PCJ International

Jan Oosterveen submits this recording and writes: 

The following is a recording of PCJ International's first shortwave transmission for Europe on 5.955 kHz. 

This recording was made in the Netherlands. I used a Software designed radio located at Technical University Twente in the eastern part of the country. Also the antenna is loacated in Enschede at TU Twente.

To access this SDR use this link http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

The antenna is a very small active one. You'll also find a description of the antenna there. 

The following recording was made on 5,955 kHz at 13:00UTC on June 09, 2013: 

Radio Australia

This two hour fifty three minute recording of Radio Australia contains: the ending of an AFL game between North Melborne and the Gold Coast, the news headlines, two full hours of Saturday Night Country and (a bit for the history books) Radio Australia's first Radiogram at 25:00 in the recording (click here for more info).

This recording was made on June 8, 2013 starting around 12:00 UTC on 9.58 MHz: 

The Voice of Turkey's lack of protest coverage

Gezi protest in Kızılay Square, Ankara  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Turkey has been in the world headlines now for well over a week. In case you're not up-to-date, here's a summary of what has happened:

On May 28, 2013,  about fifty environmentalists led a small protest in Istanbul to oppose the replacement of Taksim Gezi Park with a reconstruction of the Taksim Military Barracks.  The protests escalated when the group occupying the park was attacked with water cannons and tear gas by the Turkish police. This event led to riots, which were soon widespread; the protests, meanwhile, broadened their scope into full-fledged anti-government demonstrations across the country and even into the Turkish diaspora across the globe.

Yesterday, I turned to the Voice of Turkey on shortwave radio to hear about the active protests currently ongoing throughout the country...

But what did I hear? The only mention I heard of the Gezi Park protests in the Voice of Turkey's English language service were in a passing Turkish press report on the reaction to the protests by the US Secretary of State, John Kerry. The item, moreover, was completely buried in their broadcast and certainly not something upon which they elaborated in the least (listen, beginning at 12:50 below).

I've always loved listening to the Voice of Turkey, but events like this remind me of the simple fact that many international broadcasters are still very much the mouthpieces of their governments. 

Of course, Turkey certainly would not win an award for press freedom; not even close. Reporters Without Borders list Turkey as a country with a "Difficult Situation" with regards to press freedoms, ranking them 154th out of 179 countries in their 2013 Press Freedom Index. To put this in perspective, Finland and the Netherlands occupy the top two spots as models of press freedom, the USA is number 32, and North Korea and Eritrea occupy the bottom spots (numbers 178 and 179, respectively) obviously countries without press freedoms.

I'd like to think that the news readers at the Voice of Turkey would rather give this news the attention it deserves, or at least offer the Turkish government's perspective on the demonstrations. Instead, what we heard was...nothing.  And we heard that loud and clear.

Indeed, the world is paying attention to the lack of news coming out of Turkey right now. Time Magazine posted this article article yesterday, which begins:

As epic clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police turned downtown Istanbul into a battle zone last weekend, the country’s two main news channels had, well, not much to report. One ran a documentary on penguins. The other, a cooking show. To many Turks, their silence was symptomatic of the self-censorship Turkey’s media have practiced under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s tightfisted 10-year rule. Penguin T-shirts, penguin jokes and penguin costumes now abound — the bird has become a symbol of protesters’ frustration with the mainstream media.

One of the most amazing things about shortwave radio is that by really listening, you can hear the unfiltered voices of regional broadcasters, the clandestine organizations, and the media representatives of their respective countries.

If this story had broken twenty years ago, moreover, I would have heard it as a headline from every respected international broadcaster. Then, upon turning to the in-country "news source," as I attempted to do yesterday when I tuned in the Voice of Turkey and was subjected to a total lack of news, I would therefore be instantly made aware of what the Turkish government didn't want me to hear.

Unfortunately I feel we've lost a bit of this comparative news consumption, not just because of the exodus of many trusted radio broadcasters from the field, but because we've been trained to consume news in (palatable) bites. Our attention spans and interest seem to have diminished to the point that we now often rely on our news sources to interpret for us.  A sad fact...especially considering politically-evolving countries like Turkey still need our attention, interest, and thoughtful support.

Listen to the same Voice of Turkey broadcast I heard yesterday, by downloading the off-air recording or by listening via the embedded player below:

Radio Netherlands Worldwide (October 4, 1987)

Jan Oosterveen submits this recording and writes: 

"In the 1980's I often drove from home to the Radio Netherlands Flevo Transmittersite to make a clean recording of Happy Station."

"Also on October 4 1987 I was there. After the recording, the tape kept running also on the radio I was tunig around until at 21:28 I heard a very strong carrier coming from the transmitter building on a frequency not used that time: 9.850 kHz."

"I kept listening and there was an announcement of a Dutch transmission with frequency announcements in Dutch not mentioning 9.850 kHz."

"After the time signal suddenly a program for Indonesia started. How strange. The day after i called Continuity at RNW and I was told that I had picked up a non published frequency they used at that time to feed the transmitter in Madagascar because there was an outage on the satelite feed. But the engineer had made a mistake by sending out the wrong statiion-id. So it turned out i had a very unique recording. You must be aware that in this period no one actually used the internet for feeding a relay station."

Radio Australia Jazz Notes

If Radio Australia ever stops broadcasting on the shortwaves, one program I will certainly miss is Jazz Notes.

Jazz Notes showcases the best in Australian jazz, often featuring new and original recordings made in ABC’s studios. The show is hosted by Ivan Lloyd and has been offered on Radio Australia for several years.  I listen to the show Wednesday mornings at 9:30 am EDT.

The following ​recording was made on 29 May 2013 on 9,580 kHz at 13:30 UTC. 

Voice of Turkey

This English broadcast of the Voice of Turkey was recorded on 29 May 2013, starting a few minutes before 03:00 UTC on 9,515 kHz.

The following recording includes several minutes of VoT's interval signal.​

Voice of Greece

For your listening pleasure: almost three hours of music--ranging from modern to folk--and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece. Recorded today, May 13, 2013 on 9.42 MHz starting around 01:52 UTC.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Radio Strange Outpost 7 and Shrunken Head Rad

While attending the Winter SWL Fest this year in Plymouth Meeting, PA, I left my WinRadio Excalibur running day and night back home, recording spectrum in the pirate radio watering hole. I always find that while shortwave pirate activity is slightly lower during the SWL Fest (because many pirates are in attendance), there are always some interesting stations I miss.

This year, I was chatting with famed Pirate Radio enthusiast/author, Andrew Yoder and mentioned how I love rare pirates like Radio Strange Outpost 7. He then told me that he'd just noticed a logging of RSO7 on a pirate radio forum. I quickly logged into my home computer (via smart phone) and could see that my receiver had been capturing the right frequencies at the right time. When I returned home, I dug through the spectrum and found the broadcasts of RSO7 and Shrunken Head Radio (possibly the same pirate?) via the WBNY relay service. Woo hoo!

RSO7 is semi-cryptic, quirky and always fun (check out my off-air recording from last year). Though this broadcast contains no real music content from RSO7, Shrunken Head radio does.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Myke shares 2012 season of ShortWaveMusic

Myke, over at ShortWaveMusic, has made his entire 2012 season of ShortWaveMusic freely downloadable on SoundCloud. This series was recorded from December 31, 2011 – January 16, 2012 throughout the West African country of Mali. The series contains some remarkable field recordings taken from both the shortwave and medium wave bands.

Note that Myke's ShortWaveMusic series and travels are supported by Kickstarter donors. I don't know where Myke's travels will take him next year, but when the time comes we will post an announcement along with a link for supporters.

Now put on your headphones, close your eyes and you will be transported to Mali:

For full SoundCloud features, click here for the 2012 series on SoundCloud.

Radio Cinco De Mayo

Radio Cinco De Mayo made its annual broadcast on (you guessed it!) May 5th, 2013, starting around 00:17 UTC on 6925 kHz USB.

Early Saturday morning, the band's condition sounded like that of summer, with atmospheric noises (a few static crashes, produced by local thunderstorms), but propagation was steady and the overall quality very respectable.

You can download an MP3 of the full recording by clicking here, or by listening via the embedded player below.

Check out Ragnar's off-air recording of Radio Cinco De Mayo (and more!) on his PiratesWeek podcast.

UPDATE (May 08): Just received my Radio Cinco De Mayo QSL:

The Mighty KBC

The Mighty KBC broadcast again early this morning (from 00:00-02:00 UTC) on their new summer frequency of 9,925 kHz. Their signal from Nauen, Germany was packing 125 kW--it was amazingly strong into North America. As we’ve come to expect, the KBC’s Giant Jukebox of music has a lot of rock-n-roll and Euro-pop variety, spanning the decades; DJ, "Uncle Eric" knows how to entertain and spin the tunes!

You can listen to the full recording below in the embedded player, or simply right click this link and save the MP3 file to your computer.

You’ll notice that Kim Elliott has another installation of digital text modes in this broadcast. Decode these digital modes using Fldigi from www.w1hkj.com. Be sure to check out Dr. Elliott's VOA Radiogram website for full details about this broadcast.

Shrimp Boat Radio, WSBR (a.k.a. Freakin' Awesome Radio, WFAR)

"We're shrimpin,' but they're not bitin'!"

Last night, a very unique pirate radio station emerged from the static on 6,925 kHz USB: Shrimp Boat Radio. It seems a shrimp boat radio pirate found himself bored on board, due to a lack of shrimp--but his boredom became our gain with an offer to talk shrimpin,' fishin,' or just take music requests...live.

This is the stuff great pirate radio is made of.  He started with a request for the Rolling Stones; next Black Cat Radio's Greaser Bob chimed in with a request for GNR.  And there began an evening of pirate radio with live on-air requests.

You can tell that this was a completely impromptu production--and it was all the better for it.  Not too long into the show, he took on the alternate name Freakin' Awesome Radio (WFAR).

Hearing a live pirate radio request show was a first for me, and the sort of thing that gets this "content DXer" enthused. I'm glad I had the tape rolling!  I hope he reappears on the band in the future.

Note that I start the recording at the very first announcement from WSBR. If you want to skip to the first music request, fast-forward to about 11 minutes into the recording (you'll miss some great banter, though). There are a few long breaks of static in the recording where this pirate scrambled to find and play music requests, but this just adds to the authenticity.

Click here to download the full recording of Shrimp Boat Radio, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Enjoy!

Click here to download the full recording of Shrimp Boat Radio, or simply listen via the embedded player below. Enjoy!

Radio Panik injects shortwave audio into mixes

I recently discovered that the radio show L'etranger, on Radio Panik, 105.4 in Brussels, used shortwave radio recordings of pirate radio and numbers stations, from the SWLing Post and other sources, in one of their mixes of eclectic music and sound clips. The end result is a splendid piece of sonic art.

Note that their audio is only available on archive.org until May 23, 2013. Click here to download the show, or listen via the embedded player below. You can also hear the show on the L'etranger website.

Rádio Nacional da Amazônia

Last night, Rádio Nacional da Amazônia had a booming signal into North America on 11,780 kHz. Rádio Nacional's AM signal was very wide; I actually opened up the filter on my SDR to 16 kHz to record this broadcast. In truth, that's probably too wide, but it certainly made for great audio fidelity. So, if you’re in the mood for some Brazilian music and commentary today, this 168 minute recording of Rádio Nacional da Amazônia should satisfy.

This was recorded on Sunday, April 28–starting around 22:15 UTC–on 11.78 MHz. Click here to download the full recording as an MP3 file, or listen in the embedded player below:

Want more Rádio Nacional? Click here for other recordings.

Numbers station HM01...and Ana Montes

Wednesday morning, I suppose I had number stations on the brain.  It was no surprise, as I had just watched The Numbers Station the previous night.  Nonetheless, I experienced a rather strange coincidence:  I was reading an intriguing article about Ana Montes, “one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history,” when my shortwave radio--parked on 5,855 kHz--suddenly began to fire out an eerie series of numbers and data bursts from the Cuban numbers station, HM01.  It was, unquestionably, the perfect accompaniment to the words I was reading. A reader sent Montes' story--written by Jim Popkin for The Washington Post Magazine--which made for fascinating reading. And as I read the account of Ana Montes' rise in the ranks of the DIA, while simultaneously becoming one of Cuba's most important spies, I remembered that it was actually Montes' case that reader Dirk Rijmenants' referred to in his paper, and that we posted earlier this year.

Popkin's account of Ana Montes' life, character, promotions within the Defense and Intelligence Agency, and the sequence of events that led to her FBI investigation and imprisonment, are the stuff of spy novels. And of course, he  mentions numbers stations:

[Montes'] tradecraft was classic. In Havana, agents with the Cuban intelligence service taught Montes how to slip packages to agents innocuously, how to communicate safely in code and how to disappear if needed.[...]

Montes got most of her orders the same way spies have since the Cold War: through numeric messages transmitted anonymously over shortwave radio. She would tune a Sony radio to AM frequency 7887 kHz, then wait for the “numbers station” broadcast to begin. A female voice would cut through the otherworldly static, declaring, “Atención! Atención!” then spew out 150 numbers into the night. “Tres-cero-uno-cero-siete, dos-cuatro-seis-dos-cuatro,” the voice would drone. Montes would key the digits into her computer, and a Cuban-installed decryption program would convert the numbers into Spanish-language text.[...]

On a side note, as Rijmenants points out, using a computer to decipher a numbers station was both unnecessary and risky.

The story continues:

[...]On May 25, 2001, [an FBI team] slipped inside Apartment 20. Montes was out of town with Corneretto [her boyfriend], and the FBI searched her closets and laundry bins, paged through shelves of neatly stacked books and photographed personal papers. They spotted a cardboard box in the bedroom and carefully opened it. Inside was a Sony shortwave radio. Good start, Lapp thought. Next, techs found a Toshiba laptop. They copied the hard drive, shut down the computer and were gone.[...]The documents, which Montes had tried to delete, included instructions on how to translate numbers-station broadcasts and other Spy 101 tips.[...][...]Later that day, an FBI evidence team scoured Montes’s apartment for hours. Hidden in the lining of a notebook they found the handwritten cipher Montes used to encrypt and decrypt messages, scribbled shortwave radio frequencies and the address of a museum in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she was meant to run in an emergency. The crib sheets were written on water-soluble disappearing paper.[...]

The story Popkin recounts, though, paints the picture of a very complex operative. One who, until discovered, was very successful at her craft.  She pulled the wool over the eyes of the DIA and spied for the Cuban government for many years.

The story is complex, and Popkins' account somehow maneuvers through the twists and turns.

If you want to experience what I did--if a little less coincidentally--click here to read Popkin's full article, and meanwhile play this recording I made of the Cuban numbers station HM01, below:

Note that the year Montes listened to the Cuban numbers station on 7,887 kHz, it only contained numbers--unlike the recording here of HM01 (Hybrid Mode 01) which contains both voice and RDFT data bursts (which you can also decode, but not necessarily decipher).

This recording of the Cuban numbers station HM01 was recorded on April 24, 2013, at 10:00 UTC on 5,855 kHz in AM. Click here to download the recording as an MP3.

Again, click here to read Jim Popkin's full story of Ana Montes on The Washington Post Magazine website.

Voice of Greece

For your listening pleasure: four hours of music, and a little Greek commentary, from the Voice of Greece. I recorded this broadcast on Sunday, April 21st March 8th, 2013 on 9.42 MHz at 18:30 UTC. While recording, I piped the shortwave audio through our home hi-fi system--it sounded absolutely amazing. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

Radio Romania International

Today at 20:30 UTC, Radio Romania International's signal on 11,745 kHz was  quite strong, as it so often is.  RRI is one of the few broadcasters that still target Europe and the eastern US on shortwave.

RRI is a treasure of a station, too, with true local flavor--Romanian news, music, and mini cultural documentaries. This Sunday broadcast features the program Inside Romania, Romanian Without Tears (a language program which always reminds me of the similarities between French and Romanian), DX Mailbag, and Roots.

Click here to download the full broadcast as an MP3, or simply listen via the embedded player below. This recording features their interval signal before and after the broadcast.

If you enjoy Radio Romania International, I encourage you to send an accurate and descriptive reception report to: rri@rri.ro Maybe your letter will be featured on their DX Mailbag!

Radio Australia's Tok Pisin service

Monday morning, I was up earlier than usual and caught Radio Australia's Tok Pisin (Pacific Pidgin Language Service) on 9,475 kHz.

I doubt many English-speaking SWLing Post readers will understand Tok Pisin if you're hearing it for the first time, but as with other Pidgin languages throughout the world, Tok Pisin is a mixture of several languages: English, German, Malay, Portuguese and Austronesian languages. It has a comparatively simple structure and you might be surprised what you can understand if the topic shifts to something familiar. I've certainly enjoyed listening to it in the background as I work on other projects.

I recorded a full 90 minutes of the Tok Pisin service; you can download it directly by clicking here, or simply listen via the embedded player below:

NHK Radio Japan

For you listening pleasure: thirty minutes of NHK Radio Japan's English language service.

This broadcast was recorded an hour ago, at 10:00 UTC on 9,625 (April 19, 2013).  Though NHK has dropped their English language services into North America, you can still receive their broadcasts targeting other regions quite easily.

Click here to download the full recording, or simply listen via the embedded player below. note that I include a full five minutes of their interval signal: Enjoy!

Hard Tack Radio

For your listening pleasure: a 24 minute recording of the pirate radio station, Hard Tack Radio.

Hard Tack Radio plays US Civil War era songs "celebrating the Blue and the Gray."

I caught Hard Tack's broadcast Friday night (April 12) around 23:10 UTC. Their upper side band signal was pretty strong and well above the active noise floor, though there was a heterodyne/data noise located right around 6926.8 kHz. You won't hear this noise in the recording below, because I effectively used the WinRadio Excalibur's notch filter to eliminate it. At the very end of the recording, I turn off the notch and you'll hear the noise a few seconds before the broadcast ends.

Click here to download the full recording of Hard Tack Radio, or simply listen via the embedded player below: