How to Close Down a Transmitter (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): "It is as if aliens from outer space were at work. The mayor of Valley tells how his son's remote-controlled toy car suddenly drove through the room at three in the morning. A friend's garage door opens and closes without a command. And everyone knows the story of the woman who employed Polish harvest workers. One morning while she was standing over her pots and pans in the kitchen she heard her favorite Radio Liberty program in Polish." (Thanks Grant Barrett for the heads up.)

Posted 19:55 UTC

Giant Sunspot May Explode (BBC News Online): "Scientists are currently observing the largest sunspot seen on the surface of our star for more than a decade. Researchers think it could lead to a powerful flare some time in the next day or so. If this explosive event does occur, it will liberate in just a few seconds more energy than mankind has ever used." (Thanks Daniel Say for finding this and posting to swprograms.)

Posted 19:38 UTC

Noted refugee from marketing Doc Searls has a nice rant on how wonderful radio used to be. He puts its peak at the summer of 1963. Gee, I was born in the summer of 1963.... "In my head I can still hear KAAY/1090 out of Little Rock, which covered the midwest like a blanket every night. KIMN/950 out of Denver, which I picked up somewhere in Kansas, and listened to all the way to Colorado Springs, never closer than a hundred miles to the station itself. The signal was weak, but the ground out there was so conductive that a signal that wouldn't go forty miles in Massachusetts carried hundreds of miles."

Posted 06:33 UTC

Vatican Radio Officials Charged (National Catholic Weekly): "As there is no Italian law against electrosmog, the three were charged under a statute for 'throwing dangerous things,' which carries a fine of approximately $200."

Posted 21:31 UTC

Media Network on the fate of the Kerbango Internet Radio: "As John Cleese might have put it, 'This appliance is dead. It is no more. It has ceased to be'. In fact, it never was. The Kerbango Internet radio project was officially declared dead on 21 March 2001 by 3Com, which had paid US$80m for the Kerbango company nine months earlier." I'm bummed about this; I was looking forward to buying one of these.

Posted 18:00 UTC

Cumbre DX and ClandestineRadio.com have collaborated on a report, released today, that makes it sound as if the power and might of the U.S. government is poised to descend on Kentucky State Militia Radio, the pirate/clandestine operating nightly on 3260 kHz, with guns blazing. The breathless report, while going a little over the top, nonetheless contains some interesting information. There's clearly a WWFV connection, for example, as all the frequencies that KSMR proposes to transmit on just happen to be 10 kHz away from WWFV. Sounds like a group of disgruntled former customers....

Nowhere in the report does it state that government forces are surrounding the KSMR compound or anything. All they've got is a quote from Riley Hollingsworth of the FCC saying "yeah, we know about them, and we're going to shut them down," so it's a little disingenuous of our friends at Cumbre to be so misleading with their headline.

Posted 20:12 UTC

Bill Bergadano KA2EMZ has got his pictures of the Fest up on the web. He's also got some nice comments about the Fest on his regular links page. Bill is the person responsible for hitting up the stations for all that schwag on the free table.

Posted 14:58 UTC

If you listen to shortwave radio, you probably already know that domestic radio here in the U.S. is really bad. Salon tells you why it's so bad: "Listeners may not realize it, but radio today is largely bought by the record companies. Most rock and Top 40 stations get paid to play the songs they spin by the companies that manufacture the records. But it's not payola -- exactly. Here's how it works."

Posted 14:44 UTC

Risto Kotalampi and Kari Kivekäs covered this weekend's festivities in Kulpsville, Pennsylvania, for Hard Core DX. He's also got a ton of pictures up already, winning the race for yet another year. :-) (Don't pay any attention to the report about Allen Loudell's talk; Allen is looking forward to the death of FM radio....)

Posted 01:17 UTC

Ulis Fleming pointed me to a new AM/FM radio by Tivoli Audio, designed by Henry Kloss. He says it sounds really excellent, and it looks very retro without looking fakely retro. Lucky me, of the six dealers that carry it in New Jersey, two are within ten miles of my house.... (Like I need another radio....) Ulis got the Cobalt, and I have to agree, it's the most striking of the three.

Posted 03:32 UTC

Tom Sundstrom reviews the Yaesu VR-500: "The creativity aspect of the shortwave receiver design strikes us as being a bit stale. A few manufacturers have new models with rearranged controls, but the receivers do not seem to offer significant improvements or new features to attract our interest. The push of DSP and better filters into more reasonably priced receivers has not yet happened. So what is a person to do who likes to buy new toys?" (Radio Netherlands Media Network site)

Posted 12:33 UTC

Freeplay Winds Up SA Production "In a move which its inventor Trevor Baylis calls 'crass and vulgar', Freeplay has decided to move production of its wind-up radio from South Africa to China." (From the Radio Netherlands Media Network site.)

Posted 12:30 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 508 for February 25, 2001, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, has been posted.

Posted 12:26 UTC

The sprawling March edition of Ed Mayberry's International Listener has been posted.

Posted 12:24 UTC

Don't 'Jump' "It may be considered a sick and twisted joke to some, but the police chief in Omaha, Nebraska, isn't amused." (And people wonder why we call them "scanner scum"....)

Posted 12:23 UTC