The Southern Pacific DX Resource has a neat article about WXLE, a US Army-run medium wave station in the South Pacific back in the 1970s: "In October 1973, Christchurch DXer David Ricquish received a letter...confirming a report of reception on 7 and 8 February 1973. Location of the station was given as Canton Island, and the antenna co-ordinates as 0024635S 1714320W. The station operated on an assigned frequency of 1385 kHz emission 10A3 with a peak power of 250 watts. At last, New Zealand DXers knew what they were listening to." (As of about 1800 UTC on May 31, the computer that hosts this site, radiodx.com, appears to be unreachable. If you have problems getting the article, try again later. Thanks John Mosman for the heads up.)

Posted 02:02 UTC

If you've never been to the lovely facilities of Universal Shortwave in dynamic Reynoldsburg, Ohio (okay, so they're in the middle of an industrial park...), you can now take a tour on the net. It's not fancy 3D immersive reality like the QuickTime VR Tour of WWV, but it does feature Barb Osterman, which the WWV tour doesn't.

Posted 01:48 UTC

Media Network, in the person of our friend Tom Sundstrom, reviews the new Radio Shack DX-396: "Radio Shack has corrected the SW frequency coverage deficiencies of the DX-375 with the introduction of the DX-396, a step below the DX-399. The front panel has been modified to make it easier to use, in our opinion."

Posted 01:38 UTC

Dragan Stankovic reports for Media Network's Kosovo Media Dossier on the situation with television in Kosovo: "Up till now, the only internationally recognised TV broadcaster in Kosovo has been Radio Television Kosova (RTK), which is run by the European Broadcasting Union.... Besides RTK, there are only some private or more precisely pirate operations, either locally based or from Albania, using unlicensed transmitters."

Posted 01:37 UTC

Andy Sennitt: "I'd like to think that by raising awareness of the situation, and with our links to Web sites of those directly involved in helping the besieged independent media, we can make a small contribution. At the very least, I hope it makes people appreciate their own freedoms more."

Posted 01:27 UTC

Radio Netherlands is taking a survey online. They're giving away t-shirts and the like to 10 of the people who fill it out (and as a recent recipient of one, I can say that they're nice t-shirts). I'm not sure how statistically valid a self-selected survey like this is, so do them a favor whether you listen or not and fill it out so they have a more representative sample.

Posted 01:29 UTC

The data for the WWW SWL Guide has been lightly refreshed, with the all-important Radio Tirana program schedule updated.

Posted 03:19 UTC

In the wake of the (pretty darned good) story on NPR's All Things Considered on Friday about numbers stations, the geeks on Slashdot are discussing whether or not it would be possible to break the code for one of the broadcasts.

Posted 20:43 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 466 for May 23, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 02:10 UTC

June 2nd marks the 50th anniversary of the Haitian station 4VEH, according to the Radio Netherlands Real Radio site, which has a profile of the station to mark the occasion. Sadly, of course, they're no longer on shortwave.

Radio Netherlands has an interesting piece about the latest edition of DSWCI's Domestic Broadcasting Survey, which is available in electronic form for the first time, in addition to the traditional dead trees. They also cover Herman Boel's free Euro MW Guide, which has become the standard reference for mediumwave broadcasts in Europe.

Posted 02:06 UTC

Andy Kershaw Has Left the Building: The last Andy Kershaw show on BBC's domestic Radio 1 is over, and he went out in style, thanking his engineers and listeners and apologizing to the musicians he had lined up for sessions in the coming weeks who will now miss out on the chance to be on the air. The last two songs played were "We'll Sweep Up the Ashes in the Morning" by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, and finally Openyu Wangu by Zimbabwean greats The Bhundu Boys.

Posted 02:02 UTC

Andy Kershaw's final program for BBC's domestic Radio 1 network is on right now. You can read about what the slimewad Controller of Radio 1 did on the BBC News site. (Thanks Maryanne Kehoe for posting about this article on the swprograms mailing list.) Amazingly enough, the same esteemed jerk says that John Peel has a home on Radio 1 as long as he's in charge. Given the overlap in the music they play, it can't be the music that Kershaw plays that caused him to be fired. Maybe there's something to the idea that it was because Kershaw called him a racist....

Grrr.... I'm so mad I could spit bricks....

On the show tonight, Andy said that they offered him a 12 week contract to continue until they could get their replacement show in place (a dance music show) with "esteemed DJs", but that for some reason, the thought of sticking around after he'd been fired didn't appeal to him. Good on you, Andy!

Posted 00:23 UTC

The Radio Netherlands technical schedule says that one of the temporary generators on Bonaire is having problems, so Bonaire is down to one transmitter, and some transmissions have been transferred to Antigua, Ascension Island, Cypress Creek and Jülich. Unfortunately, the schedule doesn't reflect which transmissions, but Mark Veldhuis found a posting from Ed Evans of WSHB in rec.radio.shortwave and reposted it to Hard Core DX telling which transmissions Cypress Creek would be covering.

Posted 22:43 UTC

The Clandestine Radio QSL Gallery is looking for submissions of more QSLs from clandestine stations.

Posted 22:36 UTC

Vostochnoe Radio, the Japanese newsletter covering Russian and other ex-USSR broadcasters, posted a new issue two weeks ago. I guess it takes me a while to remember to check some of these sites....

Posted 04:53 UTC

Listening Points number 2000-10, a Japanese newsletter covering um, pretty much everything, has been posted.

Posted 04:51 UTC

Jembatan DX, the Japanese e-newsletter covering Indonesia, has posted two new issues recently after a gap of a couple of months: Number 93 from May 13, and Number 94 from May 21.

Posted 04:47 UTC

Andy Sennitt: "My grandfather used to say proudly 'I've picked up Montreal'. But he would soon be twiddling the knobs looking for something else. My Dad told me that when he was growing up, the family could never enjoy listening to a whole programme on the radio because my grandfather could never resist tuning it into something else."

Posted 09:39 UTC

In a post to the swprograms mailing list, Kevin Kelly mentioned his Internet Radio web site, which lists programs available on a numbers of radio stations via the web. Some of the functionality is tied to the eastern US time zone, and some of the HTML doesn't display well in some browsers, but it's an interesting site. It's kind of like the site John Figliozzi does here on the NASWA site for shortwave, with the added attraction that you can select a link and start hearing the program. Hmmm, that would be interesting, a radio with a web browser built into it that could tune to frequencies shown on a web page....

Posted 09:38 UTC

Media Network reports on an initiative to boost radio stations in the Pacific onto the web: "The first initiative under this project has been the development of a Web site for Fiji Broadcasting Corporation Ltd. The site, which will be released in the near future, is an online resource which will increase FBCL's audience base to an international scale."

Posted 09:37 UTC

Media Network reports on the seizure of Studio B television and radio station B2-92 by Serbian authorities: "One Studio B employee who succeeded in entering the building at about 11 a.m. said that he had seen police on every floor, that Studio B offices had been opened and that a state television crew was in the station's editing suite. About a hundred staff members of Studio B, Blic, Radio B2-92 and Radio Indeks, all of which have premises in the building, assembled in front of the building and were joined by members of the public." I guess the next step will be stations Studio C and Radio B3-92....

Posted 09:37 UTC

Paul Ormandy has posted a nice article about his DX camp at Waianakarua, New Zealand, with lots of pictures of Those Wacky Kiwis.

Posted 03:33 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 465 for May 15, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 03:18 UTC

British newspaper The Guardian published an article late last month about the BBC World Service's attempts to remain relevant in the Age of CNN: "Now that news and current affairs have become commodities to be bought and sold by huge media conglomerates such as CNN's owners AOL/Time-Warner, why should listeners still bother to seek out the World Service's faintly eccentric brand?" (Found via the Communications World web site.)

Posted 21:06 UTC

The Low Power Radio Coalition was formed to fight the forces of evil...erm...the major broadcasters who got the House of Representatives to pass a bill gutting the FCC's plans for low-power radio. The Senate has yet to do anything, so that's where LPRC is focusing their efforts, trying to prevent them from going along with the NAB's lackeys in the House. (Found via the Communications World web site; editorial spin is purely mine, though.)

Posted 20:56 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 464 for May 9, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 20:44 UTC

Bill Whitacre doesn't believe in convergence as espoused by Bill Gates and Jonathan Marks. Neither, for that matter, does Jonathan Marks.

Posted 20:42 UTC

Lee Reynolds has an opinion or two about the so-called convergence of computers and entertainment, in particular web radio. Andy Sennitt begs to differ with one or two of those opinions.

Posted 20:36 UTC

Media Network has posted its review of the Sanyo WorldSpace receiver. They think it has some serious problems, ones that are inherent to WorldSpace's service, to the point where, unless WorldSpace makes some changes, quickly, "we believe WorldSpace is the next Iridium." Ouch!

Posted 20:27 UTC

The Advanced Book Exchange web site is an interesting cooperative effort involving a bunch of independent booksellers around the world. It's a great source of used and difficult-to-find books. Searching on their site for "shortwave", I found a couple of books that people often mention wanting, but rarely find: Donald R. Browne's International Radio Broadcasting: Limits of the Limitless Medium and Gerry Dexter's Shortwave Radio Listening With The Experts. Browne's book in particular is a bargain here; it's still in print, but its publisher sells it for $89, whereas the copy available on abebooks.com is only going for $25. Gerry's book is available from three different booksellers for prices between $10 and $15.

Posted 20:19 UTC

Mika Makelainen combines business and pleasure on a recent trip to Peru to cover the presidential elections there: "Chaccha offered us local booze made of a plant called maka. And so we toasted to a better future for Radio Libertad de Junin. As for a better future for DXers vying for a QSL, you could try paying generously for all the expenses - that should improve your odds from the otherwise zero probability. The station does know very well what DXers want, but responding seems to be mostly a question of money and interest."

Posted 12:47 UTC

Hermod Pedersen posted a note to HCDX about a page containing a discussion from 1998 about the effect of the A-index and K-index on medium wave reception. Personally, I find they spend too much time on the A-index, which in my experience is best used as a trailing indicator, measuring what conditions were like yesterday. Much better to focus on the K-index, which is updated every three hours and is much more of an indication of current conditions.

Posted 12:41 UTC

MacCentral, one of the major Macintosh-related news sites, has an article covering radio hobby-related software, including offerings from Black Cat and Spectrum Systems. Nice job from an unexpectedly "mainstream" source.

Posted 10:21 UTC

BBC World Service has updated its web site, and it's some good, some bad. On the up side, more programs are now available on demand, so you can listen whenever you want. On the down side, for those programs that are not available on demand, such as John Peel and Andy Kershaw's World of Music, the pages still include a "Listen Now" link that leads you to think that you can listen to the show, but are rewarded instead with an audio file explaining that the show is unavailable for copyright reasons. Also, the site makes heavy use of Dynamic HTML and, at least on my computer, it doesn't always work well. The program details, for example, overwrite the footer at the bottom of the page when you select a program, and where the text of the details and footer clashes, can be impossible to read. Feh. Too clever by half.

Posted 13:48 UTC

Herman Boel's web site, from where you can get his excellent list of European longwave and mediumwave stations, has a new easy-to-remember URL, <http://www.dx-hobby.com/>. Or, if you don't want to be bothered by the annoying frame with advertisement, just go to the original URL, <http://gallery.uunet.be/hb/>.

Posted 13:29 UTC

Hard Core DX is reporting that a new private shortwave station, Scandinavian Weekend Radio, is going to start broadcasting from Finland at the end of June, with test transmissions throughout June.

Posted 01:27 UTC

Universal is still plowing through the backlog of orders for the Grundig Satellit 800; as of May 3rd, orders up to November 15, 1999 have been shipped.

Posted 01:26 UTC

Media Network has updated its Kosovo Media Dossier with information about TV piracy in Serbia and Montenegro and jamming of opposition-run TV station Studio B.

Posted 01:15 UTC

BBC World Service appears to be unveiling a new design for its web site today. It's not up at the moment; there's a placeholder saying that the site will be back at 2300.

Posted 01:05 UTC

Andy Sennitt: "They say that in times of crisis you find out who your real friends are. It seems that Radio Netherlands is not short of friends. Nor are we short of people who are willing to give 110% when required."

Posted 02:44 UTC

Radio Netherlands interviews Dave Harris, former chief engineer at Radio Botswana and author of their continuing web serial, "This is Radio Botswana" about his experiences there: "We had a very important decision to make, as to whether we should put more money into shortwave broadcasting, or try and perhaps go the more modern route of television and FM radio. We made that decision at the end of the 1970's, and decided we would still go down the route of shortwave broadcasting. I think it was the right decision."

Posted 02:42 UTC

Yokohama DXing number 54, a newsletter from Japan covering the Americas, has been posted to the web.

Posted 02:18 UTC

Gasp! Horrors! The Miami Herald reports that Radio Swan was run by the CIA!: "[T]he program producers began to exaggerate in order to give their broadcasts a touch of sensationalism. They made statements which were obvious lies to the listeners." Efforts to achieve the proper control failed, so on March 27, 1961, Radio Swan management sent a letter to program producers terminating their programs. They were replaced by a programming schedule "implacably under CIA control." (from a post by polisci@mindspring.com to Hard Core DX)

Posted 10:56 UTC

Ed Mayberry has posted the May edition of his International Listener Shortwave News (from a post by Ed to swprograms).

Posted 10:48 UTC