Mark Veldhuis pointed out a couple of interesting pages about Sony shortwave radios; the first is a history of all the radios that Sony has released with the number 7600 as part of its name (and there have been an awful lot, over a surprisingly long period of time). The second covers Sony portables in general.

Posted 20:46 UTC

Andy Sennitt has written a great summary of the two disputes currently forcing radio stations to remove their net audio feeds, one that's much more finely nuanced than my flippant comments. Not surprisingly, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, one of the worst pieces of legislation ever written by the U.S. Congress (what's the opposite of "progress"?), plays a leading role. International shortwave broadcasting may have a more prominent role to play for a while yet just because it's been around and the lawyers aren't circling like vultures.

Posted 18:29 UTC

Of all of the reasons for radio stations to stop webcasting their signals, absolutely positively the very last reason I ever expected this to happen was ad agencies not wanting people to hear their advertisements. (Okay, in fairness, it's actors wanting outrageous fees for their ads to air on the net, and the ad agencies are merely the messengers....) Before long, the only stations left streaming their signals on the net will be ones that don't air commercials, like, er, international shortwave broadcasters.... (Thanks Lou Josephs for originally posting about this to the swprograms mailing list.)

Posted 16:56 UTC

SpaceWeather.com has an absolutely spectacular gallery of aurora photographs taken last week from around the world, including such auroral hotspots as San Diego, California, and the mountains of west Texas.

Posted 00:51 UTC

From the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska, it's the Top Ten List for April 3, 2001: Top Ten Effects Of The Giant Solar Flare (from CBS' Late Show, starring well-known SWL David Letterman; thanks Rich McVicar for mentioning that this was on last night)

Posted 00:22 UTC

The BBC News web site has some spectacular photographs of aurora caused by the recent geomagnetic storm. I really wish it hadn't been cloudy here in New Jersey last night....

Posted 04:29 UTC

The South Pacific DX Resource has posted another new item in their wonderful ongoing Radio Heritage Collection. This one is about Shelby Newhouse's experiences just after World War II at the U.S. armed forces' Radio Tokyo. One of my best friends was a broadcaster in Japan for the Army in the 1960s, so I was particularly interested to read this one.

Posted 15:55 UTC

Last week I tried to visit Mark Mohrmann's excellent LA-DX page to help ID a station I was hearing and was greeted by a ubiquitous 404 page. Bleah. Well, Tom Sundstrom has tracked down the new home of Mark's page. Change your bookmarks!

Posted 15:40 UTC

Dan Henderson has put together a table with all the salient information you'll need to fulfill your minimum daily requirements of Kurdistan-related clandestine station listening, complete with information about whether or not the stations QSL. I knew there was a number of Kurdish clandestines, but had no idea there were so many! I guess I just haven't been paying attention.... (Incidentally, the Voice of the People of Kurdistan on 6995 usually booms in here in eastern North America around 0300.)

Posted 15:14 UTC

WORLDWIDE DX CLUB Weekly Top News 513 for March 30, 2001, compiled by Wolfgang Büschel, the man NASWA columnist Al Quaglieri calls "a more accurate and comprehensive source of broadcasting information than either BBC Monitoring or the WRTH," has been posted.

Posted 15:01 UTC

Mike Bird has some nice explanations of the explosions on the surface of the sun that have been buffeting the ionosphere this week.

Posted 14:47 UTC

One of the many interesting items in the new Radio Netherlands Technical Schedule for the A-01 season is a number of broadcasts, starting tomorrow, of tests of the Digital Radio Mondiale system. The schedule kind of implies that these will be on every weekday. Have a listen and you can see for yourself just how many channels one of these broadcasts will obliterate.

Posted 14:43 UTC