The new private shortwave station from Finland, Scandinavian Weekend Radio, should be up and running any minute now (they're scheduled to go on the air for the first time at 2200 UTC). Their flea-powered transmitter should make this Real DX^(TM). Frequencies are either 11690 or 11720.

Posted 22:59 UTC

Okay, this is about television, not radio, but it's just too weird not to share. From the BBC World Service's From Our Own Correspondent: "And like any self-respecting news programme Naked Truth has a weather report - reported with inimitable style by a professional striptease artist who gyrates erotically before a map of Russia. As the temperatures rise, the clothes come off. Russia, it seems, has found a novel way of keeping abreast of the news."

Posted 03:34 UTC

The Black Swan (Media Network): "The original plan was to operate Radio Swan as a clandestine station, but the US Navy, having been involved in the transportation of equipment to Swan Island, decided it did not wish to be associated with a clandestine operation. So Radio Swan went on the air in May 1960 as a "commercial" station, ostensibly owned by the Gibraltar Steamship Company, a bogus company set up by the CIA as a front for the operation."

Posted 23:08 UTC

Listening Points 2000-12, a general DX newsletter from Japan, was posted on June 17th.

Posted 02:17 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 470 for June 20, 2000, and 470-B for June 22, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 02:10 UTC

Media Network has a nice review of John Figliozzi's Worldwide Shortwave Listening Guide: "The 112 page book is well designed for practical use.... As the book is intended primarily for North America, all programmes beamed to the Americas appear in bold. However, it is just as useful in other parts of the world, as broadcasts to all target areas are included." They also use nice words like essential and indispensible.

Posted 02:04 UTC

Tom Sundstrom has been updating the Winter SWL Fest pages with lots of new information. The Fest background page even has pictures of Pancho Villa (although there aren't any recordings of his voice there, nor explanations of why his favorite music would happen to be Peruvian Huaynos....)

Posted 02:40 UTC

Paul Ormandy's Southern Pacific DX Report site just keeps posting cool articles about radio stations; the newest one is about Radio Sunshine, ZK2ZN, which has broadcast on a variety of mediumwave frequencies over the years.

Posted 23:01 UTC

Jembatan DX, the Japanese newsletter covering Indonesian DX, put out a short issue, number 96, on June 11th.

Posted 22:55 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 469 for June 13, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

(Of course, I would have told you about this earlier if I could have standed spending more than a two minutes at the computer in the recent heat here.... Expect a new Top News any minute now....)

Posted 22:37 UTC

Universal Radio's Grundig Satellit 800 page says that they've filled back orders up to mid-April now, so they're getting closer to being caught up. They can't ship the radios overseas, though....

Posted 22:31 UTC

Media Network: "In [India,] a country where most people are literate or semi-literate, community radio could play a key role. Very poor people can, at best, afford only one electronic device, like the simple radio which could cost as little as $2 in India. Low-powered transmitters for FM are available for less than $200. However, the Indian government does not allow their use for broadcasting."

Posted 22:31 UTC

Media Network reports that this year's Love Parade in Berlin, one of the largest street parties in the world, will be broadcast on shortwave by Ostdeutscher Rundfunk Brandenburg, July 7-9.

Posted 22:23 UTC

Andy Sennitt on the trustworthiness of brodcasters: "A Dutch domestic broadcaster revealed that it too had 'occasionally' used a bit of subterfuge to get a sports commentary on the air. Our local Hilversum newspaper quoted one incident where a well-known commentator had actually broadcast a commentary while watching his TV set in his own front room!"

Posted 22:09 UTC

Sorry for the lack of postings over the past week. A broken air conditioner and a heat wave have made the room where my computer and my radio are a less than pleasant place to pass the time. Hopefully this week will be better....

Posted 13:25 UTC

The International House of Radio's program Marketplace had an interesting report last night about the changing nature of radio due to things like Internet-based audio on demand and satellite-delivered national radio channels like XM Radio. (You can hear the program if you want, but it'll cost you. I guess that's part of the changing nature of radio....)

I posted my reactions to what I heard on the swprograms mailing list. My basic point was that everybody seems to talk about how people will be able to have greater control over what they hear and the like, but nobody talks about how the change in the medium will change what they hear. If you want to hear something on demand, chances are it's going to be about something, unlike most radio. If radio on demand catches on the way Marketplace and Forrester Research were suggesting, we may see a dramatic increase in the amount of radio that's actually about something.

The discussion kind of took off from there.

Posted 23:12 UTC

DXing.com's Newsroom has news from Dr. Adrian Peterson that there will be two special broadcasts from Adventist World Radio on July 2nd and 9th on the occasion of the Seventh Day Adventist Church's worldwide convention in Toronto. The broadcasts will be via WHRI on 6040 kHz at 1200 UTC.

Posted 22:54 UTC

Radio Free Asia has a page on how to construct a Shortwave Interference Reducing Antenna using objects you probably already have in your home! (Gee, I wonder why they'd be interested in that....)

Posted 00:09 UTC

Our friend and now (again!) NASWA columnist John Figliozzi has taken the dead trees version of his programming database, The Worldwide Shortwave Listeners Guide, away from Radio Shack and published the new 2000-2001 edition himself. He's still got the same printer, so it'll look just like the one you used to be able to get at the Shack, but it'll actually have up-to-date information. The book's web page contains instructions on where to order your copy. Go buy a copy. Go buy two, in fact.

Of course, the electronic version, The WWW Shortwave Listeners Guide, remains here on NASWeb as well.

Posted 08:58 UTC

Last weekend on Communications World on VOA, Kim Andrew Elliott reported on his trip to Canada to attend the Challenges conference, which is kind of a talking shop for international broadcasters. At the conference Kim presented a paper on international broadcasting and the Internet, and has made the paper available on the CW web site as a PDF file. It's an interesting read. He makes the point, among others, that the net is primarily a text medium, and proposes that it may continue to be so, flying in the face of the Conventional Wisdom (a different kind of "CW") of the all-singing all-dancing broadband future.

Posted 07:56 UTC

Looks like there was another fadeout this morning. I was listening to the BBC on 9515 via Sackville around 1300 with no problem, but when I tried to tune in again at 1555, there was nothing there. Or, for that matter, anywhere else. No WWV on 10, 15, or 20 MHz. Conditions started to return to normal by about 1605; BBC 9515 was back by then. IPS Space Services has a nice blinking red graphic that reads "fadeout" on its current weather page, and their Real Time SWF Coverage Map shows the extent of the fadeout. And look! It's pretty much centered on eastern North America, where I sit.

Posted 17:28 UTC

Hans Johnson in a Cumbre DX Special and Lou Josephs on the swprograms mailing list have mentioned a major solar flare from yesterday (that resulted in shortwave signals completely disappearing in some places for a few hours) that will affect shortwave in the next few days, particularly Thursday and Friday. IPS Space Services in Australia says that shortwave fadeouts are possible on those days. Their current conditions page describes likely "significant geomagnetic storm levels and ionospheric depressions" tomorrow. NOAA is predicting a 40% chance of active conditions, and 25% chance of a major storm.

So what's all this mean? If you want to listen to programs, you may find service disrupted on Thursday and Friday. Stations may sound "watery" or not be there at all. If you're trying to DX, on the other hand, you may find that usual pests have disappeared, stations that are normally blocked are enhanced, and conditions will just generally be unusual, possibly providing opportunities to hear stations inaudible under regular conditions.

Posted 15:14 UTC

The June edition of Ed Mayberry's International Listener webzine has been posted. This month has information about changes at the Voice of Russia, Andy Kershaw being fired by BBC Radio 1, the Challenges conference held last month in Canada, and the ever-popular Much More.

Posted 23:15 UTC

Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The World Today:

COMPERE: Well, Radio Australia's small role in all of this may be about to be given a boost again. The chairman of the ABC, Donald McDonald, says he's keen for Radio Australia to begin broadcasting from the Cox transmitters. He told me that he's written this very morning to the Christian Voice Broadcasting Group to open negotiations.

DONALD McDONALD: We've made an opening gambit, you might call it, and I have sent a letter to the chairman of Christian Voice saying that we're anxious to talk with them. (Thanks John Figliozzi for posting about this article on the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 23:09 UTC

Beaming Canada to the World: "That [Radio Canada International] is still broadcasting at all reflects the feisty resistance of its staff. While some employees accepted their fate after the 1991 cuts, others went into action. They formed a coalition of employees and supporters to pressure the government to restore full funding. Within days after the cuts were announced, they demonstrated outside RCI's offices and, in Ottawa, called press conferences and besieged the media -- not an easy task since they often had to explain what RCI was." (Thanks Daniel Say on the swprograms mailing list for posting about this article.)

Posted 23:00 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 468 for June 6, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 22:46 UTC

Salon, Radio Roadkill: "Freedman is certain the station's Web presence has enlarged its audience. Soon it could go further. Freedman expects small, focused stations to become 'international phenomena,' partnering with companies, listeners and bands outside their cities, states and countries to create concerts, festivals and CDs."

Posted 22:41 UTC

Radio Sweden has added a new frequency, 15425 kHz, for its 03-04 broadcasts (Swedish at the top of the hour, English from 0330) and Magnus Nilsson of Teracom, the company that operates Radio Sweden's transmitters, wants your report (especially ones that compare 15425 to the existing frequency of 9495). They're offering a special QSL and they'll be giving away t-shirts to some of the reporters. E-mail reports to magnus.nilsson@teracom.se or fax them to +46 8 55542060. (From a post to the Hard Core DX mailing list by Magnus Nilsson; I would have linked directly to the post rather than including the substance of it here, but the mailing archive on the HCDX web site appears to be broken at the moment.)

Posted 13:10 UTC

Tom Sundstrom has a new musing up. He briefly mentions Radio Netherlands, talks about the 'Fest (under 280 days and counting!), and has a neat section about Radio Swan/Radio Americas, the 1960s CIA-run anti-Castro clandestine (no, wait, it was really run by the Gibraltar Steamship Company, that's it....) He's got a picture of one of their QSLs, and a bunch of links to other sources of information about Radio Swan. He's also got a review of some new software from Mark Fine (where'd I see that name before?)

Posted 01:41 UTC

Mark Fine finally got off his butt and bought a real domain name for his line of receiver control and schedule database software: www.fineware-swl.com (and it should be propagated to the whole net by now). Congratulations, Mark!

Posted 01:35 UTC

The Australian: Doubt on cash a risk to radio over Asia

Radio Australia risks losing all shortwave radio coverage over most of South-East Asia in August when its temporary lease from a Taiwan transmitter expires, after both Radio Australia and the ABC said yesterday they had no money to renew the lease. The new concerns about Radio Australia's Asian coverage came as Labor said yesterday it would attempt to guarantee the broadcaster's access to the Cox Peninsula shortwave transmitter in Darwin, which was sold last week to a religious broadcaster. (Thanks John Figliozzi for posting about this article on the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 23:46 UTC

Radio Netherlands has a "Media Hot Spot" feature about the attempted coup in the Solomon Islands. Now they've got a matching pair!

Posted 23:41 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 467 for May 30, 2000, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 09:42 UTC