Shortwave listening and everything radio including reviews, broadcasting, ham radio, field operation, DXing, maker kits, travel, emergency gear, events, and more
Scheduled Transmissions from Radio City are:
3rd Saturday at 08.00 to 09.00 UTC on 9510 kHz with Repeats all other Saturdays
4th Saturday at 12.00 to 13.00 UTC on 7265 kHz via Hamburger Lokalradio
Contact address remains: [email protected]
Saturday HLR:
06.00 to 10.00 UTC, on 6190 KHz
10.00 to 16.00 UTC, on 7265 KHz
European Music Radio Relays:
21st October 2017:
21.30 to 22.00 UTC on 7490 KHz – to Central & North America via WBCQ
Internet Repeats on 22nd October 2017:
EMR will have this months Transmissions via two streams running at the following Times:15.00, 17.00, 19.00 UTC http://nednl.net:8000/emr.m3u will be on 96 kbps /44 KHz stereo for normal listening http://nednl.net:8000/emr24.m3u will be 24 kbps / 22 KHz mono will be especially for low bandwidth like mobile phones.
You can also listen to RRI’s English language programming live over the internet using the same SW broadcast schedule given above. All you need to do is go to the “RRI Live!” section in the top-right of our website, choose channel “2” for English and then select your desired audio format (WMA, MP3 or ACC).
Listen to English language programming on demand via the RRI website
RRI broadcasts in English are also available for listening on demand via our website. The “On Demand” feature is located immediately below the “RRI Live!” section in the top-right of the RRI homepage. To listen again to a programme all you need to do is select the date of broadcast from the drop-down list and then click the desired programme. Our programmes become available for listening on demand two hours after the original broadcast.
RRI and social media
RRI can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Google+, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, SoundCloud and Instagram.
RRI via mobile phone in the US and on TuneIn
Did you know that if you’re in the US you can also listen to RRI broadcasts on your mobile phone? Our English language programmes are available both live and on demand via the following AudioNow “call-to-listen” phone number: 716.274.2526. Calling this number incurs no extra charge above the equivalent of a standard US mobile phone call.
Our programs are also available on TuneIn (Radio Romania International 1)
The price is $169.99 US–they’ve noted an expected ship date of sometime after November 3, 2017.
We’ve been testing a pilot run CC Skywave SSB and recently posted photos. Once we have an production unit, we’ll post comparison videos and review notes.
Directed by Ryan Gregory Phillips.
Starring Juanita Ringeling, Cristobal Tapia Montt, and Kyle Davis.
SYNOPSIS:
Isabel and Josh, a young couple dealing with the recent loss of their child, move to a remote home that Josh’s work has can study mysterious radio signals. As Josh hones in on the origin of the signals, Isabel begins to exhibit strange behavior, which leads to the pair confronting their painful past as well as their bizarre present circumstances.
Though it is a smaller, more intimate film, writer-director Ryan Gregory Phillips’s Shortwave will evoke inevitable comparisons to this year’s It Comes at Night. The two films both feature small groups of characters in isolated forest settings being terrorized both by mysterious forces and each other. And both share a fondness for dream sequences and ominous red lighting. But where It Comes at Night was frustrating in its evasiveness and its refusal to embrace most of the tenets of its genre, Shortwave is mysterious yet forthright about its science fiction and horror DNA.
The plot is set into motion when Josh and his wife Isabel (Cristobal Tapia Montt and Juanita Ringeling) are sent by his employer to live in a remote home, where he can continue to study the origins of mysterious radio signals. Their relationship is under extreme pressure for a multitude of reasons, most significantly their disappearance of their child. As Josh gets closer to discovering the origins of the radio signals, Isabel begins to act very strangely.
There is no doubt that Shortwave is a low-budget film, but it uses that to its advantage. It’s setting feels like a real home in an isolated forest, and the fact that most scenes feature Isabel and/or Matt and no other actors allows the viewer to focus on their relationship, which is really the epicenter of the film. Ringeling and Montt both give excellent performances in roles that require a full range of emotion, and Phillips wisely gives them room to operate, even within the film’s slim 85-minute runtime. The two actors have excellent chemistry as well, making them believable as a couple even when the script has them at odds with one another.
Shortwave also has some commonalities with this year’s excellent indie A Dark Song in that while it is unapologetically a genre effort, it isn’t afraid to really dig into the foundation in which is plot is based. In the case of both films, the foundation is two damaged people dealing with loss and grief under extraordinary, partially otherworldly pressures. Given the grim subject matter, Phillips wisely keeps the pacing brisk and the runtime short. As a result, Shortwave, while serious, doesn’t overuse its ability to raise questions about loss and grief. Instead, it balances them in with solid scares and creative mysteries that seem to have a lot more backstory than what is explained here.
There should be more films like Shortwave, as its successes come as a result of sharp ideas and well-executed direction and performances rather than a huge budget. It manages to carve out a unique perspective in a saturated genre, and triggers the heart and mind in addition to the adrenal glands. Though it ends a bit abruptly, it still manages to feel like a complete experience, and has some genuinely scary moments. Shortwave is definitely worth watching as horror film, as a domestic drama, and as a showcase for the talents of its stars and its director.
One of the joys of running the Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA) is that, over time, more and more people have become aware of it and submit recordings they’ve had in their private collections for decades.
Quite often, SRAA off-air recordings were originally made on reel-to-reel or cassette tapes which degrade with time. When SRAA contributors take the time to digitize these recordings, and share them via the SRAA, they put these collections in the hands of hundreds of archivists. We’re grateful each time we receive one of these shortwave or mediumwave/AM recordings.
You can imagine my excitement when I received the following message from one of our newest contributors, Colin Anderton:
“As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights. In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days’ news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them.”
Colin’s recordings are amazing. Here’s a sample from December 10, 1977:
We’ve started publishing Colin’s recordings on the archive at regular intervals.
Interestingly, I discovered that Colin also has a website dedicated to NASA highlight recordings from the space age. Several months ago, he spent a considerable amount of time making the public domain series more listenable–removing voice-actuated recorder noises, tape clicks, etc.
Colin has made his collection of re-engineered NASA recordings free to download on his website. If you download and enjoy his recordings, consider dropping him a donation. If you’re into spaceflight like I am, you’ll certainly enjoy this collection:
BBC World Service continues expansion with new services for Ethiopia and Eritrea
Three new language services for Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the diaspora are being launched today by the BBC World Service as part of its biggest expansion since the 1940s.
BBC News in Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya will be available online and on Facebook. This will be followed later in the year with shortwave radio services in each language consisting of a 15-minute news and current affairs programme, followed by a 5-minute Learning English programme, from Monday to Friday.
The new BBC services will provide impartial news, current affairs and analysis of Ethiopia and Eritrea as well as regional and international news. Boosting the BBC’s operation in the Horn of Africa will also provide the rest of the BBC’s global audience with a better understanding of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Programmes will target a younger audience with social media playing a key role. In addition to news and current affairs, there will be extensive coverage of culture, entertainment, entrepreneurship, science & technology, health and sport – including the English Premier League.
These services will benefit from a growing network of journalists across the region and around the world.
Francesca Unsworth, BBC World Service Director, says: “The BBC World Service brings independent, impartial news to audiences around the world, especially in places where media freedom is limited. I’m delighted we’re extending our service to millions of people in Ethiopia, Eritrea and the diaspora worldwide.”
Will Ross, Editorial Lead for Africa, says: “We know that there is a great deal of hunger for audiences in Ethiopia and Eritrea to access a broad range of high quality content in Amharic, Afaan Oromo and Tigrinya. It has been a privilege to work with Ethiopian and Eritrean journalists who are so keen to learn new skills and to ensure the new language services are a success.”
Hi there, the garden at my house is pretty small and as a consequence, I am very limited in terms of what antennas I can usefully employ. You can’t position anything further than about 10 metres from the brickwork and to compound this, we are surrounded on all sides by neighbours in close proximity. All very nice people, but all very noisy – electrically speaking lol. I simply can’t get far enough away from these sources of electrical noise to achieve excellent SNR.
The solution to my problem was ultimately a Wellbrook ALA1530 magnetic loop, but prior to that I used an end-fed random wire, the performance of which deteriorated as the months went by as the ubiquitous blanked of local QRM continued to increase. Eventually, I was forced outdoors, well away from my town – effectively catalysing my forays into the Oxfordshire countryside on DXpeditions. That first experience of listening to the radio on shortwave, in the absence of any QRM was enlightening to say the least and of course, subsequently, DXpeditions have become a mainstay of my listening activities. However, despite enjoying some great DX successes out in the woods, one has to be realistic about how often it’s possible to leave the house just to listen to the radio. This led me to the purchase of the Wellbrook ALA1530 magnetic loop. It proved to be a triumph of electrical noise mitigation and an absolute necessity in copying transatlantic medium wave signals in such a noisy and compact space. A total game-changer. The brilliant performance of the Wellbrook eventually led to me purchase a second, cheaper active antenna; the E-field Bonito Boni Whip and in turn, that purchase led me to the MegActive MA305, kindly supplied by Bonito themselves for objective testing.
Have DXing kit, will travel…everything you need in a small flight case…
You might remember my initial tests at home confirmed, as expected, that E-field antennas don’t work well in electrically noisy environments (except at LW frequencies in my experience) but outdoors, away from noise, they are superb. I have a number of reception videos on my YouTube channel – Oxford Shortwave Log which clearly demonstrate identical performance of the Bonito MegActive MA305 antenna and Wellbrook ALA1530 magnetic loop out in the woods. So, what if you’ve got a large garden in a suburban area that allows you to be just far enough from sources of electrical noise…how much of a difference does it make to the noise floor of your receiving equipment? Can E-field antennas such at the Bonito MegActive MA305 do the job? Furthermore, how well does a random wire work in a larger garden?
My MegActive MA305 antenna system for mobile DXing…and another use for a washing line…
I was fortunate enough to know someone who owns a house with a large garden, quite close to my QTH (a 10 minute walk) and who was more than willing to let me set up my DXing equipment and sit around until the early hours of the morning, listening to and recording various signals on my Eton Satellit. In preparation, I set up the Bonito MegActive MA305 antenna and hung the radiating element on the washing line – sounds ridiculous but actually worked very well, placing it about 2.5 metres above the ground. I also set up a 40 metre longwire, which at its closest point, was still approximately 25 metres from the house, and 30 metres from the neighbours. This post will focus on the performance of the MA305; a subsequent post will detail the performance of the longwire.
The large garden I ‘borrowed’ for my DXing session with the Bonito MegActive MA305 antenna
Suffice to say, the MegActive MA305 performed admirably during my first listening session. In the middle of the afternoon I copied a very strong signal from The Voice of Korea around 15:44 hrs UTC on the 25 metre broadcast band, followed at 17:10 hrs UTC with a superb signal from The Voice of the Broad Masses 2, Eritrea, on the 40 metre ham band. Later on in the evening I copied Radio Mail with excellent modulation, CHU Canada with voice announcements (almost impossible at home), Myanmar Radio with an untypically strong signal and XEPPM Radio Educación from Mexico City with a signal I would normally expect on a DXpedition-proper with a large antenna.
My conclusions to this experiment are simply that E-field antennas can work in a suburban environment, if you are able to site them far enough away from adjacent sources of electrical noise. I don’t have empirical data on this, however, I can confirm that 10 metres proximity is too close at my QTH and 30 metres is sufficiently far away at this test location. One has to assume the houses nearby are similarly equipped to mine with electrical appliances that generate electrical noise. Thus, if you’re interested in a very well-priced, compact antenna and you live in an urban or suburban environment with access to a large garden/ outdoor space, an E-field Boni Whip or MegActive MA305 might well be suitable – and you’ll have a superb portable antenna for those listening sessions away from home!
Finally, I should mention the Eton Satellit. Much-maligned in certain quarters when it was first introduced into the market, it continues to demonstrate superb DXing credentials. I won’t forget some words of wisdom from a friend of mine and fellow DXer, with more than 3 decades of experience in listening to the bands on HF. He told me that Judging from his own experience with some of the original Grundig Satellit models of the 1980s and early 90s (namely the 400, 500 and 700) he was quite sure that the Eton Satellit is a considerably better DX performer than those vintage sets, that offered great sound for casual listening to international broadcasters, but didn’t perform too convincingly on weak DX signals. The Eton Satellit has been a revelation and I’m pleased to have played a small part in turning around the rather widely held view that it was less than worthy of the Satellit branding.
Fresh out of the box, the Eton Satellit has surpassed all my expectations…
Please find embedded reception videos below and text links to the Oxford Shortwave Log YouTube channel. My next post on this subject will cover the performance of a 40 metre longwire in this large garden environment. Thank you for reading/watching/listening and I wish you all great DX!
Clint Gouveia is the author of this post and a regular contributor to the SWLing Post. Clint actively publishes videos of his shortwave radio excursions on his YouTube channel: Oxford Shortwave Log. Clint is based in Oxfordshire, England.
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