Live, off-air, approximately one-and-one-half-hour recording of Radio Cairo in English on 17 August 2016 beginning about 23:00 UTC on a shortwave frequency of 9965 kHz. According to a High Frequency Coordination Conference registration, the signal originates from a 250 kW transmitter at the Abis transmitter complex, near Alexandria, Egypt, and was beamed 325° to western Europe and eastern North America. Radio Cairo is operated by the Egyptian Radio and Television Union, the public broadcaster of Egypt, operated by the Egyptian government.
The broadcast includes music and various features, including news (at about the 15-minute mark in the recording) and "Arabic by Radio" -- lesson 94 (starting around the 52-minute mark). The broadcast concludes with the news in brief, sign-off announcement, and about five minutes of music before time pips for 00:30:00 UTC. Times mentioned in the broadcast are Cairo local times, that is, in Central African Time (UTC + 2 hours).
Most Radio Cairo transmissions currently suffer from extremely poor modulation making them completely unintelligible. This recording is a rare example where the broadcast is somewhat understandable for the most part. However, the audio is muffled at times with music passages sounding somewhat better than most of the spoken word. The "Arabic by Radio" segment is, on the other hand, quite clear. The original recorded audio has been amplified by 400% to produce the archived audio file.
The broadcast was received by the Web-interface wideband software-defined radio at the University of Twente in Enschede, The Netherlands, with a "Mini-Whip" antenna in AM mode with 5.09 kHz RF filtering. Reception must be considered only fair despite a strong signal since modulation was weak and slightly distorted or "muddy." However, there was no interference and negligible signal fading.
