise to an entirely new industry, one focused on creating new ways for people to communicate even across vast distances: radio.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, radio would not only play a major role in the international correspondence of countries fighting in both World Wars but it also became a widely popular phenomenon amongst the general public. By the mid-1920s, there were hundreds of licensed radio stations hosting news broadcasts, comedy shows, dramas, live music, sports programs and other forms of entertainment.
A century later, it’s not hard to spot the parallels between what made radio one of the most popular content mediums in history and the explosive growth of radio’s evolution in podcasting. Though there are some unique differences between the two mediums, I believe podcasters should still pay respect to how the evolution of radio gave rise to the advent of podcasting.
The Rise of Contemporary Audio Entertainment
On October 30, 1938 — the evening before Halloween — Orsen Welles hosted a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s science fiction novel, The War of the Worlds, “converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey.” While Welles and his team reportedly had no intention to deceive listeners into believing the broadcast was in any way real, Welles would later go on to say in a 1960 court disposition about his desire to release the broadcast, “in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening…and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play.” [Continue reading at Rolling Stone…]
Ukrainians are eavesdropping on the invaders and broadcasting on their frequencies
One of the many surprising failures of the Russian invasion force in Ukraine has been in radio communications. There have been stories of troops resorting to commercial walkie-talkies and Ukrainians intercepting their frequencies. This may not sound as serious as a lack of modern tanks or missiles, but it helps explain why Russian forces seem poorly co-ordinated, are falling victim to ambushes and have lost so many troops, reportedly including seven generals. What is going wrong with Russian radios? Continue reading